Number Friends and the Doubling Doorway

Join the Number Friends as they embark on an exciting pirate adventure, with lots of doubling fun along the way! This charming book is the second in the ‘Number Friends’ series and has been designed to help young children explore the concept of doubling.

Includes:

• A doubling certificate signed by Tommy and Tilly to cut out and keep

• Instructions to make your own ‘doubling doorway’ – see what you can double at home or school!

• Ideas for further learning

Message from the Author

During my time teaching, I noticed that there are countless resources for teaching children to write and form letters, but there are not many (if any) similar resources for teaching the formation of numbers. I started thinking about how to fill this gap and decided to play around with the idea of teaching early maths concepts through a fun story.

I came up with the concept of having a different character for each number; ones that may already be familiar to young children from nursery rhymes and songs.

This idea quickly snowballed and I ended up with each number having it’s own character, colour, story, and memorable rhyme to help recall the digit formation.

I wanted to have ‘things to spot’ in the illustration for each number, to help build up the childs understanding of each number having a value. So for the three little pigs, there are three clouds to spot, three apples on a tree, three bees near the honey pot etc. I also wanted the character representing each number to be able to feature in future books and perhaps explore that number in more detail.

Because the Early Years framework is so cross curricular and play based, I also wanted to bring in lots of ideas which linked to other areas of learning; so looking at the three little pigs again, children could build dens or maybe make some honey on toast and talk about instructions and the importance of ordering and sequencing.

I tried to tie in many areas of the Early Years curriculum, such as colours, prepositions, day and night, animals, exploring different materials, healthy eating, music and also activities to help develop gross motor and fine motor skills… it was a lot to organise and fit into ten short stories!