Five surprising places where you’ll find maths for Years 1 and 2

From the animal kingdom to outer space, maths underpins it all! These five awe-inspiring books will give your child a glimpse of some of the unexpected places where maths can be found - often without us even realising until we look closer.

3 books - Maps, Lifetime and The Lego Ideas Book. 3 books - Maps, Lifetime and The Lego Ideas Book.

The LEGO Ideas Book: You Can Build Anything!

Written by Daniel Lipkowitz.

Aside from being a lot of fun to play with, LEGO is a versatile tool that can support spatial reasoning, an understanding of 3D objects, position, quantifying collections and how numbers work.

This book is full of ideas for LEGO projects you and your child can build together like cars, buildings, and things from outer space. It encourages invention and ingenuity - valuable qualities in all young mathematicians.

Round Trip

Written and illustrated by Ann Jonas.

You can use this fun picture book to explore the mathematical ideas related to 2D shapes with your child. With a story told through text and reverse illustrations, together you can follow the adventure of a family that is taking a trip into the city and back again.

The Usborne Outdoor Book

Written by Jerome Martin and Emily Bone, and illustrated by Briony May Smith.

Why not take your child and their exploration of mathematical ideas out of the home? Use this book as a source of inspiration for all sorts of outside adventures - with some maths-related ideas popping up along the way. Whether it be quantifying collections by counting seashells, using understanding about position to draw maps, or investigating time by observing the sun and the seasons – there are plenty of ways to support your child’s mathematical understanding.

Little Leonardo's Fascinating World Of Engineering

Written by Bob Cooper and illustrated by Greg Paprocki

Without mathematics, little Leonardo would not have been able to create amazing structures or share them with other people. This book explains nine different kinds of engineering and how engineers build everything from giant bridges to mobile phones, using maths to help them.


Walking With The Seasons In Kakadu

Written by Diane Lucas and illustrated by Ken Searle.

Have you ever thought about how maths is used to help us explore changing seasons and weather patterns? This book depicts the passage of time and the change in weather in Kakadu, in northern Australia. Your child can explore the seasonal calendar of the local Gundjeihmi-speaking community and investigate a way of measuring time.

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