Best suited for Early, First and Second Level
We have rounded up some of the activities that have been shared with us by teachers on Twitter, for celebrating Maths Week Scotland in your classroom or school.
Test your problem-solving skills and try to crack our secret messages using clues
Code Break is an interactive web app consisting of three ciphers: Pigpen, Caesar and simple substitution (solved by frequency analysis). Earn stars for each challenge, and learn about code-breaking through the ages by playing our interactive ‘Could you be a code breaker?’
Created by the Open University
To make this festive card, we’ll be looking at number bonds for 10 and sorting things by size.
Pyramid is a card game for two or more players, to practice addition. For older children, the same game play can also be used for multiplication. To play either version, you will need a standard set of cards with the face cards (Jack, Queen, King) removed.
Best suited for Early, First and Second Level
In a series of four videos, children demonstrate how mathematical principles including symmetry, tessellation and 3D shapes, can be the basis for a huge range of art and craft projects.
Created by Anne McNaught and Jo Hall
In this non-competitive drawing game, children can explore shapes and patterns.
>> Download Bauble Game Tutorial
>> Download Bauble Game Template
Here's a fun wee activity for younger learners, to playfully encourage number recognition: dig out your Lego and get creating! Building with Lego is an opportunity to incorporate a little maths in to your children's play time. How many bricks do they need of each colour? What size of bricks - 2x2 blocks, or 2x4? While they're having fun, they're already learning maths without even realising it.
Best suited for Early, First and Second Level
Twinkl Scotland have been working in collaboration with Maths Week Scotland to produce a wide range of resources linking to and informed by Curriculum for Excellence, which support teaching and learning maths. These free resources include talking cards, activity sheets and classroom ideas to get pupils talking about and engaging with maths. NEW RESOURCES ADDED FOR 2023!
Convert binary code in to pictures, in our festive bitmap puzzles. The have a go at creating your own puzzles for a friend to solve.
>> Download Festive Bitmap Puzzles
>> Download ‘Create Your Own Bitmap Puzzle’ Sheet
Best suited for Early, First & Second Level
Join Rusy the Robot from the NumBots, and learn some robot dance moves to practice subitising, number bonds, double/half and one/two more/less. The resource combines movement with teacher-to-pupil interactions. The teacher can put the resource on the board (one slide for each activity) and follow the steps to do an activity together.
A collaboration by Numbots and Move & Learn
It's time for a little geometry magic! Children will love this geometry paper trick - first you can impress them with it, and then they can impress their friends.
This simple beading activity celebrates the symmetry of snowflakes, and incorporates repeating patterns too.
Best suited for Early, First and Second Level
This resource offers six activities to ignite interest in both maths and art. We’ve put together a slide show ready for use in your setting.
Activities include symmetry, balance, speed, moving objects and pattern. Questions and tasks are deliberately open-ended to encourage learners to problem solve and develop their creativity skills.
Created by National Galleries Scotland
Are you ready for a mathematical space adventure? Prepare for a journey to the Planet Turasmara. Download and complete your passport application ready for boarding, then solve the six space maths challenges!
Created by the Scottish Mathematical Council
For our final Christmas Countdown activity, let’s have some fun with number doodles! This was a really popular activity last year, so we’ve come up with another round of new doodles.
>> Download Number Doodle Tutorial
>> View 2022 Number Doodle Video
Pig is a dice game for two or more players. All you need to play is one six sided die, some paper and a pen or pencil to keep score. Pig is what's known as a jeopardy game, where you have to decide whether to jeopardise previous points gained by rolling again to gain even more points. As well as practicing basic maths skills counting up your scores, Pig teaches you to think strategically - if you are too greedy and take too many risks, you might lose your points!
Best suited for Early, First and Second Level
This resource aims to inspire learning about maths, through art. We’ve put together a powerpoint ready for you to use in school, or print out to use on a gallery visit to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.
You can select the tasks that best suit your learners, try them in any order and adapt to suit. Activities include: Tesselation, Scale, Favourite numbers, Describing Shape, Symmetry and Pattern.
Created by National Galleries Scotland
Best suited for Early, First & Second Level
Scots Language Centre have a set of numbers in Scots which are useful for teaching purposes. The numbers are available as a downloadable PDF, along with a list of suggested activities and associated materials. Use them as part of your classroom display, in sequencing exercises, numeracy tasks and more!
Welcome to our Countdown to the Christmas Holidays! Every day from 1 to 20 December we will be sharing a new activity - you can look forward to a mix of puzzles, games, and arts & crafts, and more! We have given an indication of which activities are best suited for which age, but feel to check them all out and pick the ones you will enjoy most.
You can find the downloads for ALL our activities via the link below.
