In this video, we show you how to make a fun geometric brain teaser. You will need a square piece of paper, a ruler, a pencil, and a pair of scissors. Then find a willing volunteer to solve the puzzle. It's not as easy as it looks!
Puzzles are a fun way to learn about symmetry, and you can make your own out of Lego bricks and a base board. For younger kids, use Duplo bricks and simple patterns, for older kids use regular Lego bricks and make the patterns more challenging.
Maths War is a great little game to practice different kinds of maths skills, including number values, place value, addition and multiplication. All you need is one of two packs of regular playing cards, with the face cards (Jack, Queen, King) removed.
Time to get your scissors & paints out to create your own Tower of Hanoi puzzle - and then of course you'll have to solve it! But don't worry, we've included the solutions at the end of the video. You can try it with 3, 4 or 5 discs.
Pencils at the ready! Using dot grid paper to create pictures, connect adjacent dots vertically, horizontally or diagonally to create geometric drawings.
If you don't have any dot grid paper, you can download and print off some for free via the link below. Or you can use graph paper and connect the corners of the squares instead.
Join Numberella, Ronnie Resist, Miss A Go and The Thief in an exciting interactive adventure that will take you deep into the jungle of the lost world of Meravilium. Use your maths skills to help the adventurers outwit the mysterious talking creatures who guard the great pyramid… and help them discover the secrets that lie inside!
There are two difficulty levels to choose from, one for the 7-10 age group and one for the 11-14 age group. Everyone who completes the adventure wins a certificate!
Try your hand at coding and bring a character to life with code in Scratch! Follow along with Claire Quigley from Glasgow Life to try the example below of a “Counting Sheep” to see how it’s done, or watch our video at scienceceilidh.com/codedance and then share your animation!
Content created by Science Ceilidh
Some tips from the Scottish Government's Parent Club on how to make maths homework fun, plus some suggestions for maths games to play together at home.
There's lots to do for families during Maths Week Scotland, from the events, activities and challenges you can find on our website, to getting busy with maths inspired games, arts, books and baking at home.
We've created a wee booklet for you, which you can print out and record all your Maths Week Scotland activities, plus a section to write about yourself and a couple of brain teasers to get you in the mood for maths.
Just print, fold, and you're good to go!
Pi Day (14th March) is an annual celebration of the mathematical constant π (pi). Here are seven fun ways to celebrate pi, on Pi Day or all year round.
Here's a simple but fun geometric puzzle activity to set up for kids, either as a non spooky alternative to Halloween or for bat lovers all year round. Cut out shapes from black paper and challenge kids to create a bat out of them.
Are you ready for some spooky counting fun? We've created a seasonal activity sheet for you, to keep the kids busy in the run up to Halloween. How many of each of the symbols can you find?
This open ended drawing game encourages number recognition and counting, and celebrates the symmetry of snowflakes. Discuss why the die has only even numbers, and where to place your symbols on the grid to keep your snowflake symmetrical
Use your code cracking skills to work out the punchlines to five Christmas cracker jokes that have been encrypted as secret messages.
You can also have a go at encrypting your own secret messages, using our Cryptography resource developed by the Open University, with five different ciphers to choose from.
Building with Lego is a great 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.
There are a multitude of maths skills involved in baking - from weighing, measuring and counting, to fractions, conversions, telling the time and more! Put your maths skills to the test as you bake our delicious sugar cookies! (gluten free, nut free, vegetarian)
In this simple counting activity with a seasonal twist, early learners can match the buttons to the gingerbread shapes to count from 1 to 5. The download also includes a bigger version of the template for younger children, so that bigger buttons or equivalent can be used.
>> Download Gingerbread Template
Note: Small parts can pose a choking hazard. Please supervise young children when doing this activity.
In this collaborative drawing challenge, one person describes whilst the other draws. It’s not as easy as it sounds! You can use only shapes and directional words in your description. Why not have several people drawing at once and compare your pictures at the end – did you all draw the same thing?
Get stuck in to some maths themed seasonal crafts with our Sierpinski Christmas tree! The Sierpinski triangle is a pattern of equilateral triangles that repeats again and again at different scales. This kind of pattern is called a 'fractal'. Our tree is a large pyramid made of smaller pyramids. Since a fractal can repeat endlessly, you can keep adding layers to build a tree as large as you want!
Today you'll need to get your thinking caps on again - fill the squares on the grid with the correct colours, with the help of the coordinates, to reveal our festive mystery picture!
Happy (belated) Christmas Jumper Day! If, like us, you didn’t get the memo that Christmas Jumper Day was a day early this year, you can have some festive jumper fun with today’s activity. Download our free activity sheet and design your own jumper. Can you give it a mathematical twist? How about adding some shapes, repeating patterns, tessellation or symmetry!
In our festive Sudoku for kids, cut out the stars and place them on the grid so that you have one star of each colour in every row, column and 2x2 or 3x2 block. There are two different levels of difficulty to chose from.
In this fun Christmas art activity, you need to create pictures just by colouring in squares - no extra diagonal or rounded lines allowed! Try our suggestions or create your own!
Bonus suggestion: If you are into cross stitch, you could also use these doodles as cross stitch patterns, with each square equalling one stitch.
It's the perfect time of year to cuddle down with a good book. With plenty of counting books for kids to choose from, it's also a great opportunity to include some maths in your seasonal story time.
What are your favourite seasonal books to read at this time of year?