New Book!!

I bought something, its not a resource for my class but a NEW BOOK!

'Foundations of Mathematics' by Skinner & Stevens came up somewhere on a blog I read about basic maths within the foundation stage.  As a nursery teacher it is frustrating that I can't find a good about early mathematics without it including (and usually predominantly about) reception.  

It doesn't blow you away with your first read.  In fact a lot of the things included are basic and might be teaching you to suck eggs.  I don't know if it was intended for new practitioners or maybe even students.

What really gets me going about these types of books is the COLOUR!  I don't respond well to text books, I’m a very visual learner.

There are 8 different sections which covers most of the bases on early maths.  They go through number, calculations, measurement, shapes, problem solving, sorting and a great section on stories and rhymes.  Sadly, and this is perhaps just a personal issue but they have a separate section on the outdoors.  I understand outdoor mathematics needs to be different than that inside but I believe that all of these areas (number, calculation etc.) should encompass outdoors and that there should be half of each section devoted to outdoors.  But I'm not the author. 

There are many great examples of strategies that you can use that you might not have thought about before. I also particularly like how they devote pages to 'mathematical mark making' which seems to be a bit of a buzz term for OFSTED.

Within certain sections they explain the ‘steps’ to learning.  For example within number they explain the different stages of counting, (1:1, stable order, abstraction, order irrelevance and cardinality).  It’s nice to have this included and then have strategies tailored towards each step within the counting process. 

I don’t want to give a lot away but considering it took me a LONG time to find a book that had mathematical knowledge for practitioners, strategies AND PHOTOS I would have to say go and buy this book.  There are very few which correspond to the new EYFS (2012), and whilst mathematical skills don’t need a curriculum to link to, it’s still nice for those (like me) who are relatively new to it all! 

8/10

Excellent photographic examples and great strategies that will give new and old food for thought.

Could have done with incorporating more examples of outdoor learning within each section rather than a discrete section.