Numeracy problems to solve for Key Stage 1, 2 and 3

This is a game for 2 players.

You will need:

• Spring Flowers playing board
• 18 Flower Fraction cards (Coloured Pink, yellow and blue) Sort into two piles of 10 halves of flowers and 8 quarters. of flowers.

You will need to print these off, either in colour, or you can colour them in yourself. The flower fraction cards need cutting the lines shown.

Click here for the Spring Flowers playing board.

Click here for the Flower Fraction Cards

How to play

1. Shuffle each of the piles of cards. Put the quarter flower cards face down on the left on the playing board and the half flower cards on the right on the board.
2. Decide who starts and who has which flower bed.
3. Player 1 chooses either a half or quarter flower fraction card and places it face up on the centre space in the board. Player 1 then places the card on the matching colour and fraction shape on their own flower bed. Player 2 does the same.
4. Players carry on taking it in turns to turn over a flower fraction card. If a card is already on the matching flower position (some colour and fraction), the player misses a turn and the other player can use that card.
5. The first player to complete their own flower bed is the winner.
6. Have fun!

An Extra Challenge

You will need to print and cut out the 1/2 and the 1/4 cards. Shuffle the 1/2 and1/4 cards and place the pile face down hear the playing board. Each player in turn picks a card from the pile to determine whether to pick up a half or quarter flower card.

This is a game for 2 players.

You will need

• Frosty Fractions Playing Board
• The two types of snowflakes tokens sorted into two separate piles.
• A set of all the fractions cards placed down in a pile
• You will need to print them all off.

Click here for the Frosty Fractions playing board.

Click here for the Frosty Fraction Cards

How to play

1. Decide who starts by picking a fraction card (higher fraction starts)
2. Player 1 takes two fraction cards (from the face down pile) and place them on the spaces provided on the playing board. The two fractions are added. You might need to make use of equivalent fraction or change improper fractions into mixed numbers. If the answer is available on playing board, the player places one of their snowflake tokens on the answer.
3. Player 2 does the same. If a snowflake token is already on a fraction or the number isn't there, that player misses a turn.
4. Players carry on taking turns to turn over two fraction cards. When all the fraction cards are used up, shuffle them and turn them over to use again.
5. The game continues until one player has made a line of three of their own snowflake tokens.
6. Have fun!

An extra challenge

The Ancient Egyptians started writing numbers about 5000 years ago. Their numbers were based on decimal system; that is, they counted in tens, hundreds and thousands as we do today.

Papyrus
The Egyptians recorded their numbers by carving them onto stone or papyrus 'paper'.

Papyrus was made from thin layers of dried papyrus reeds that could be found growing along the banks of the Nile.

Egyptian Numbers

Here are the Ancient Egyptians symbols, called hieroglyphs, for numbers up to a million.

Number	Hieroglyph	Description
1		a stick
10		a basket handle
100		a spiral of rope
1000		a lotus flower
10 000		a bent finger
100 000		a tadpole
1 000 000		a kneeling man

The Egyptians wrote their hieroglyphs left to right, right to left or up and down.

Below are some numbers written as hieroglyphs. Use the table above to work out what these numbers are.

Read from right

Read from left

Task B

Writing Egyptian fractions

All fractions written by the Egyptians, apart from 2/3, and 3/4 were unit fractions; that is, they had 1 as the numerator. Fractions in ancient Egypt were shown by putting a hieroglyph of a mouth above a number.

		What unit fractions are these?
1/5	1/8

If the denominator was a big number then the mouth hieroglyph would be put at the front of the number.

	1/359
	What unit fraction is this?