Every Numberjacks experience aims to combine entertainment and education. We want to help young children enjoy early maths, problem solving and thinking skills, to help them get off to a good start at school with a cheerful and positive attitude towards maths that will last them all their lives. The learning in Numberjacks covers a wide range of topics, including numbers, counting, shape, measurement, movement, position, pattern and problem solving.

We base our learning on the guide lines of the Early Years Foundation Stage and National Numeracy Framework in the UK.  Early years maths is very similar in most countries, and we check the content of the programmes against the maths curriculums of other countries too.

'Joined-up thinking’ is a key Numberjacks aim, and we hope to carry that across into all Numberjacks products and experiences, all of which will be, we hope, a suitable mix of entertainment and education.  Almost all Numberjacks products will, where possible, contain ideas for activities and things to do that extend both the play and the learning that the product can offer.

 We also hope that Numberjacks will be an entertaining way for parents and carers to talk about maths with their children.  Many adults are much more comfortable helping children to read than to ‘do maths’, and Numberjacks is an opportunity to share in and engage with the child’s enthusiasm for learning.  It is actually very easy to find things to do that will help a child with mathematical and thinking skills.  Please do talk about the programmes, follow up the challenges that each programme ends with, and generally enrich your child’s enjoyment and understanding of Numberjacks by being there to share the fun.

Helping your child with any of the any or all of the following will help to develop good thinking and maths skills:

Be curious and interested in the world
Look around, notice things, listen, feel
Compare numbers, amounts and things – are they the same, different, equal?
What is the same or different about this one and that one?
Are things bigger, smaller, heavier, lighter, fuller, empty?
Do things match, are they linked, can you sort them into groups?
What happens if…
Try things out to see what happens – repeat, change, reverse what you did?  Now what happens?
Solve problems by wondering, asking questions, thinking, imagining, predicting
Enjoy numbers – which can describe how many there are of something, how big something is (shoes) or label something (house number, bus number)
Know the number names, what they number they represent, and what order they come in
Count out loud, forwards and backwards
Count things, before and after moving them around, count sounds, count with and without touching things
Find the number one more or one less than other number
Join groups of things to see how many they make altogether
Take some things away and count how many are left
Share things out one by one
Estimate if you have enough things to go round, or to fill a box.  Count to check afterwards
Count how many of one thing “make” another thing
Look at shapes, and their sides, corners and edges – how many, are they stragith or curved?  What this are the same shape?
Find shapes such a square, circle, rectangle, oblong, triangle, star, diamond
Find solid shapes such a cube, box, sphere, pyramid, cone, cylinder
Put things in order, by number, size, what happened first
Look at how things move - right, left, up, down, forward, backwards, turn, start, stop, fast, slow
Look at where things are positioned - in, out, inside, outside, next to, above, below, between, on, under, over, through, close to, near, far away, distant
Find patterns in designs, bricks, natural and manufactured things – can you copy, extend, match, reverse the patterns, or create your own?
Talk about what is going on, explain, make simple marks in paper to “record” what is happening

Above all – enjoy it!