Maths for Junior Infants

Meeting the first numbers properly. Pupils touch-count little sets, recognise and begin to form each numeral, match numeral to set, build the first counting stairs, meet 'one more', and discover that three stays three however it is arranged. Every context is an infant's own world: songs, teddies, birthdays and the numbers on doors and buses.

Extending the counting world to 4, 5 and zero, then moving from counting sets to making and breaking them: partitioning 4 and 5 onto two plates, joining little sets, and finding a hidden part. Everything stays in objects and talk ('3 and 2 make 5'); there are no plus, minus or equals symbols at this stage. Five becomes a landmark: one whole hand, one full row of the ten-frame.

Meeting repeating patterns properly: noticing, copying, continuing, creating and fixing AB, AAB and ABC patterns in colours, sounds and actions. The rule is the star: say the pattern out loud and it tells you what comes next. Patterns stay in little hands (cube trains, threading beads, body percussion) with the pattern-blocks interactive as the shared IWB surface.

Where things are, then what shape things are. Position words through body play and the shop-corner queue, then 3-D solids before 2-D shapes (infants handle boxes and balls long before they meet the flat shapes on their faces), and finally shape movements: rolling, sliding, turning and fitting. Almost everything is real objects: the feely bag, the junk box, ramps and construction play; the interactive appears only late, once flat shapes arrive.

Direct comparison across the three measures an infant can get their hands on: length (longer and shorter, taller, wide and narrow), weight (heavier and lighter, and the surprise that big is not always heavy) and capacity (full, empty and which holds more). Everything is compared directly: lining up ends, hefting in two hands, pouring one into the other; no units yet. The balance scales does the truth-telling, at the carpet and on the IWB.

A first sense of time: day and night, the order of the day's events (first, next, last; before and after), and the feel of a long time against a short time. There are no clocks and no days-of-the-week lists at this stage: time is pictures, routines and talk, sequenced with photo cards on the washing line, acted out and sung. No interactive appears in this module; every lesson runs on picture sequencing, rhyme and play.

First money awareness, entirely through shop play: money is what we swap for things, coins are special and worth looking at closely, one coin buys one thing, and a price tag tells us how many coins to count out. Everything stays tiny: 1c coins in little purses, price tags of 1c, 2c and 3c, no sums and no change. The shop corner, the till and the talk are the whole lesson. No interactive appears in this module; the money lessons run on role play.

Late in the year the counting world opens up to 10: oral counts forwards and backwards, touch-counting sets to 10, meeting and recognising the numerals 6 to 10 (recognition only, writing these belongs to Senior Infants), seeing little dot patterns at a glance, and the first landmark feel of ten (a full frame, two full hands). Rhymes and games carry every lesson.

The year closes with finding things out: asking a class question, collecting one answer from everyone (one cube, one mark, one picture each), lining the answers up fairly so eyes can compare, and reading what the rows say (more, fewer, most of all). Real-object graphs come before picture graphs, and every graph grows from a question the class actually cares about; the tally-chart and pictogram-builder interactives are the shared IWB surfaces, and one picture always stands for one answer.