My Best course - Messy Maths (foundation stage)

Bringing maths into the outdoors may be old hat for some practitioners, but for those needing inspiration, this activity-based course is a good place to start, according to Rachel Bryant. The key stage 1 teacher, who is soon moving to Reception class, says the course was a useful refresher for her, while some of the more junior staff ‘couldn’t wait to get back out there’ once they had returned to school.

The teacher at Cwmaman Infants in Aberdare, Wales, adds, ‘We have quite a few new teaching assistants who were more used to sitting down and going through the workbook but not so aware of how to take maths outside.’

The morning she spent on the course was entirely outdoors, with a set of activities provided and adapted according to different age groups.

She says, ‘We were given criteria – such as even numbers or a multiple – and had to find things [which matched the criteria] from the natural world and put them in egg boxes. Our criterion was evens, so we found two buttercups, four blades of grass and six sticks. We then swapped with people’s egg boxes and had to work out what their criterion was. When we did this with the year 1 children they loved it. We also used symmetry – creating a symmetrical picture using whatever we could find. We made the line of symmetry horizontal and vertical – this works well with Reception-age children.

‘We also made a picture frame, which we placed on the ground, counting all the things we saw in it which were the same.’

The course, Messy Maths (foundation stage) is taught by a teacher with hands-on experience of international pedagogy across Scandinavia, according to course provider Ignite Up. As well as exploring child-centred learning and the potential of the outdoors for maths, the course description includes a physical development aim of understanding ‘the importance of movement and thinking as linked functions’.

• http://igniteup.co.uk