Recycling – keeping
The purpose of this resource is to provide suggestions to whānau about how they can support mathematics by using some recyclable materials, such as bottle caps and newspapers.
About this resource
This section provides some ideas for how you can raise awareness and share mathematics using everyday experiences and resources found around your home. It includes ideas for supporting your children’s learning in all areas of mathematics: geometry, measurement, statistics, algebra and number.
This page provides suggestions as to how mathematics can be practiced by saving some recycleable materials.
Keeping
Some things that you may be tempted to throw out can be useful items to add to your maths kete.
- Plastic bottle tops: Make great counters and are easy for small hands to hold and stack. You can use them as markers on games like bingo, to practice counting, or even as round items for junk-bots (see the Making section).
- Newspapers: These can be a great resource to support your child’s learning. You could look at and discuss numbers in news stories, or prices in advertisements. Older children could work out how much area the whole paper would cover if it were spread out, or try to estimate how many words there are in the whole paper! So you might want to put the paper in the maths kete so that it can be used there before it goes in the recycling bin or fire.
- Boxes: One of the things children learn to do at school is to make nets or plans for boxes. It is fun to take apart boxes of different shapes carefully so that the flaps are all still there but the box is now a flat shape. Help your child make the box again inside out, following the fold lines and taping flaps, and edges. Then they can decorate the box. This practice of working with nets will be a big help when they get to doing this at school.
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