We need to give children an enjoyable experience of mathematics at the Foundation Stage, so they are left with a positive impression of the subject. ICT helps them achieve this goal.
* Lots of opportunities for learning mathematical skills can be gained with ICT in role play. Numbers are everywhere in the real world. Toy phones, old phones and mobile phones with lists of telephone numbers available can be used in any situation, to identify and use sequences of numbers. Provide old keyboards, typewriters, laptops or computers, calculators and electronic cash registers for stock-taking, typing phone numbers, ages, street numbers or bills, paying, calculating and so on.
* Floor robots, such as Beebots or Pixies, provide excellent mathematical stimulation. At a simple level, getting one to travel along a number line (or any line with letters, colours, animals or any topic picture) gives the children counting opportunities. Setting up worlds for them to explore gets them estimating distances and numbers. Supplying grids with pictures (such as a treasure island, or planets) gets them counting and thinking about direction.
* Program floor robots to draw shapes. Tape a pen on the back for drawing, or invest in the new Scribble Pack from Swallow Systems if you have a Pixie.
* Dress your remote control car up as a dog, and build it a kennel. Have the children drive the dog into the kennel, behind it, in front of it and more. If you have a 'Bailey's Book House' CD, play the positional game on that too.
* Lots of good CDs develop maths skills - Sherston CDs such as 'Tizzy's Toybox', or the 123 CD, 'Millie's Maths House' or Dorling Kindersley's 'My First Number'. 2Simple provides some great mathematical tools in its Infant Video Toolkit with graphing and directional software, or try making a number book using 2Publish or 2Paint. If you are in a school setting, 2calculate is a simple spreadsheet with lots of ideas from reception upwards. Whatever software you use, make sure that children are not working in isolation, but with a partner, to develop mathematical vocabulary.
By Andrew Trythall, ICT co-ordinator and Year One teacher at Sir Robert Hitcham's CEVAP School, Suffolk (www.hitchams.suffolk.sch.uk)
