Playful Mathematics: For Children 3 to 7 - Hardcover

by Helen J. Williams (Author)

Nursery World Professional Book of the Year 2022

Children are naturally mathematical in their play. They play with mathematics.

Early years' practitioners often struggle to make mathematics relevant and engaging for their young learners. In their play, children are naturally mathematical yet practitioners are often unsure about how to build on this or how this observed play 'fits' in with the mathematics they teach.

This Nursery World Award Winning Book:
*Empowers early years teachers to see the learning in this play and to remain committed to play based practice
*Outlines recent research on how children best learn mathematics
*Supports early years practitioners to know why preparation works better than planning and why ′thinking space′ matters more than you think

Author Biography

Helen Williams is an independent educational consultant based in the South West specialising in the teaching and learning of early mathematics. Helen′s expertise is in Early Years, KS1 and early KS2 and she has a special interest in developing effective, playful opportunities for learning mathematics. Helen writes on mathematics, contributes to practitioner conferences and runs early years' work groups through the CODE Maths Hub. Her doctoral research was completed with Roehampton University in 2014 and is entitled: "The relevance of role play to the learning of mathematics in the primary classroom".