The information below includes worksheets from the NSW Department of Education and Training, as well as helpful videos and ways to prepare children for high school Mathematics.
Choose the relevant category below to expand the list.
If you require any further information please contact the school office.
Helping Your Child With Length and Area
Parent worksheet with activities to help your child t home, to understand measuring length and area.
Helping Your Child With Counting
Parent worksheet with activities to help your child at home, to develop their counting.
Helping Your Child With Arithmetic
Parent worksheet with activities to help your child at home, to understand arithmetic - addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
Helping Your Child With Shapes and Objects
Parent worksheet with activities to help your child at home, to understand spatial mathematics - ideas relating to shapes, shapes within solid objects and the position of shapes and objects.
Helping Your Child With Mental Calculations
Parent worksheet with activities to help your child develop their ability to do calculations in their heads.
Helping Your Child With Patterns and Algebra
Parent worksheet with activities to help your child at home, to understand patterns and algebra.
Dice Games
Parent worksheet with dice games to help your child at home, develop their skills with addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
Card Games
Parent worksheet with card games to help your child at home, develop their skills with addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
Counting Down From Twenty Song
The Counting Down From Twenty Song by 'Have Fun Teaching,' is a counting song that teaches younger kids how to count down from 20 to 1, by ones.
The Shapes Song
The Shapes Song, written and performed by A.J Jenkins, teaches kids, in an entertaining way, to know their shapes.
Maths expert and parent Associate Professor Janette Bobis, from the University of Sydney, lists seven top ways to ensure your child is ready for high school maths.
Building your child's confidence in maths so they believe they're good at maths before they leave primary school, is a crucial element in succeeding in high school maths.
It means when they're faced with more complex maths problems they've got that resilience to fall back on because they have an identity as a mathematical thinker, an ‘I can do this' type of attitude.
Having confidence in their ability to do maths will also mean your child will be much more motivated to learn it.
So, if they do strike a mathematical concept in their first or second year of high school that's difficult, they're more likely to work at it rather than throw their hands in the air in horror and give up.
Fractions are a major source of problems for kids, yet it's through fractions that they learn probability, scale, ratio, proportional reasoning, and algebra.
Fractions and decimals are introduced in earlier grades but become more complex in Years 5 and 6. The best thing you can do to help your child with fractions is to find out how they feel about them.
If they are struggling, then it's really important to communicate with your child's teacher and ask what you can do to help them.
Kids need to have a good ‘sense of number', and parents can gauge this by their skills in estimating.
It's all to do with reasonable judgements and the more a child understands maths the better they are at making estimates. To help develop your child's estimation skills ask them:
In recent years there has been a growing importance upon estimation because of society's reliance on calculators and computers to work out maths problems. A child who can estimate will quickly know whether the answer makes sense or not, without having to do the exact calculation.
Kids who can work things out mentally (mental computation) have a greater flexibility in the way they work out maths problems.
Children who are good at mental computation usually understand their basic facts, have a good understanding of place value and can apply many different strategies. They're usually confident in their mathematics and can see patterns or relationships between numbers.
Challenge your child to work out things in their head when you're out shopping. It can be fun and also reinforces the relevance maths has to everyday life.
Multiplication doesn't just mean having your child know their times tables.
Understanding the structure of multiplication makes a child a much more powerful thinker.
If they can't tell you how they got the answer it means they might not know what multiplication really means.
Encouraging your child to think ‘multiplicatively' means they understand the processes behind how numbers are multiplied and divided. Fractions, measurement, algebra, probability, and aspects of geometry all rely on this kind of thinking, because it's about relationships between different numbers.
Children can just keep adding and adding and adding to arrive at an answer, but understanding the structure of multiplication makes a child a much more powerful thinker. Again, if multiplication is something your child is struggling with, talk to their teacher about how you can reinforce what they're learning.
In primary school kids learn about ‘place value', which simply means the value of a digit according to where it is found in a number. For example, in the number 35 the place value of ‘3' is 30 or three units of 10.
Understanding place value means kids have a deeper understanding of the structure of how our number system works. Place value also enables kids to compute more complex maths problems.
Place value is one of those foundational areas of maths. It enables kids to make more complex computations [sums] easier because they understand things like 60 x 6 will be the same answer as 6 x 6 multiplied by 10. Gauge your child's knowledge of place value by asking them what the digit means in a number you see in the street e.g. "What does the ‘5' mean in the house number 254?"
Understanding multiplication comes down to your child being comfortable with their times tables, so that if they're asked to multiply an unusual problem, such as 12 x 15, they can work out the answer in their head without too much difficulty.
Understandably, children begrudge rote learning the times tables, but once they get past those early years of understanding what multiplication is all about then it becomes almost essential that they can instantly remember them.
Knowing their times tables by heart helps kids when they get to high school because they won't have to waste time learning the basics, and can instead focus on learning new and more complex maths. It's about being efficient with their maths.
Encourage your kids to learn their times tables by pointing out to them instances when you use multiplication in everyday life. This can show them why it's important.
You can contact St Joseph’s Primary on 8869 8100 weekdays between 8:00am and 3:00pm or use our contact form.
