One of the key aims of the Centre is to develop and evaluate research-informed resources to support children’s mathematical learning at home, early years settings and school.
We are working with parents, teachers and practitioners to develop activities, games and digital resources that can support children’s mathematical development and be used in everyday learning.
We are currently working on the following resources and projects:
- The Maths Play and Learn Backpack project aims to work with families to develop topic-focused backpacks containing activities and guidance to support children’s early mathematical learning. Families will be able to borrow the backpacks from their nursery and use them at home, creating opportunities for mathematical learning as well as enabling communication between families and practitioners.
- We are working with the digital resource Numbuko to understand how perceptual features within a digital learning environment influence children’s ability to map symbolic numbers onto quantities. We aim to investigate whether the visibility of individual units within digital manipulatives, and the use of colour to represent cardinality, can impact children’s performance.
- Through an interview study, we are investigating how parents support children’s mathematical learning during shared storybook reading. We are also working with parents to develop a resource based on their recommendations, providing guidance on how storybooks can be read to support children’s mathematical learning.
- We have developed a set of playing cards designed to support children’s early number learning through familiar card games. The cards use coloured and transparent suits to represent quantities, with a structured 5 + 5 layout to support children’s understanding of numbers up to 10 and number bonds. The cards provide opportunities for children to practise counting, subitising, comparing and ordering numbers, recognising number symbols and talking about numbers.