Fun Maths Activities and Investigations for KS1 and KS2 in Primary School
Over the years, we’ve created lots of different fun maths activities and investigations to add to the primary teachers creative toolbox. Some of these maths activities our tutors use in our online maths interventions, others we share here as part of our continual support for KS1 and KS2 teachers working in UK classrooms.
The purpose of these maths activities, especially the event-based ones is three-fold:
1. To support you the teacher with problem solving and reasoning questions (with answers of course where relevant) and save you writing your own.
2. To give children the opportunity to see more everyday maths in context, and experiences of how maths reasoning really matters in the real world.
3. To add some variety and relevance to the maths lesson slides, questions and worksheets, you may be doing with your class every day. We love what the White Rose maths hub resources provide in terms of weekly planning, but sometimes we may be looking for some more exciting and fun maths activities, whether for year 1 or year 6.
Topical Maths Activities For The Term
Maths investigations linked to key calendar dates this term, designed to develop reasoning and problem solving in your pupils
Some of you may question the place that fun has in a child’s education, and whether fun maths lessons will achieve the long term goal of retention and retrieval. While we’ve all had a class who require an upbeat tempo of fun games as part of their learning process, some children will find this a distraction if important new teaching is introduced through a game. You will know your pupils best in this context.
The majority of maths activities and investigations shared below use a fun concept or relevant idea to develop children’s fluency, reasoning and problem solving skills in the pursuit of learning maths.
Follow the links to find out more about the kind of maths activities and maths investigations we’ve got available to you.
Fun maths activities KS2 (with some KS1 in there too)
Fun outdoor maths activities 13 flexible and fun activities to do outside, many of which can be adapted for early years to Year 6; most of these involved some kind of physical activity as well as treasure hunts for angles, ways to incorporate data handling and measurement into the school fair, and using maths skills to make mathematical connections to nature.
Fun back to school maths activities teaching ideas to help you get back in the groove of maths lessons after a long summer break. These are maths activities the whole class can get involved in, some practising quick mental maths skills, others involving more complex reasoning, plus the odd card game maths activity as well.
Fun end of term maths activities: We all know that by the end of the summer term the atmosphere in class tends to get a bit overexcitable. Here are some ideas to harness that excitement into some fun and lively maths investigations that recap children’s knowledge from across their year’s work from 2d shapes to averages and algebra.
Fun maths games for kids at home: This might almost be our favourite collection – one to hand out to parents; it includes home made board games, fun ways to practise times tables and lost of fun games that help children with their maths skills and require only a pencil, a piece of paper and a pack of playing cards to get going. Essential for anyone undertaking any kind of home learning with their children.
We’ve also now extended our maths games collections to include KS1 maths games, KS2 maths games, and even KS3 maths games.
Fun maths lessons for KS2: a collection of our favourite fun maths lessons, suitable for Year 3 to Year 6 (ideal for after SATs) which include human bar charts, sharing 3D shapes, and planning the teacher’s next holiday!
Fun maths starters KS2: 15 of the best maths starters to help you introduce a new topic, consolidate previous work, or just to use as part of a maths meeting with your class, improving their mental maths – includes a printable version to use in school.
Fun SATs revision games: Even 11-year-olds need a break sometimes, so we asked some fantastic teachers on Twitter what their favourite top tips for keeping SATs revision fun were, and here’s your answer – loads of great ideas in here for anyone teaching Year 6.
Fun maths club activities: Provided you’re armed with some creative, open ended, and ideally practical maths club activities to give children, maths clubs are not nearly as hard to set up and run as you might first imagine. The benefits are manifold; this article has all you need to get started including several really fun group games specially designed for primary school maths clubs.
Fun maths investigations for topical events
KS2 maths problems solving investigations: For many years now Third Space has been creating maths investigations for Year 6 only originally that we’ve now adapted to be suitable across KS2. In the main these tend to be open ended maths investigations, focused around key events in the primary school calendar; some of these are also slightly shorter activities but they all require pupils to do extensive problem solving and reasoning based around events in everyday life. Here are some favourite KS2 maths problems solving investigations from each term
Autumn Term maths investigations year 6: Bonfire Night maths activities and Christmas Maths activities
Spring Term maths investigations year 6: Pancake Day Maths activities, World Book Day Maths activities and Easter Maths Activities
Summer term maths investigations year 6: Football Maths activities and World Cup Maths activities
Mixed ability maths investigations
We know most of you now teach mixed ability maths classes so something we’re often asked for is year 6 maths activities with a low threshold and a high ceiling. Take a look at these open ended maths investigations for Year 6 and the rest of Key Stage 2. You’ll also be able to download one of our favourite free teaching resources – 8 low threshold high ceiling activities including the famous fox chicken grain puzzle.
We’ve also collected the best KS2 maths challenges here for any of your pupils who are working at greater depth in KS2 maths and need further extension in your maths lessons.
Holiday maths
We all know about the summer brain drain and how easily children forget what we’ve taught them but it can be difficult to know what to do about it. These summer holiday maths activities were created with parents in mind, you can also use these KS1 and KS2 holiday maths packs to give your pupils lots of fun maths challenges to do over the holidays.
- Year 3 holiday homework: Don’t Forget Your Maths Pack Year 2 to Year 3
- Year 4 holiday homework: Don’t Forget Your Maths Pack Year 3 to Year 4
- Year 5 holiday homework: Don’t Forget Your Maths Pack Year 4 to Year 5
- Year 6 holiday homework: Don’t Forget Your Maths Pack Year 5 to Year 6
National Curriculum maths activities for KS1 and KS2
The final way we’ve organised our KS2 maths activities for you is by national curriculum topic. We’ll continue to add to this section so bookmark this page and check back if it’s useful. Get started:
Do you have pupils who need extra support in maths?
Every week Third Space Learning’s maths specialist tutors support thousands of pupils across hundreds of schools with weekly online 1-to-1 lessons and maths interventions designed to plug gaps and boost progress.
Since 2013 we’ve helped over 130,000 primary and secondary school pupils become more confident, able mathematicians. Learn more or request a personalised quote for your school to speak to us about your school’s needs and how we can help.
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