All Modules B6-Development Matters in the early years | Page 40

Playing and Exploring, Active Learning, and Creating and Thinking Critically support children’s learning across all areas

6 Mathematics: Shape, space and measure
A Unique Child:

Positive Relationships:

Enabling Environments:

observing what a child is learning

what adults could do

what adults could provide
• Measure for a purpose, such as finding out whether a
teddy will fit in a bed.

40-60+
months

104. Beginning to use mathematical names for ‘solid’ 3D
shapes and ‘flat’ 2D shapes, and mathematical terms to
describe shapes.
105. Selects a particular named shape.
106. Can describe their relative position such as ‘behind’ or
107. ‘next to’.
108. Orders two or three items by length or height.
109. Orders two items by weight or capacity.
110. Uses familiar objects and common shapes to create
and recreate patterns and build models.
111. Uses everyday language related to time.
112. Beginning to use everyday language related to money.
113. Orders and sequences familiar events.
114. Measures short periods of time in simple ways.
115. Early Learning Goal
116. Children use everyday language to talk about size,
weight, capacity, position, distance, time and money
to compare quantities and objects and to solve
problems. They recognize, create and describe
patterns. They explore characteristics of everyday
objects and shapes and use mathematical language
to describe them.

.

• Demonstrate the language for shape, position and
measures in discussions, e.g. ‘sphere’, ‘shape’, ‘box’,
‘in’, ‘on’, ‘inside’, ‘under’, long, longer’, ‘longest’, ‘short’,
shorter’, ’shortest’, ‘heavy’, ‘light’, ‘full’ and ‘empty’.
• Find out and use equivalent terms for these in home
languages.
• Encourage children to talk about the shapes they see and
use and how they are arranged and used in constructions.
• Value children’s constructions, e.g. helping to display
them or taking photographs of them.

• Organize the environment to foster shape matching,
e.g. pictures of different bricks on containers to show
where they are kept.
• Have large and small blocks and boxes available for
construction both indoors and outdoors.
• Play games involving children positioning themselves
inside, behind, on top and so on.
• Provide rich and varied opportunities for comparing
length, weight, capacity and time.
• Use stories such as Rosie’s Walk by Pat Hutchins to
talk about distance and stimulate discussion about
non-standard units and the need for standard units.
• Show pictures that have symmetry or pattern and talk
to children about them.

• Ask ‘silly’ questions, e.g. show a tiny box and ask if there
is a bicycle in it.
• Play peek-a-boo, revealing shapes a little at a time and at
different angles, asking children to say what they think the
shape is, what else it could be or what it could not be.
• Be a robot and ask children to give you instructions to get
to somewhere. Let them have a turn at being the robot for
you to instruct.
• Introduce children to the use of mathematical names
for ‘solid’ 3D shapes and ‘flat’ 2D shapes, and the
mathematical terms to describe shapes.
• Encourage children to use everyday words to describe
position, e.g. when following pathways or playing with
outdoor apparatus.

• Make books about shape, time and measure: shapes
found in the environment; long and short things; things
of a specific length; and ones about patterns, or
comparing things that are heavier or lighter.
• Have areas where children can explore the properties of
objects and where they can weigh and measure, s