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Heads or tails?

A child playing with coins
A child playing with coins

What you need

  • A coin
  • A piece of paper
  • A pen/pencil

Benefits

A fun way to develop your child’s maths skills as they will be counting and recording results.

The experience

Show your child how to play ‘heads or tails?’ by flipping a coin and seeing which side it lands on. On a piece of paper, draw a line down the middle to create two columns – one titled ‘heads’ and one titled ‘tails’. You may like to draw a head and a tail to help your child distinguish (or they could use their own drawing). 

Every time your child flips the coin, see which side it lands on and place a mark in the appropriate column. Older children may enjoy making a prediction each time – which will it be? Or could even predict how many times it will be heads in one minute? Use a timer and see if their prediction was correct? 

For younger children, play for a short time, and then count together the number of marks in each column – which one was the winner? Which one had the most marks? This is a great way to develop mathematical vocabulary and understanding related to quantity.