Have some very smiley maths at home FUN

Celebrate international smile day
and help your kids with maths

When you smile at someone else, they usually smile back. Brilliant

Smiling Pattern Challenge

Try this maths investigation with your child:

Problem solving activity investigating number sequences

If one person smiles at two others and each of those two smiles at two others, how many people will be smiling?

Try acting it out with play people or cuddly toys, or make a drawing.
Extend the investigation by continuing the pattern.
Try a new pattern where each person smiles at three, four, or even ten others.
Talk together about how quickly the numbers get bigger.

★ Pass it on ★ When you have played with several patterns you could try asking for example "in the sequence when one person smiles at two others, could there be 30 people smiling?, could there be one hundred people smiling?"

How to Make Smiley Pictures into a Fantastic Maths Learning Activity

What could the question be?

Help your child make sense of sums by starting with an answer and asking them to make up a question. Brilliant!

★ Pass it on ★ Share talking about the picture together and then ask: "If the answer is one, what could the question be?" Try to give your child plenty of time to think. You could offer a starter such as "The question could be how many...?"

Problem solving activity with an answer of one

★ Pass it on ★ Ask: "If the answer is four, what could the question be?" Encourage your child to come up with different possible questions.

Problem solving activity with an answer of four

★ Pass it on ★ Talk about this picture together and ask: "If the answer is two, four, or eight, what could the question be?"

Problem solving activity with answers of two, four, or eight

★ Pass it on ★ This time the answer could be one, two, three, four, five or more.

Problem solving activity with multiple possible answers

To encourage deeper thinking, ask: "What could we add to this picture to make an answer of five?"

Help your child make sense of the comparison more than. Take turns making comparisons using pairs of pictures. For example: "I spy with my little eye three more in this picture than in the first picture. What am I counting?"

Ten different smiley faces for comparison activity

Subitise up to 5

Learn why subitising is such an important skill for your child to learn

I am passionate to encourage families because the best way for you to help your child with maths at home is to have fun together. Get started with Number Chase games and activities.