CAMathories Woodland Stories #1

CAMathories are fun and interactive games, designed, written and reviewed by a team of education researchers, mathematicians, and scientists from Cambridge University to teach young children mathematics! Each CAMathories game also contains a series of teaching notes (at the corner of the screen) to help parents to teach their children mathematics.

This first Woodland Series of CAMathories, contains three well-loved stories that are all situated in the woods, a favourite location for traditional fairy tales. The stories are written in a way that is appropriate for 3-5 year olds, and pose a number of different challenges in a range of mathematical areas, which include:

CAMathories Goldilocks and the Three Bears: principles of counting, characteristics of basic shapes, ordering of sizes

CAMathories Ugly Duckling: principles of counting, adding number pairs, inverse relationship between addition and subtraction

CAMathories The Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf: combinations and permutations, observation skills, patterns and shapes

The role of Parents and Caregivers

If they are run straight through, these stories last between 5 and 10 minutes.

However, they all contain a number of games and puzzles, which are posed by Professor Cantab, and the time it takes children to solve these will vary. The stories, games and puzzles are written to be appropriately challenging for 3-5 year olds.

So, to begin with, it is important that as parents and caregivers you watch and listen to the stories and play the games together with your child. Enjoy chatting together about the games and encourage your child to talk about their ideas. You may need to help with actions such as dragging objects around the screen or selecting objects using a mouse, finger pad or touch screen.

If your child needs support, it can be helpful for you to show them how to play a game or solve a puzzle, carefully describing what you are doing. Once you have played a story with your child a few times, when you think they are ready, encourage them have a go on their own.

Young children often need a number of experiences to fully grasp a new idea, and this takes time. So it is helpful to follow up the mathematical ideas of particular games and puzzles using practical everyday examples which will build confidence and understanding . Parent notes attached to each game at the top right corner will give some advice about this.

However, the golden rule in all your discussions and extensions is to be playful and follow your childs interests. The most important thing of all is that your child enjoys and has fun with the stories. If the story is proving to be a valuable experience for your child, they will want to play the same story over and over again. This will all help to build familiarity and confidence in learning and playing with mathematics. Wish you happy learning and CAMathoring!