7 engaging Maths Week Scotland activities for primary schools
Looking for Maths Week Scotland activities for primary pupils? With this year’s ‘Maths Matters’ theme, there are plenty of opportunities to show children how maths is used beyond the classroom. From money and measurement to time and problem solving, these seven practical ideas can help you bring Maths Week Scotland (19th-27th September) to life!
1. Put maths into the shopping basket: money and shopping
Money is one of the easiest ways to show children why maths matters, because we need it when we spend, save and manage money.
Set up a pretend shop or give pupils a selection of items with different prices. Challenge them to work out which coins they would need to buy certain items.
Try it with Busy Things:
Use Busy Things’ Money addition widget to practise and reinforce how you can make different amounts using different coins.
For confident learners, limit the coins available to them to make it trickier!
2. Make time matter: time and timetables
What would happen if nobody could tell the time?
Ask pupils to think about all the things they do during a typical day that depend on understanding time.
Getting to school, knowing when lessons start, catching a bus, watching a favourite programme and deciding how long they have left to finish a task all rely on maths.
Create a simple daily timetable and ask pupils questions such as:
- How long is the journey?
- What happens at 10.30?
- How much time is there between two activities?
- If something starts at 2.15 and lasts 45 minutes, when will it finish?
Try it with Busy Things:
For more concrete examples, they could play Busy Things’ Time quiz too. With questions about minutes, hours and days as well as bus timetable questions, it’ll get them applying their maths to all sorts of practical situations!
3. Understanding shapes
Shapes are another everyday example of maths in action.
Challenge pupils to describe the elements of different shapes. How many corners do they have? How many sides? Are the sides at right angles to one another?
Ask pupils to look around the classroom and identify the shapes that make up the furniture or stationary around them.
You could also go on a ‘shape hunt’ around the school or look at the school building from the outside and identify shapes in order to appreciate how important shapes are in buildings and construction.
Try it with Busy Things:
Busy Things’ 2-D shapes – Missing lengths activity gives pupils an engaging way to put what they know about different shapes into action. Can your pupils fill in the gaps with what they know?
4. Look for maths in nature
Maths is everywhere in the natural world.
Take pupils outside and challenge them to become maths detectives. How many different shapes can they find? Can they spot symmetry? Can they measure leaves, sticks or shadows? Can they count or classify what they find?
You could ask pupils to photograph or draw examples and create a classroom display called “Maths is everywhere!”
This is a particularly useful way to help children understand that maths isn’t separate from the world around them. It helps us describe, compare and make sense of what we see.
5. Become problem-solving detectives
Sometimes maths matters because it helps us solve a problem.
Give pupils a challenge that doesn’t immediately tell them which mathematical operation or strategy to use. Encourage them to explain how they approached the problem and why they chose that method.
For example:
You have £10 to spend on items for a class picnic. What could you buy?
Or:
You have 30 minutes before the next lesson. How could you divide that time between three activities?
The focus doesn’t always need to be on getting the answer quickly. Encourage pupils to think about different ways of solving a problem and explain their reasoning.
Try it with Busy Things:
Busy Things’ Falling wall activity provides a fast-paced way for pupils at all levels to develop positional awareness, as well as practise problem solving and quick thinking.
6. Explore maths in your local area
Take maths outside the classroom.
Give pupils a simple investigation to complete around the school or local area. They could count objects, measure distances, record numbers, look for shapes or collect data.
For example, pupils could investigate:
- How many windows are there in different parts of the school?
- Which route around the playground is longest?
- How many different shapes can you spot?
- What types of vehicles pass the school?
- How could you represent your findings in a chart?
This is a great opportunity to combine maths with other areas of the curriculum while helping pupils see its relevance beyond the classroom.
7. Show pupils where maths could take them: future careers
One of the most powerful ways to show that maths matters is to explore the jobs and activities that depend on it.
How might an architect use maths? What about an engineer, builder, chef, scientist, designer, pilot or sports coach?
Ask pupils to choose a job and investigate how maths is used in it.
You could finish by asking:
“What would be harder to do if we didn’t have maths?”
It could lead to some surprisingly interesting answers.
Summary
We hope you’ve enjoyed the ideas we’ve shared here for Maths Week Scotland. Whether you’re planning Maths Week Scotland activities for September or looking for ideas to use throughout the year, there are plenty of ways to show pupils why maths matters.
We particularly hope you’ve played the activities we’ve showcased, including our Money addition widget, Time quiz, 2-D shapes – missing lengths and Falling wall activities. They are free to play until 28th September.
If you have and you’re looking for more engaging ways to support maths learning throughout the year, Busy Things provides hundreds of curriculum-linked activities and games for Scottish primary schools, alongside resources across 14 curriculum areas.
You can explore some more of our free Maths Week Scotland activities or start a free 28-day Busy Things trial to discover what’s available across the curriculum.
Maths matters in September. And it matters every month of the school year.