Until 1996 Chris Mayo was a full-time primary school teacher. One day she forgot to take in the straws she normally used to teach place value and, inspired, she spent her coffee break cutting out card jars and sweets to represent hundreds, boxes to represent tens, and individual sweets to represent units and tried these out on her Year 3 class. She was gratified by the response - 'Their eyes lit up as they "saw" the concept and understood the value of numbers'. She was using a currency the children could easily understand. Sweet Counter Place Value cards were quickly followed by Flip Flap fractions illustrated by pizzas, pies and puddings.
Although these are now a regular feature of maths teaching, Chris can take credit for being the first to use them.
Thus her company, Sweet Counter, was born. Chris launched the company initially with just one product - Place Value Cards - sending out 2,000 mailshots to schools throughout the UK. The concepts are all on colourful, die cut card, designed to be practical and fun for the children to use.
Teachers were impressed and orders began to roll in almost immediately.
Chris was confident that she had the entrepreneurial skills to make a success of running her own business. However, that hasn't meant that things have always run smoothly. For the first three years she was based in her own home, fitting in her work with the demands of her two children. Finding large sums of money to pay for bulk printing orders caused problems with cash flow, and then there was the further dilemma of how to store everything in her home.
Sweet Counter became a victim of its own success. 'It was just too big,'
says Chris, and, reluctantly, she leased the rights to a publishing company, Claire Publications.
For several years Chris returned to teaching, but her desire to produce new educational resources persisted.
In 2002 she regained ownership of Sweet Counter, this time investing in a business unit and employing people to help her. She has since gone from strength to strength. Sweet Counter has continued to build up an impressive range of products, and now includes resources for literacy as well as numeracy.
It has also developed a range of unique Playground Pictures. These are PVC wall fixtures for external or internal use, which display maths and literacy information, creating teaching, learning and assessment zones, and adding colour and interest to the walls on which they are displayed.
The latest annual catalogue from Sweet Counter is available this month. It is primarily a mail order and online company which can send class sets within days of an order. You can also see the full range at the numerous educational exhibitions Chris and her team attend around the country.
Telephone 07973 152064 www.sweetcounter.co.uk www.playgroundpictures.co.uk
