BushMaths, 116 GUERNSEY Road, Hoedspruit (2026)

23/08/2025

Today I had the blessing of facilitating an Ecochildren workshop for Grade 1 - 3 teachers in the Bohlabela district. Most of these teachers have classes of around 50 and more learners. I taught a Grade R class of 40 learners for a few weeks and I was exhausted at the end of each day. The red tape and the admin the system places on them is also relentless in its demands. So I know their weeks are long and tiring.

Yet out of their own will, they show up for a whole Saturday to commit themselves to being learners in order to become better mathematics teachers. Even one of the district officials from Bohlabela district head office drives a round trip of 140 km to be here each time, despite the heavy load she is carrying in multiple portfolios. No matter how tired I am when I start the workshop, the enthusiasm of these ladies and how they give themselves fully to whatever tasks I present to them, increases my energy.

I love seeing Foundation Phase teachers, who are not often even qualified to teach mathematics, completing tasks and solving problems they did not believe they could solve. Yes they struggled and argued with each other and got frustrated, but their joy at finding the solutions was contagious.

This is something for me that we seem to have misplaced or forgotten in mathematics education.....they joy and satisfaction children get from working through the struggles and problems and in that learning to develop thinking and reasoning skills. Instead I often see parents and teachers trying to make it easier for kids, by showing them how, or giving them shortcuts or methods to follow too soon. I think we mean well in this, but it can steal the satisfaction children need to experience in solving their own problems. And it can hinder the development of robust reasoning skills.

Mathematics is a creative, fun, consistent, developmental and predictive field that has been reduced in many classrooms to a rigorous, rote set of inconsistent rules and procedures. Today I loved watching these teachers see the beauty of mathematics, and not the beast it is often presented as. Thank you Kapama Private reserve for investing in this community in this way.

18/09/2023

I enjoyed these teachers so much on Saturday. Some groups came up with some really excellent and easy to understand explanations to the problems they solved. So proud of them and will be posting some of their solutions shortly.

01/02/2021

Are you giving your young child the best foundation to get ahead?

A lot of research in mathematics education in the past has focused on counting and representing numbers using symbols. In recent years though more attention has been given to young children's relational understanding of quantities (visually) before they know the symbols. This has proven to be a much better indicator of their mathematics success at primary school than their ability to count or work with number symbols.

This type of research along with research we did with 15 000 learners is what prompted the development of the QUANTIFEEL card game. It is designed to support children in the development of their early relational quantity understanding as a means to giving them optimum opportunities for success in mathematics and problem solving in other subjects once they start school. That is why we have not included the use of symbols.

Quantitative reasoning is linked to understanding that five, for example, can be visually arranged or structured in various ways, and still recognize (as opposed to counting) that it is a quantity of five. Most children will be able to count the objects (one by one) on the cards below and come to the conclusion that each card has five objects. This is not any indicator that they will progress at mathematics beyond simple counting. Quantitative reasoning skills, however, enable the child to see the cards below are all equal quantities by just looking at the cards and seeing that although they are arranged differently (have different structures), they are still each representing a quantity of five. This also helps them later with bonds, knowing five can be (as per the photo):
3 + 2
1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1
2 + 2 + 1
2 + 1 + 2
2 + 3
The cards have been specifically designed to teach these structures visually without formal instruction being needed. So your child learns through play and creates a relational understanding of quantities before the formal instruction at school of symbols begins. This helps them become better analytical thinkers and problem solvers, not only in mathematics but also in other subjects.

These cards can be used with children as young as two or three years old by simply using only the one to three or one to five cards initially and later adding the six to ten cards as the child progresses.

Click on the photo below to order your pack of QUANTIFEEL today or visit https://bushmaths.com/quantifeel/ for more information.

09/01/2021

Getting ready to go back to school? Try one of our maths quizzes (with instant feedback) to see how you fare. The algebra one can be for Grades 9 - 12 and the functions one is more for Grade 11 and 12 learners. Click on the link to try.
https://bushmaths.com/assessments/
Contact us for any online tutoring assistance or upcoming "catch-up" workshops.

05/01/2021

To order click on the link:
https://bushmaths.com/quantifeel/

18/12/2020

New stock of Quantifeel educational card game delivered this morning. These new sets have Big 5 cover cards and five "Ways to play" cards included in the pack with more ideas on the Quantifeel page on my website. There are so many different games one can play with these cards. This is a great way to have fun interaction with your young child and build some relationship while they learn informally. You can order on the page now and checkout on the website. Free delivery in the Pretoria area for the next few weeks.

09/12/2020

Just some holiday fun....play the video with sound to hear the problem from the lioness. Answer in the comments and watch out for some fun facts on lions tomorrow.

