Working out the difference between clockwise and anticlockwise can be very tricky for young children -  they have enough problems working out left and right! Nevertheless these terms are introduced in Year 2. Probably the best way to approach this is to show the movement with the hands of a clock and then to practice making quarter turns clockwise and anticlockwise, holding out one arm to point in the direction faced. There are also a number of games that can be played such as blindfolding a person and asking them  to move a number of steps forward and then turning to reach a particular point. (You need to trust the person giving the instructions!)

Go to clockwise and anticlockwise

The lovely long summer holiday is quickly drawing to a close and teachers are beginning to plan for next term. Whether you are a teacher or a parent why not download the first week of our brand new set of resources for Year 2? Each week we will publish a set of printable pages to match the Maths Primary Framework Planning Blocks. Each set will contain anything from 18 to 25 pages of great maths to challenge your children and save you time hunting around for the right resources. As well as this we have 40 mental arithmetic questions to sharpen up those crucial skills!

Our first week is a gentle introduction to Year 2 maths with work on:

Find solutions by logical thinking to our ‘How many ways?’ balloon challenge

Revise counting on and back in ones

Revise counting on in tens

Order 2-digit numbers

Add three small numbers

For teachers this relates to the Primary Framework for Maths: Year 2, Block A, Unit 1, Week 1

Go to Year 2 Week 1  resources

Our Challenges are proving to be a great success as they allow children to explore mathematical concepts and extend their thinking. Here is a great little investigation for young children, which helps with counting and logical thinking. Using just the 1p, 2p, 5p, 10p and 20p coins what different totals can you have with just two coins?

At first it is suggested that you make a rule that says that you can’t have two of the same coin. This limits the scope of the challenge, but if children deal successfully with this there is no reason why they can’t investigate totals that include using the same coin twice, or even increasing the number of coins to 3.

Go to our 2 coin challenge

We have had several requests recently for more in the way of Data Handling for Year 2 and we are now beginning to build up our resources in this area. The aim of this set of pagers is to give opportunities to interpret data on a simple block diagram and to provide the impetus for the child to create their own survey and present the results, again in a block diagram.

The subject is favourite sandwich fillings – always a popular discussion topic with young children and the questions use a lot of mathematical language ( most popular, how many more etc).

Favourite sandwich fillings

We have some exciting changes coming very soon to the URBrainy site. We have been working hard to make the site even easier to use and more useful.

New users to the site will be able to get a free trial with a number or print credits allowing them to sample the worksheets that they want.

Of course when we make these changes to the site, the site will have to be down for a short while. We think this will only be at most an hour, but as with all new things, there could be unforeseen problems but we will keep you updated here in the news section.

In year 2 children are introduced to most of the common metric units, including:

centimetres

metres

kilometres

grams

kilograms

litres.

In the real world they will still hear other units being used (those old inches, feet, pounds etc) but it is vital that they gain a secure knowledge of the metric system and are able to judge which units would be most appropriate to use to measure something.

These pages ask for things which could be measured using the above units. There are two aspects to this, firstly that children use the correct type of unit (metres to measure length etc) and secondly, that if there is a choice of unit to use the most appropriate ( a classroom in metres rather than kilometres).

Go to our ‘Which unit? worksheets

Dominoes are a great resource for children and here is just one set of ideas as to how they can be used. Take a pile of dominoes (it does not have to be the whole set) and sort them into two groups: those with a one spot and those that do not have a one spot. A grid can be printed to help with the sorting. Then, other ways of sorting can be suggested, eg sorting into even number of spots and odd number of spots, or a total less than 7, equal to 7 and a total more than 7.

Ask your child to think of other ways that the dominoes can be sorted and try to predict how many will be in each set.

Go to Sorting dominoes

This is quite a task for Year 2 children. Two dice are needed and the printed sheet to record results. The task is to roll the two dice, add them together and record the total in the box. Repeat this 14 times. The real task them comes in trying to sort the totals.

Firstly, sort into 1-digit numbers and 2-digit numbers. Almost certainly there will be a lot more 1-digit numbers and it would be worth asking why this is the case.

Secondly sort further into odd and even numbers for both the 1-digit and 2-digit numbers separately.

Some simple questions follow but there is plenty of scope for further questions, depending on the results. One good question to ask is why there are no ones shown!

Dice sorting challenge

The best way to learn about weight is to handle the weights and get ‘a feel’ of how much something weighs. The gram is a very small weight, so the kilogram is much better to handle, although this is rather heavy! This is probably one of the reasons why the British have been reluctant to give up their beloved pounds and ounces.

It would be really useful to have have a set of metric weights and a set of balance scales. This Year 2 maths worksheet asks the child to find four objects that they think weigh less than a kilo and then asks how to find out whether they are correct. If you don’t have a kilo weight there are many food items which have the weight on which could be used. (4 packs of butter at 250g each etc.)

The second task is to try and put their 4 items in order from lightest to heaviest. This can be done by comparing two and placing them in order and then comparing the third with the first two, and so on. Even easier if you have a set of metric scales!

The third task is to try and find four objects that weigh about the same as a kilo. This will help with getting a good idea of what a kilo actually feels like.

Go to our Kilo maths worksheet

Standard units of measurement are usually introduced in Year 2. Children should already be familiar with the metre and once they can count fluently to 100 and beyond the centimetre can also be introduced. Quite a tricky word to spell too!

At first it is a good idea to practice drawing lines less than/about the same as/more than a centimetre in length. This should help with grasping the approximate size of a centimetre. Unfortunately many adults still use the term ‘inch’ when talking about small measures.

Watch out when your child starts to use a ruler to measure. Most rulers have a space away from the edge to start measuring from, but they are not always marked with a zero. Watch out, also, for the child who starts at the edge

Note that all measurements are approximate on this page as printers do print at slightly different sizes, depending on the settings used, paper size etc.

Introducing the centimetre