Woodthorpe Church of England Primary School

Maths in the Early Years

We follow a scheme of work called 'Power Maths'. Power Maths is our whole-class mastery programme for Reception to Year 6.

What is Power Maths? Watch this clip to find out more 

Click on this link to see an overview of the Maths Curriculum for each term in EYFS

Familiarising maths to Early Years children helps to develop their understanding of all elements of problem solving and reasoning in a wide range of contexts. Maths in the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum comes under two strands:

Number: Children at the expected level of development will:
• Have a deep understanding of numbers to 10, including the composition of each number.
• Subitise (recognise quantities without counting) up to 5.
• Automatically recall (without reference to rhymes, counting or other aids) number bonds up to 5 (including subtraction facts) and some number bonds to 10, including double facts.

Numerical patterns: Children at the expected level of development will:
• Verbally count beyond 20, recognising the pattern of the counting system.
• Compare quantities up to 10 in different contexts, recognising when one quantity is greater than, less than or the same as the other quantity.
• Explore and represent patterns within numbers up to 10, including evens and odds, double facts and how quantities can be distributed equally. 

As with all other areas of learning, the teaching and learning of mathematics in our Reception class takes place both indoors and outdoors through a wide range of practical activities. Teachers use their knowledge and expertise to plan for a high quality learning environment which provides children with lots of opportunities to explore different aspects of number and patterns in order to learn new concepts- this is through our continuous provision.

At Woodthorpe, we use Numicon as a concrete resource to teach number and place value. Numicon helps children to visualise numbers. The different coloured Numicon shapes represent different numbers. Numicon is multi-sensory. Children can touch as well as see the numbers. From this visual picture they are able to see how we can add, subtract, double and share numbers/amounts and the relationships between them. Numicon allows our children to ‘see’ number; make connections; see patterns; and show what they are explaining, giving children a deeper understanding of number.