We were pleased to welcome parents and families of Year 1 children into school this afternoon to launch the Mastering Number Parent Project in school.

Research proves that high quality teaching in school is key to raising attainment but the role that families play at home is really important. The purpose of the Mastering Number Parent Project is to provide families with ideas for activities and games that they can play at home to help children secure really good number sense.

The numbers that the children will be working with may be smaller numbers but we are purposefully focussing on smaller numbers to help children develop a deep understanding of numbers to develop that strong number sense.

The children practised subitising. Subitising is the ability to instantly recognise a small quantity of objects without the need to count.

We then played some of the games that the children will be bringing home with them next week.

Each week the children will be bringing home their ‘Mastering Number’ folder with a set of activities and a ‘homework’ diary in them for you to record how they got on. They look like this:

Thank you to the families who attended this afternoon. We hope that you enjoyed the session and found it useful and we look forward to hearing about how the children have enjoyed playing the activities. Please ensure folders are in school on a Monday for the activities to be changed and sent home.

Here are some of the comments made by our families about the session:

Did you enjoy the workshop?

“Yes – my child said he loved it!”

“Yes. My child and I have enjoyed the workshop.”

“Yes, it was fun to do together.”

Did you find the workshop useful?

“Yes. Very useful and engaging.”

“Yes. It was quite useful learning how to teach numbers with lots of fun.”

“Yes. Giving lots of ideas for how to make maths fun.”

“Yes. It is good to know it doesn’t always need to be hard.”

How will it help you to support your child?

“We will have fun whilst mastering number.”

“Yes, it will be fun whilst learning numbers.”

“I know how to help my child count in the same way they do at school.”

“Playing together and shared learning.”

What could we have done better? Is there anything you would like more information on?

“Nothing!”

“More workshops like these would be useful for other subjects such as English, Geography etc.”

“No we enjoyed it and look forward to trying at home.”