4 ways to prepare your child for school
Help your child to feel confident and secure about their transition to school.
Read moreHeads or tails?
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.