These activities are a great way to enjoy a Math discussion with your child. They are a quick activity - 5 to 10 minutes maximum - or until the conversation runs its natural course. But the insight into your child's thinking will be interesting - it might help you recognize your own Math strengths too!

While you're listening to your child's thoughts, sharing your thinking will open their mathematical minds to new possibilities. Be sure to talk about your own strategies:

• Can I show you what I noticed?

• Can I show you how I did it?

• Can you guess what I did?

We'll include some prompts to guide your conversation as you go.

Please feel free to share your child's thinking by posting a picture, a quote or a video on Class Dojo!

What do you notice about this picture of marshmallows?

1. How many large marshmallows? How did you get your answer?

2. How many small marshmallows? How did you get your answer?

3. How many marshmallows altogether? How did you get your answer?

4. Do you notice any patterns? How can they be continued?

This picture is taken from the website Math Before Bed https://mathbeforebed.com/2018/05/01/car-collection/

How many?

How many cars?

How many of each colour?

How can you sort them?

You can always push your child's thinking by prompting "How do you know?" "How did you count them?" or "Show me how you figured it out!"

This activity is taken from the Frugal Fun for Boys and Girls website https://frugalfun4boys.com/build-math-patterns-with-lego-bricks/

You might need to build this pattern with your child to see the rotational pattern in the structure. We work a lot with linear patterns so this will be new.

What is happening to the Lego blocks as you build? (turn, attach at the end, they might notice the four circles visible on each step, they might notice it looks like a staircase, etc.)

Can you name this pattern using letters? AB, ABC, ABB, etc.?

Can you add the next step in the pattern?

This activity was taken from https://wodb.ca/numbers.html

These are great activities for visual discrimination. There is NO WRONG ANSWER as long as you can explain your reasons. There is a reason that each of these die doesn't belong.

The website states: There are no answers provided as there are many different, correct ways of choosing which one doesn't belong.

This activity was taken from Math Before Bed https://mathbeforebed.com/category/geometry/

How many? How do you know?

Can you name the shapes you see? (diamond, triangle, trapezoid - losange, triangle, trapèze)

How can you sort the shapes? (colour, number of sides, etc.)

Can you count the blue shapes? red shapes? green shapes? Did you have to count, or did you know how many by looking?

How many green triangles do you think would cover the whole space (area) of the shapes?

This activity is taken from Math Before Bed. https://mathbeforebed.com/

Count the circles. How did you count them?

Can you group the circles differently?

Did the empty spaces help you count? How could they help?

Can you make an addition sentence for the picture?