This week, the children have been using their perceptual subitising skills (seeing the quantity without counting) in increasingly complex arrangements, moving from dots in a line and arrangements of 2, to a focus on standard dice arrangements. For larger quantities, the children started to use skills of conceptual subitising, beginning to quickly see the sub-groups within these larger numbers. A key focus has been on developing skills of visualising; the children were encouraged to look carefully at arrangements of dots and then to close their eyes and explain what they saw. The children were encouraged to use spatial language to describe the sub-groups within these arrangements and this helped to deepen the children’s understanding of part–whole relations, allowing them to further consider composition (the numbers within numbers).

Towards the end of the week, the children used a number track (with numbers placed in equal spaces in ascending order) to play dice-based games. Playing games with dice helps to consolidate the children’s understanding of the stable order of numbers and allows them to link the numbers on a track to the quantities on the dice. 

Home Learning Challenge:

Play board games together over the weekend which involve children rolling the dice and moving on the matching number of spaces on a track or grid - Snakes and Ladders is a great game to play to support these skills. As always, please upload any photos to Tapestry so the children can share their learning at home with their classmates. Click on the link below to download some snakes and ladders boards that you can print off at home to play with or draw one of your own, the children will enjoy adding the snakes and ladders.