Count and figure it out together
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using catalogues and magazines

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Catalogues and magazines are full of numbers. Children love to look at the pictures and the words and the numbers. Your child can cut pictures out of old catalogues and sort them out.

You use numbers when you look at catalogues. You look at the price. You choose the right size. You write down the code on the order form.

You can give your child a blank order form to play with and to draw and write on. You can talk about all the numbers in the catalogue.

Let your child help you look through catalogues. Ask her to find the price and the sizes.

What to do

  • Cut out pictures of children's clothes. Talk about getting dressed. Ask your child to help you put the pictures in the right order.

  • Look at the numbers in the catalogue. Talk about what they mean. Read the numbers out. Talk about the prices. Show how one thing is cheaper than another. Look at numbers that are codes.

  • Cut out pictures of clothes with patterns. Cut out check shirts and spotty jumpers. Cut out flowery dresses and stripy ties.

  • Ask her to sort out all the patterns. She can put the stripy patterns together. She can make up her own stripy or spotty design on paper with coloured pencils.

  • Cut out lots of numbers. Help your child to find numbers she knows. She could look for her age. She could look for her front door number. She could look for her bus number.

  • Use an old order form. Help her 'pretend' to fill it in. Look at the spaces for the credit card numbers.

clothes

  • Use a pretend telephone. You can use an empty yoghurt pot each. Your child can pretend to place the order over the phone.
    Ask her the page number. Ask her how many things she wants.

  • Look at a telephone directory. Look at the numbers in the book. Look for patterns of numbers. Some numbers repeat, like 0171 and 0181. Read out the numbers.

  • Use bus tickets, train tickets, raffle tickets, trade cards with telephone numbers on them, take away menus, receipts, junk mail.

numbers

 

Useful questions

  • What do you put on first when you get dressed? Do you put your socks on first or your shoes

  • Can we find a telephone number on this page?

  • Where shall we look for the price of the hat?

  • Can you find anything on this page for £5?

  • Can I copy your stripy pattern? What colours do I need? What comes first? What comes next?

  • Did you say page 6? What size do you want? What pattern?

  • What is your size? Do they have any clothes in your size?

activites

What will your child be learning?

  • Reading numbers
    some numbers will be too big for your child to understand but he will enjoy learning some big number words and writing big numbers like:

numbers

  • Putting numbers in order
    looking at page numbers will help your child to say what number comes next and to count to high numbers.

  • Looking at patterns
    there are lots of maths words in patterns like first, next, on top
    of, below.

patterns

 

 

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