My mum's maths manifesto!

I love it when you have those eureka moments - oh my lord, finally I get it!

Last month, I finally got what my mum had been buzzing on about all those years.

You see my mum - for as long as I can remember - has had a bee in her bonnet about maths.

She tried to explain that numerals and signs are just short hand for "real maths" - which you can handle and feel and poke and prod and squidge and most importantly of all have fun with.

She tried to explain that the interesting thing about the number 8 - for example - isn't that it is - randomly - represented by two circles on top of each other. And that interesting - and fundamental - things about 8 are that:

If you've got 8 bricks you can make a tower with a flat top that is 8 bricks high or 4 bricks high or 2 bricks high or 1 brick high ... (because the factors of 8 are 8, 4, 2 and 1)

But if you took one brick away you could only make a tower with a flat top that is 7 bricks high or 1 brick high ... (because 7 is a prime number that can only be split by 1 and itself)

Or, if there are 8 mini-muffins and 2 mummies, with 2 children each and you share the muffins out equally between the mummies and they share them out equally between their 2 children, each child gets 2 yummy mini-muffins each ... (because 2 is the cube root of 8)

Or, if there are 8 scrummy golden goujons for tea, I can have 2 and mummy can have 2 and grandma can have 2, but they'll be 2 bits left - (8 doesn't factor by 3 so has a remainder of 2)

And if we split each of those 2 left over goujons into 3, it makes 6 little bits all together and we can have 2 whole gougons and 2 little bits each ... (because 8 divided by 3 is 2 and 2/6ths)

And she tried to explain that, the incredibly exciting thing is, that any child who can answer the question "how many" - trickier than we think - can also explore and discover and rediscover over and over again in so many different, hands on ways all these fascinating things about the number 8 for themselves. Wow!

And that's all without ever knowing that the short hand for number 8 is 2 circles on top of each other! (Or of course without any mention of factors, prime numbers or cube roots!)

I knew, since I was a teenager that my mum must be on to something about maths because other mums, who'd been on the playgroup courses she ran - in which she buzzed on about real, hands on maths - came back to school and studied with me, so that they could go to college for the first time, because they'd finally realised that actually maths was something they used every day in the kitchen, doing the shopping, making clothes and doling out treats to their kids and the numerals and signs were just short hand for what they already understood.

But, I only finally really got what she was on about last month, when littl'un - who has been pretty disinterested in all the numeral recognition games I have assiduously plugged and doesn't know most of the numerals, even though she is starting to read - was so excited by our big bird watch chart.

Like most children, she loves races and competitions. She also loves working out "how many" and is always counting things on her fingers. So the chart was brilliant, because suddenly she could ask lots and lots of "how many" questions to work out who was winning ..

How many times have robin, magpie, pigeon, blackbird been to the garden?
How many more times has pigeon been that blackbird?
How many times have all the big birds been?
How many times have all the little birds been?

And she could "do" this maths - what we think of as addition and subtraction - simply by counting how many coloured squares and how many blank squares there were on a chart without using any numerals or any signs. And it was endlessly fun. Again, wow!

Since, my eureka moment, I've been discussing it a lot with my mum. And she's adamant that too much focus, too early on the short hand - the numerals pre-school and the signs very early on in school - is downright dangerous.

The short hand should only be added on the top when children have already spent hundreds and hundreds of hours exploring and delighting in all the real and interesting things about numbers for themselves.

So over the next month - hopefully with some help from my mum! - I am going to stop fretting about whether my 3 year old can recognise numerals and instead try and come up with as many fabulous pre-school maths games and activities - that don't involve numerals - as I can.

And I'll come back and share everything I can here and on Pinterest.

I would love to hear your ideas, do link them up below ...

Number & Maths

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