Maths Through Story – a mathematical adventure!

School Blog - 19 May, 2021

Recently, the school enjoyed a day to teach maths using picture books – maths themed of course! There were…

Maths Through Story – a mathematical adventure!

School Blog -

Recently, the school enjoyed a day to teach maths using picture books – maths themed of course! There were…

Recently, the school enjoyed a day to teach maths using picture books – maths themed of course! There were lots of curious and engaged minds throughout the school and we had some time to explore some interesting topics in depth and to apply maths in creative ways.

Reception studied the picture book ‘Hooray for Fish!’ by Lucy Cousins. Excitement levels were high! The children counted fish and made number pairs to 10 and 20. This was followed by a maths related art activity to design their own fish.

Year 1 learned about dinosaurs and measuring through the book ‘How tall was a T. Rex? by Alison Limentani. Using cubes, children compared the length of different parts of a T.Rex with everyday objects. In the afternoon, everyone completed a foot outline to show how they all fitted into the size of one T. Rex foot! The finale was to go into the playground and line everyone up to get an idea how big some dinosaurs really were!

Year 2 compared the different lengths of aquatic animals by studying the comparisons in ‘How long is a Whale?’ which is another book by Alison Limentani. The children wrote number sentences to compare the lengths of the different animals and played a game to match up cards of equal value. In the afternoon, Year 2 used trundle wheels to gain an appreciation of the length of a whale and made their own pairs activity to compare lengths.

Year 3 enjoyed a fun picture book ‘Zero’ by Kathryn Otoshi. After this, the children played a mathematical game to make large numbers using digit cards. In the afternoon, the children made their own colourful digit cards to use in future maths lessons.

Year 4 read the story ‘Equal Shmequal’ by Virginia Kroll. Following this the children played mathematical animal top trumps and then completed mathematical balance puzzles. In the afternoon, children completed some art work showing balanced number sentences. The Year 5 story was ‘Bean Thirteen’ by Matthew McElligott. The children explored factors, prime numbers and in the afternoon made disappearing geometry puzzles.

Year 6 investigated factorials through the wonderful story ‘Anno’s Mysterious Multiplying Jar’ by Mitsumasa Anno. The children learnt how factorial numbers quickly increase in size and how factorials can be used to work out different possible combinations. Also, children designed their own factorial world using the picture book for inspiration.

We look forward to our next maths through picture book lessons in Term 6.