Celebrating STEM - Our Maths Activity

After hearing that Learning Resources was celebrating S.T.E.M this month, I thought that I would join in and celebrate it too. We love learning and S.T.E.M gives us great opportunities to do this. If you are unsure what S.T.E.M stands for it's Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths. Some of these areas of learning you may think are a little advanced for a young child but in fact they are all things that your child naturally has the ability to learn and will also pick up easily. 

This week is all about Maths. Maths is something that is so easy to involve in your child's lives every day. Ever since Lily was able to climb steps we have counted them. Not only is it a subject that is easy to do, its one that children really seem to enjoy. Lily started counting things even before she knew numbers and would just make a noise as she pointed to each thing. 

There are lots of different areas of maths that you could focus on. You have shapes, sizes, volume, counting, recognising numbers and many more.

For this weeks activity I decided I would just see what I could find around the house to make a quick but fun maths activity. Lily has plenty of toys that really help her with maths. Such as this Learning Resource Number Turtle Toy we reviewed. But I really do love to show that you can always teach maths by using things around the home. 

So for Lily I decided to firstly find some container type items. I found a small tub, a old bottle and a tin pan from her kitchen. These were perfect as they were in 3 different sizes and so I could ask Lily all about size. I then found conkers which we had collected months ago and thought that they would be perfect for this activity. 

I then asked Lily which was the smallest tub. She picked the smallest one up and was pleased when I told her she was correct. When I asked her which was the biggest she chose the bottle. The bottle isn't the biggest but the tallest and so I think this confused her a little. I feel I probably should of found something taller than the small tub, but not as tall as the metal tin.

After this I got Lily to count the conkers into the small tub. Lily can now easily count to 10. But we only managed to fit 8 conkers into the small tub. I then got her to count the conkers into the bottle. Lily counted up to 10 but forgot 11 and went onto 12. I corrected her and then we counted toggether all the way to 18. Which was the amount of conkers that would fit in and also the amount we had. 

At this point I was also teaching Lily about things being full and things being empty. This teaches her about volume. We counted the Conkers into the big tin and the whole 18 conkers we had filled the tin with more room to spare. 

I then did the activity all over again but I used some foam packaging that had come out of a parcel. Im always keeping little handy things like this around the house for arts and crafts.

In the small tub we managed to count and fit 13 of them. In the bottle we fit 22, and in the tin we managed to fit 40. During the Activity I asked Lily questions like "Do you think we can fit any more in?" "Is the tub full?" 

This is a really good activity to get your child thinking. 

Lily must have really enjoyed doing this activity as after I had finished it all. She sat and carried on playing with it. Filling up the tubs and counting. Lily starting counting teen numbers and also some numbers in the 20's but she didn't do these in order. This is the first time I have heard her say any numbers in the 20's and so I think she picked these up from when we were counting together.

Lily has accsess to these items when ever she likes so she can practice her counting. 

What sort of activities do you do to encourage leaning maths? Do you think you will be trying this activity out?