Starting to change the maths provision area

A few weeks ago we had a visit from Sharon Day (@Sharonjaneday), a Mathematics consultant who our school brought in to help maths throughout the school.  She had given me some training the year before when I was in reception.  
The training last year really blew my mind as it made me look at a lot of my areas in a much more mathematical way.  For example we talked about the play dough area being quite static and not having much of the mathematical language which you could.. It really helped me to see the importance of enhancing all areas with maths but in a way which didn't make me feel like I was being lectured at!

This year Sharon came back to the school and I asked her to come to the Nursery.  We looked specifically at the 'maths area.'  Now I don't know how you feel but I really don't like this idea of a 'maths area' in Nursery.  Maybe its a little bit of last year still in me, but I feel that the skills that can be learned in this area can be learned throughout the other areas of provision.  But we had a good chat and came up with some ideas.

We had some targets to work towards:
1) Strengthen the home-school link to help our parents understand how to develop their child's maths learning at home. 
2) Develop the mathematics provision area from lots and lots of plastic boxes FILLED TO THE BRIM with resources which aren't being used to a more productive, working area.
3) Enhance mathematical opportunities throughout the entire setting (provision areas) and the outside area as a whole. 

The longer I talked to Sharon the better I felt about developing this area.  As a team we also visited The Early Excellence Centre and had a little poke about in their areas to see what they were doing and what was deemed to be "excellence."

So I was a little bit of a convert.  I began quite slowly.  (I don't like the word "I" either, we did talk about this as a team but I led the way trying to add things to the maths area - I used it as a little bit of a project but tried to get other team members involved where possible).  I (we) managed to find some baskets in ASDA that were 3 different sizes.  We also found one that was large and had four different sections - perfect!  The best thing about these baskets was how they were very shallow.  We had talked about using baskets and boxes with pictures on but felt the best method was to have baskets that the children could see straight into rather than having to pull things out.  Think about it - as a practitioner when you're tidying do you pull the boxes off your shelves to see whats inside or can you see?

So we've started small.  We have put a washing line up on the top shelf with a little metal bucket (that is tidied onto the hook so it can't go walking).  We put two tracks onto our maths table (With contact, one track was curved, another was straight) and we have filled the baskets we have put out with:

* Laminated number cards 1-5 (Really we are only looking to do numbers up to 3 in Nursery but some of our children are slightly above this so we had to differentiate.)

* Babies socks - 4 pairs.  This was really good for matching and talking about the properties and patterns of each socks and hanging on the washing line. 

* Laminated colour squares - for hanging on the washing line to make patters. 

* 5 pebbles - regular but large enough to not go missing.

* 5 wooden balls (from cheap pot-pouri from ASDA) - very durable. 

* 10 dominoes - picture dominoes which are simply to decipher.  Its also nice to not have tonnes and tonnes of dominoes out as they tend to go missing, or worse, go in handbags for shopping trips.

* clipboard with large square graph paper.

* 1 simple jigsaw

We added 2 different baskets per week.  This way children became accustomed to the different resources within the baskets without wanting to pocket them. 

I also have the following ready to go out:

* star glass beads (from pets at home, £2.50 for a bag of about 20 that are really for fish bowls!)

* colourful autumnal clips for clipping onto the washing line to make patterns or sort. (See below). 

 (I also love the box).

The whole point of these resources is to develop the children's ability to sort, match, count etc.   

I'll add some photos of the area when I'm back at school.  It seems to be going well but we have a long way to go.  There is still a lot of space left on the shelf, a whole display to do and we haven't really addressed the home-school learning link or the outdoors problem.  We do have a lot of lovely ideas so pop back and see how we are doing.

Thanks;)