Numeracy

Helping Your Child with Math

Count Everything

Count toys, kitchen utensils, and items of clothing as they come out of the dryer. Help your child count by pointing to and moving the objects as they say each number out loud. Count forwards and backwards from different starting places. Use household items to practice adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing.

Sing and Read Counting Songs

Every culture has counting songs, such as "One, Two Buckle My Shoe" and "Ten Little Monkeys", which make learning to count - both forwards and backwards - fun for children. Counting books also capture children's imagination by using pictures of interesting things to count and add.

Discover Numbers in Our Environment

Take your child on a "number hunt" in your home or neighbourhood. Point out how numbers are used on the television set, the microwave, and the telephone. Spot numbers in books and newspapers. Look for numbers on signs in your neighbourhood. Encourage your child to tell you whenever he or she discovers a new way in which numbers are used.

Solve Number Problems Together

We need six tomatoes to make our sauce for dinner, and we have only two. How many more tomatoes do we need to buy? "You have two pillows in your room. How many pillowcases do I need to wash?" Two guests are coming to eat dinner with us. How many plates will we need?

Practice Skip-Counting

Together count by 2's and 5's. Ask your child how far he or she can count by 10. Roll two dice, one to determine a starting number and the other to determine the counting interval. As your child to try counting backwards from 10, 20, or even 100.

Games with Dice and Playing Cards

Try rolling dice and adding or multiplying the numbers that come up. Add up the totals until you reach a target number, like 100. Play the game backwards to practice subtraction.

Play "Broken Calculator"

Pretend that the number 8 key on a calculator is broken. Without it, how can you make the number 18 appear on the screen? (Sample answers: 20-2, 15+3). Ask other questions using different "broken" keys.

Numeracy Matters

The first section of links on this page are about the importance of Numeracy and why these skills are important to our students in today's world. We live in a vast global community which is why we've linked to sites in many parts of the world. Children in every country are working on these same life skills.

There is also a link where you can do an online quiz to test out your own Numeracy Skills (#6) And finally, in the first section, are links to documents on basic numeracy / math skills from our own Ontario Ministry of Education.

In the second section are online interactive math games and activities our students will be using at school, but they may also come to this site and use these same activities to re-inforce their math skills at home. We hope you find this page informative and helpful as we spend this year focusing on Numeracy Skills throughout our school. If, in your own Internet searches you find other good educational links we might include here, please send me those links. I'd be happy to include them. Our school goal this year is "Students will develop a greater understanding of additive reasoning."