**Exclusively for Birmingham Early Years Practitioners** - Join us to explore Young Minds Big Maths’ Ramp Play booklet, and deepen your understanding of the maths hidden in everyday play.
Children are naturally drawn to ramps, quickly experimenting with height, speed and movement using whatever materials are available. What’s often overlooked is the rich mathematical thinking and language that emerges through this simple, joyful play.
This session introduces the Ramp Play booklet, developed through the Young Minds Big Maths project with early years educators and university mathematicians.
Drawing on real observations of 3‑ and 4‑year‑olds, the booklet reveals the surprising maths in ramp play and offers practical ways to notice and nurture it in your setting.
The ramp play booklet is a guide for practitioners, designed to help them explore maths through ramp play. It contains lots of examples of children’s play, reflections from practitioners, insights from mathematicians, and practical things like new words to introduce and advice on getting started.
Join us in this exciting online session to explore the booklet and deepen your understanding of the maths hidden in everyday play!
Our guest speakers:
Rachel Oughton & Sophy Darwin, Mathematicians from Durham University
Kathryn Nichols & Sarah Dixon-Jones from Houghton Community Nursery School
Want to get a copy of the booklet for your team?
You can download a PDF copy of the Ramp Play booklet for free, directly from Young Minds Big Maths.
We also have lots of printed copies of the Ramp Play Booklet to share with settings and schools across Birmingham. They are available to collect from:
Jakeman Nursery School
Adderley Nursery School
Osborne Nursery School
Our Early Education Advisor team will also have copies available at our upcoming in-person network meetings or when they visit your setting!
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Important notice: This session is exclusively for practitioners working in Birmingham Local Authority. Please ensure you complete the booking form fully to ensure your booking is accepted.
If you have any further questions about this session, please email the BEYN Coordinators: Clare Williams & Sue Bennett (info@birminghamearlyyearsnetworks.org)
BOOK YOUR PLACE >>> Young Minds Big Maths - Ramp Play
PLEASE NOTE: Places are limited - if you book a place and your circumstances change and you can no longer attend, you must cancel your place via Eventbrite to release it to the next person on the waiting list. We will be monitoring bookings and attendance at all BEYN events going forward, as we need to report on this to the BEYN strategic group.
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About Young Minds Big Maths
Each half term, early years (EY) educators from participating settings meet with some Durham University mathematicians to discuss the ideas the children in each setting have been exploring and the sorts of activities that have been taking place. The mathematicians suggest links that can be made to mathematics, or ways to extend mathematical explorations or make mathematical links between topics. They also draw attention to times when the children are thinking about things in a mathematical way.
The aim of the project is to be child-led. The content of the meetings is determined by the children’s interests and chosen directions, and the idea is to enrich their existing play rather than to impose a particular mathematical curriculum. The EY educators use the meeting to inform their planning and interactions with the children as their play and exploration continue. The success of the project depends heavily on the skill of the EY educators in bringing mathematical ideas to the children in their setting in an engaging way, appropriate to each child. As the project grows, EY educators from Houghton Community Nursery School have been supporting new EY educators as they seek to implement mathematical ideas from the meetings in their own settings.
The project equips EY educators to explore and extend maths with children ‘where they are at’, allowing them to pose their own questions and choose the direction they take their investigations.
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