Our Reception classroom was absolutely buzzing today as the children got stuck into a making ten challenge. With piles of brightly coloured Numicon shapes scattered across the tables, there was a lovely sense of focus in the room.

It was wonderful to watch them work it out for themselves. Rather than just looking at numbers on a page, they were using their hands to test their ideas—layering a six and a four or a seven and a three over the big blue 10 plates to see if they fitted.

By turning maths into a hands-on puzzle, the concept of adding up really started to click. There was so much excitement as they swapped pieces and shared what they’d found with each other. It didn’t feel like a heavy lesson to them; they were simply playing their way towards a proper understanding of how numbers work.