Parent and carer support

Welcome

It can be hard for parents to know how best to support their child’s learning in all learning areas, including mathematics. This can be made even harder during challenging times as the education landscape is changing and many parents and carers are at home trying to work, help with learning from home, care for family and friends, negotiate who gets to use things like the computer, toys, books, the table, etc.

To help, we’ve put together some advice that we hope will be useful to any parent or carer.

Top tips

You don’t need to be a teacher to help your child with maths.

Think of your job like a sports coach – you don’t need to be the best player to become a really good coach. You can be a great coach for your child by listening carefully to your child’s thinking, asking questions (and not always telling) and encouraging them. You might say things like:

  • Can you share your thinking with me?

  • I like how you’re thinking about…

  • I wonder if there are any patterns here…I wonder if they might be able to help us?

  • Do you notice anything interesting about…

  • What if we try working backwards?

  • I wonder if we could think about this another way?

  • I like how you came back to that idea and thought about it differently.

  • Let’s take a break for 5 minutes! Sometimes I need a brain break to give me some space to think.

It’s ok to say you don’t know.

Mathematicians often don’t know things. They work on problems for years and seek help from their peers to help them in their work. Contact your school if there’s something you’d like clarification about.

Maths isn’t just about doing procedures and memorising facts.

Maths is also about problem solving, sharing ideas, and thinking hard.

This statement is false: “Being ‘fast’ means you’re good at it…so being slow means you must be bad at maths.”

Maths sometimes gets a bit of a bad rap. The idea that being fast at answering questions means 'you’re great at mathematics...and it's the only way to be great' is one of the biggest misconceptions about maths.

Good mathematicians can recall some important number facts, and they take time to solve problems. They often work together, ask questions, and come back to ideas when they’ve changed their minds.

Being a mathematician is sometimes like being an author – you have a story you want to share and so you write a draft and then you come back and refine it and change it so that you can share your ideas with someone else.

Sometimes being a mathematician is a lot like being a scientist - you notice something and create a way to conduct an experiment to find out more.

Being 'good' at maths involves a broad range of skills and capabilities - being able to use number facts to solve a problem is just one way.

Nobody is perfect.

You might have some days where you can’t “fit it all in”.

This is normal. If you run out of time for all of the learning that day, you can try some of these things to still help with maths at home:

  • playing

  • building/creating

  • talking.

Examples for playing

Games are a great way of developing mathematical skills… and you get to have some fun, spend some time together and get away from screens. When playing games, try starting off by playing a few games together without worrying too much about strategy or who wins or loses. Once you’ve played a few times, see if you can work out strategies to help you win!

Some great games include:

  • Snakes and ladders

  • Yahtzee

  • Uno

  • Chess

  • Monopoly

  • Prime club

  • Quirkle

  • Sequence

  • Scrabble

  • Connect 4

  • Rush Hour

  • Dice games

Examples for building/creating

Making, building and creating things often includes a great deal of spatial reasoning. Whether navigating websites, following instructions to build structures, working on jigsaw puzzles and giving/using instructions to get somewhere, a range of spatial reasoning skills are needed. You can help build spatial reasoning skills, and maths, by playing with things like:

  • puzzles

  • LEGO

  • blocks

You can also:

Examples for talking

Parents and carers can encourage the development of their child’s mathematics by talking to them. You can keep a conversation going by pausing, providing time for your child to think and share their ideas. You can also ask ‘I wonder’ questions as you go about your day

  • I wonder how many pegs are in our peg basket/are on the line now?

  • I wonder how many steps it takes us to walk to the letterbox?

  • It took us 13 steps to go from the front door to your bedroom and back again. I wonder if we would end on zero if we do that again, starting at 13?

  • I wonder which of your toys in shortest?

  • I wonder how many rectangles we can find in our kitchen…let’s have a rectangle hunt!

  • I wonder what time we should leave for our walk? We need to be home by 5pm so...

You can also talk with them when you:

  • Read books together – you can ask questions about what might happen next, the location of characters and things on the page (e.g. “Is that Andy below the giant banana?”).

  • Cook – talk about the amount of ingredients you’re using and how you’re measuring them (e.g. “we need 1 and a half cups of flour but I only have this half cup measure. Count with me…1 half, 2 halves (that makes a 1 whole) and 3 halves…that makes 1 and a half cups”).

  • Tidy up – sorting toys into different categories.