27/11/2020

Some exciting news......the QUANTIFEEL game has sold out but we are getting ready to print another 1000 sets!

The game is getting a slight revamp with the Big 5 animal cards being added to the back of different cards. This will mean more fun and games to play, and of course give the game a real BushMaths feel.

It also means we are able to supply schools or pre-schools who may want to purchase large numbers of the game, at a reduced rate. And with purchases of 100 sets or more, I am also offering a free workshop (excluding travel costs) to parents/teachers/learners on the importance of developing quantity awareness prior to introducing symbols.

Symbols are a representation of the number and should provide a way to support learner's thinking and communicate their thinking using mathematical symbols. However, they can only be used like that if the quantities they are representing are properly understood and part of the young child's conceptual structure.

QUANTIFEEL is a fun way to let children achieve this through interacting with each other or their parents or teachers. Actual games, as opposed to digital games, also offer an opportunity to spend time with your child and build relationship while they learn.

Contact us for more information or for single or bulk orders.

15/11/2020

Looking for a game that is fun and educational for your young kids? Quantifeel is a card game developed for children 3 - 6 years old. There are a number of different games that can be played between children or with you as a parent and the purpose is to teach children about quantities (values of numbers) before they work with the more formal symbols in school. Basic number sense is about knowing quantities and understanding the values of numbers (how much) rather than recognizing and manipulating symbols. Children will easily make the switch to working with symbols (which are representations of numbers rather than the number themself) if they can recognize quantitates at least up to ten by sight. QUANTIFEEL contains 50 cards with only quantities of one to ten on (zebras, dots, apples, dice and fingers) and no symbols, so it is a fun way for kids to practice number names and get a feel for what the quantities look like in different arrangements. These are the quality of normal playing cards. Contact Hannah on 0828596310 to order.

03/11/2020

With formal schooling starting so early, many children get into learning symbols formally before they have adequately developed a sense of quantity and number names to support the introduction of the symbolic representations. The concept of less and more is the most basic and fundamental foundation for understanding quantities. And I don't mean knowing less or more through counting, I mean by just looking at two quantities and being able to say which is less and which is more. Schools tend to focus alot on formal counting and accuracy which I believe is at the expense of kids developing the natural intuition to estimate an amount by sight. So I was very excited when a friend gave her four year old (who is not in a formal schooling system) a box of QUANTIFEEL cards to play with and she started sorted the cards into two piles - less and more.

29/10/2020

This QUANTIFEEL activity is not in the instructions included in the box but I am suggesting it since playing the QUANTIFEEL games with my nephews last week. They are 5 and 8 years old and it was interesting for me to see that the 5 year old initially was much quicker at stating the quantity he sees on a card than the 8 year old. I suspect this is because he is in Grade RRR and still works almost exclusively with objects and pictures (in terms of quantities) and not with symbols very much. The 8 year old is in Grade 2 and seems to work mainly with symbols (unfortunately) so he is not so in touch with recognizing what the quantities look like. However, after we played this game (as shown in the video) he started to recognize the quantities and patterns of quantities more quickly. You will notice that he pauses on the numbers bigger than 5 which is normal as he stops to try and count by sight. His younger brother has to use his finger to count the objects when he does not know how many there are (which is also quite normal at his age).
This game can be played with one child - as I did with the 8 year old in the video. Or it can be played with two or more children where the adult flips over one card at a time and the first child to correctly say the quantity on that card, gets the card. The child with the most cards at the end is the winner.

23/10/2020

QUANTIFEEL ACTIVITY 5
This activity works on on connecting the senses of hearing, seeing and feeling with the quantities. It also helps children to learn to represent what they see without redrawing the exact object. That is a core function of mathematics. With symbols they will later write the number 5 (for example) but it will in fact indicate five objects.
Show your child a card and ask them to:
1. Clap the quantity they see (in other words they clap once for each object). This is especially important for the younger ones.
2. Draw a strip or a circle (or whatever you like) on their paper for each object they see on the card. This helps them to learn one-to-one correspondence.
On the images below some examples are shown of representing marks on paper for objects. If I show a child a card with nine zebras on and tell them to make a mark (or line or something) on their paper for each zebra, then they may draw something like is shown in the images. Most children initially will draw the marks in the same structure they see on the card. As they become more aware of quantity their structure will change and the marks will be nine without being arranged necessarily in the structure originally shown. This is good.

If you want to make this exercise a little more active for little ones, they can do one jump or some form of exercise for each object on the card they see.

BushMaths

23/08/2025

18/09/2023

01/02/2021

09/01/2021

05/01/2021

18/12/2020

09/12/2020

27/11/2020

15/11/2020

03/11/2020

29/10/2020

23/10/2020

Address

Telephone

Website

Alerts

Contact The School

Shortcuts

Share

Category

Listing takedown request