Numberblocks: NCETM Support Materials1 min read

Numberblocks is a pre-school BBC television series aimed at introducing children to early number.

These NCETM materials use each episode as a launch pad. They are designed to assist Early Years (and also Year 1) practitioners to move on from an episode, helping children to bring the numbers and ideas to life in the world around them.

You don’t even need to register with the NCETM to use them!

The materials are designed to be used in conjunction with the Numberblocks episodes. They highlight and develop the key mathematical ideas that are embedded in the programmes. Each set of materials comes in the form of a PowerPoint file, and includes the following features:

• The episode description summarises the story and the key things that happen
• The maths in the episode explains the key mathematical concepts that are featured in the episode
• Using mathematical language – because it is important that practitioners model precise and correct mathematical language, there are suggestions of key sentences that you might use and have repeated; they provide a language structure to connect each mathematical idea to different contexts. Children will initially use their own language to talk about the mathematics, and will develop correct and precise language if this is modelled by adults.
  

Overviews of each series, their storylines and the mathematics addressed, are available as downloadable PDFs from the link below.

More materials are available on the CBeebies’ Numberblocks page, also linked below.

Link: NCETM Numberblocks Materials

Link: CBeebies’ Numberblock Page