Sample Activities
These activities are based on using our Preferred Materials. Please try some. If you don't have our preferred materials they can be adapted to work with other resources. Exploring will help you make a decision about Membership. Member schools have access to many more activities, as shown in the Activities Checklist below.

Activities
... Ten Friends
... Ten Tens
... Number Shapes
... Fractions, Plugs & a Calculator
... Move Around
... Order Of Operations
... Please May I Have?
... Predict A Count
... Win/Lose A Flat
... Wipe Out

More Activities

... More Poly Plug activities
... More Calculator activities
... Poly Plug & Maths Tasks

Tools

... Content Finder
Select activities by content
NOTE: Content Finder does not yet include all activities on site, none-the-less it is very useful as it stands. We are regularly adding more activities and as we continue development would appreciate your feedback on its value.

... Year Level Finder
Select activities by year level

... Activities Check List
Select activities by name
Print this alphabetic list (PDF file) to keep a record of the activities you use and to remind you of the ones you have yet to use.

... Poly Plug Frame - 1 large board
... Poly Plug Paper - 12 small boards

Notes

  1. Members have collected many activities suitable for Threading. This is a teaching strategy which creates time for children to construct their own learning. If an activity is rich in mathematical content and can be revisited as a familiar context involving a new challenge, it is used for small amounts of time 2 or 3 days a week for several weeks. Several of the activities above have this feature, but perhaps the most obvious is Predict A Count.

  2. An assumption of Calculating Changes is that children have free access to calculators to use as and when they wish, just as adults do. A consequence of this attitude is our recommendation to purchase a calculator programmed with order of operations (algebraic logic). As explained in Preferred Materials, MathMate was our preferred calculator for this and other reasons. When it was discontinued we shifted our (qualified) recommendation to the MathMaster.
Make two piles of counters add to 10.
Write what you have done on your calculator.

What happens if we make three piles that add to 10?

Calculating Changes ... is a division of ... Mathematics Centre