Early Mathematics Nursery, autumn term, week 14

For three-year-olds, early maths is playful, practical, and part of everyday life—not worksheets or formal lessons. It’s about building early skills in thinking, language, and problem-solving that will help them as they learn more difficult maths later on. This blog gives you a snapshot of the maths activities the children explored this week. The activities may change, but the key ideas stay the same.

In nursery, number work often looks like counting real objects in meaningful, practical situations.

Counting the children at snack time.
Making sure we have the right number of cups for everyone.

We regularly learn maths skills through stories, songs, and rhymes.

A storybook exploring number and quantity.
Choosing a number song.
Some of the number songs we’ve been learning this term.
Singing a number song with picture cues and finger counting

Multiple times a day, we count the children as they come in and out of the classroom. Everyone helps with this, which supports the children in learning to say the numbers in order. This repeated counting naturally finds its way into their play.

Saying number names in order as we count the line.
Practising ‘how many’ with play dough and jewels.

'Subitizing' in maths means recognising a small number of items at a glance—using ‘fast eyes’ instead of counting to know how many there are.

We practise ‘fast eyes’ regularly with flashing fingers and dots on paper.
This can become a fun game, using ‘fast eyes’ to see how much money (or other objects) is hidden.
Which bowl hides the most money? Use your ‘fast eyes’!

Spotting numbers in everyday life helps children see the value of maths, showing them that numbers are all around us. You can support your child by pointing out numbers at home, in the supermarket, or out on the street.

A range of numerals is displayed in class and talked about during play.

The children learn to group items by size, colour, or type. They can then compare the groups using words like more, less, and same.

Grouping animals: there are more cows than lions or ducks.
Some of our best grouping happens at tidy-up time—our ‘organisation and sorting’ time.

We explore patterns and shapes. Children learn shape names, spot shapes around the classroom, and create basic patterns, like lining items up.

Having a go at drawing shapes.
Creating shapes using natural materials.
Lining items up to explore the basics of sequences.

Developing spatial awareness helps children understand shapes, positions, and directions, and explore early maths involving space and measurement. Other related maths skills include understanding and using vocabulary for size, capacity, mass, and time.

Inset puzzles help children explore spatial awareness in different ways..
Exploring spatial awareness: over, under, behind, and next to.
Beginning to measure by comparing big and small, heavy and light, full and empty.
Exploring different sized structures using words like taller and shorter, while practising some shape names.
Two skills in action: comparing the size of structures and creating a repeating pattern with the red blocks.
Creating patterns while exploring shapes.
We use maths vocabulary about time, such as ‘first’, ‘then’, and ‘next’, when talking about our daily routine board.

In nursery, early maths is all about play, talk, and everyday experiences—things that are easy to support at home too. With encouragement, children learn by counting objects, exploring shapes and sizes, and hearing simple maths words in daily routines. Together, we can give them plenty of opportunities to build confidence and curiosity, helping them develop a positive start in maths in a fun and natural way.