Planes, trains and automobiles........

This week I thought I would give you a fun maths craft after the last few busy posts with lots of 'lesson' style learning. This also serves a double purpose as it gives you chance to revise the work some of you might have done on sequences a few weeks ago.

What you will need

A printed out train with many carriages or something else that has many of something!
This could be many aeroplanes, cars, beads, pictures of animals.........
(The one I used is here, you could do much bigger ones too)

Colouring pencils or pens

A sequence!

What to do
Choose a sequence with your child that they would like to learn / practice or revise.
With your child write the sequence on your train carriages (or something else)
Let your child colour in and or decorate their train.
Display your train (or other) on the wall. The more your child looks at it the more the sequence will sink in.

I know many children that would love this activity: a little bit of learning and then some colouring and decorating :)

Pre-school
These sequences will be the basics of numbers and you may need to start nice and easy with just the
Basic counting up as far as you can go
Counting backwards from 10 and then maybe 20
Counting in 2's to 20
Counting in 10's to 100

5, 6 and 7 year olds
These children will , hopefully, be confident counters by now but will need to be working on counting in sequences that miss out numbers, so 2's, 3's etc. The other area you may need to practice is going over 100.
Counting forwards - always worth practicing
Counting backwards - from any number below 100
Counting in 2's - as far as they can
Counting in 2's - but odd numbers
Counting in 5's - can they get to 50 or 100?
Counting in 10's - how far can they get?
Counting in 3's - up to 36 initially
Counting in 4's - up to 48 initially

7, 8 and 9 year olds
Hopefully most of these children have mastered the art of counting and can do the basic times table sequences. So the next challenge for these is to push them to know all their tables and to look slightly further afield.
Counting forwards - always worth practicing
Counting backwards - from any number below 300
Counting in 2's - as far as they can
Counting in 2's - but odd numbers
Counting in 5's - can they get beyond 100?
Counting in 10's - how far can they get?
Counting in 3's - up to 36 initially
Counting in 4's - up to 48 initially
Counting in 6's - up to 72 initially
Counting in 7's - up to 84 initially
Counting in 8's - up to 96 initially
Counting in 9's - up to 108 initially
Counting in 11's - up to 132 initially
Counting in 12's - up to 144 initially

9, 10 and 11 year olds
By now these children should be revising their times tables and pushing onto more interesting sequences:
Counting forwards - always worth practicing
Counting backwards - from any number
Counting in 2's - as far as they can
Counting in 2's - but odd numbers
Counting in 5's - can they get beyond 100?
Counting in 10's - how far can they get?
Counting in 3's - how far can they get?
Counting in 4's - how far can they get?
Counting in 6's - how far can they get?
Counting in 7's - how far can they get?
Counting in 8's - how far can they get?
Counting in 9's - how far can they get?
Counting in 11's - how far can they get?
Counting in 12's - how far can they get?
Can they start counting in any of the numbers above but starting from a different starting number eg. count in 6's starting on 2.
Counting in 13's
Counting in 15's
Counting in 25's
Counting in square numbers
Counting in triangular numbers
What other interesting sequences can you find? fibonacci, prime numbers, to the power of 2............

Have fun with this one!