After working hard in our maths books to get us started on our home learning journey, we are now going to go back to continuing with our sequence of Power Maths lessons.

Our Power Maths lessons help us to embed and master our knowledge of number. We will revisit larger numbers at a later date, however, the new Development Matters document for Early Years settings, and the new Early Learning Goals, focus largely on the mastery of numbers to 10 and learning about mathematical skills to use within 10.

Before Christmas we spent a lot of time delving deep into our knowledge of numbers to 5, comparing these numbers and finding different ways to make these numbers. For the remainder of this week, we are going to focus on embedding our knowledge of the numbers to 10. I will provide a challenge for those learners who are finding this work particularly easy. However, if you have any queries or feel you child needs a further challenge, please do get in touch.

Our focus today is going to be on the number…. 7

Your first task is to make sure that you can count out 7 objects accurately. You may use any counting objects you choose (e.g. pasta, sweets, raisins, grapes, toy cars). Count out 7 objects and then count them again to check you are right. Remember, putting your objects in a line and pointing to each one as you count can help you to count accurately. Practise this lots of times to make sure you can count to 7 really well!

Challenge: Now you have mastered counting to 7, let’s investigate the different ways we can make 7. Take a look at the photos below to see how I investigated making 7 at home.

For this task you will need two sets of counting objects or two different colours (e.g. pink sweets and yellow sweets or two different fruits). I chose to tip some grapes and blueberries into a bowl as my counting objects. 

Next, I counted out 7 objects onto my piece of paper. I placed my objects in a line to make them easier to count. Once I counted out 7, I then went back and touched each one again to check I had 7.

Then I began to investigate how I had made 7. First I counted how many grapes I had in my line of 7 and then I counted how many blueberries I had. I found that 3 grapes and 4 blueberries made 7. So 3 and 4 make 7. 

I wanted to investigate further and see if there were any other ways I could make 7. I counted out 7 pieces of fruit onto my paper again and placed them in a line.

This time I found that 5 and 2 make 7.

How many ways can you find to make 7? Don't forget to send me photos so I can see if you have found anymore ways that I haven't found yet!