Maths at Home
Maths at Home
July 2025 - Four Triangle Puzzle
If you a cut a square diagonally from corner to corner, you get four right-angled isosceles triangles:
How many different shapes can you make by fitting them back together? You may join long sides to long sides and short sides to short sides. The whole length of the side must be joined.
This is allowed: 
This is not allowed: 
Please email your arrangements to Mrs Bishop at
ebishop@dinglewell-inf.gloucs.sch.uk
and they will be added to the website to celebrate maths at home.
June 2025 - Dotty Six for Two
How do you play?
You'll need an adult to play with.
You'll also need a 1 to 6 dice and a grid like this one
Take turns with the adult to throw the dice and draw that number of dots in one of the boxes on the grid. Put all of your dots in one of the boxes. You can't split them up and you can't have more than six dots in a box. When a box is full, you could put a tick in the corner like this:
Keep going until there are three ticks in a row or column or diagonal. The winner is the person who puts the last tick.
How do you decide where to put your dots each turn?
You can watch the game being played via this link:
May 2025 - Symmetrical Letters
Think about these capital letters – M, A, T, H
Imagine them made out of card, and lying flat on the table in front of you.
Imagine cutting each letter in half – both halves must be symmetrical – that means exactly the same on each side if one side was flipped over. Which are symmetrical?
Now imagine your name in capital letters made of card. Which letters are symmetrical? Does anyone in your family have a name with no symmetrical letters?
Can you make up a name with only symmetrical letters?
Mrs Bishop would love to see your symmetrical names so please send photos of your letters to:
ebishop@dinglewell-inf.gloucs.sch.uk
and they can shared on the school website to celebrate maths at home.
April 2025 - Seeing Squares
This is a game for two players. You will need a piece of dotty paper (available below). Players take it in turns to choose a dot on the grid. The winner is the first to have chosen four dots that can be joined to form a square.
If you play online,
https://nrich.maths.org/square-it/
the first player will place blue triangles and the second player will place pink squares. Here is a picture showing a completed game being won by the pink square player:
Squares can be anywhere and any size. Once you've played a few times against a friend, you might like to discuss your strategies and then test them by playing against the computer. Can you find a winning strategy?
Dotty Paper
March 2025 -
To link with Red Nose Day the challenge this month is based on a cake sale.
An array is an arrangement of pictures or objects into columns and rows. They need to be arranged into a square or a rectangle with no holes in the middle to be an array.
For this challenge, an array is a full box of cakes. For example, this is an array for 20 cakes:
Mrs Bishop would love to see your solutions to this Red Nose Day problem. Please email photos of your arrays to: ebishop @dinglewell-inf.gloucs.sch.uk so they can shared on the school website to celebrate maths at home.
February 2025 - Three Squares
This month’s activity is Three Squares.
What is the greatest number of squares you can make by overlapping three squares of the same size?
Mrs Bishop would love to see the pictures of the arrangements of your squares, so please send your solutions to her and these can be shared on the school website to celebrate maths at home.
ebishop@dinglewell-inf.gloucs.sch.uk
She would also like to know how you organised your thinking. How did you know that you had found the greatest possible number of squares?
January 2025 - Inside Triangles
How many different triangles can you draw on the dotty grid which each have one dot in the middle?
Here is a four by four dotty grid.
I have joined three dots on the grid to make a triangle which has one dot inside it.
How many different triangles with one dot in the middle can you draw?
How do you know you have found them all?
December 2024 - Christmas Elves
Father Christmas gives his elves some new clothes: red, green or yellow jackets and trousers.
The elves have fun by mixing up the jackets and trousers.
How many different ways can they wear the jackets and trousers?
Please send your Christmas Elves solutions to Mrs Bishop, as I would love how many different outfits the elves can create.
ebishop@dinglewell-inf.gloucs.sch.uk
Solutions
November 2024 - How Many Dots?
How many dots can you see? How did you count them? Talk with your family about how they counted the dots. How can you check your answer is correct.
I would love to know how you counted the dots, so please send your thoughts to Mrs Bishop and the these can be shared on the school website to celebrate maths at home.
Solutions
Millie decided to group them in pairs and count up in multiples of two to find the total number of dots. She recorded her workings as the two times table.
Lily said, "First I just counted the dots. That was medium hard. Then I asked Mummy and she counts the diagonals but misses out the crossings. Daddy and Christopher count the rows up and down. Then I counted the rows up and down."
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