This webpage came about because of a project involving some mathematicians from Durham University and some early years educators from Houghton Community Nursery School, which came to be known as ‘Young Minds Big Maths’.

What is Young Minds Big Maths?

Each half term, early years (EY) educators from participating settings meet with some Durham University mathematicians to discuss the ideas the children in each setting have been exploring and the sorts of activities that have been taking place. The mathematicians suggest links that can be made to mathematics, or ways to extend mathematical explorations or make mathematical links between topics. They also draw attention to times where the children are thinking about things in a mathematical way.

The aim of the project is to be child-led. The content of the meetings is determined by the children’s interests and chosen directions, and the idea is to enrich their existing play rather than to impose a particular mathematical curriculum. The EY educators use the meeting to inform their planning and interactions with the children as their play and exploration continue. The success of the project depends heavily on the skill of the EY educators in bringing mathematical ideas to the children in their setting in an engaging way, appropriate to each child. As the project grows, EY educators from Houghton Community Nursery School have been supporting new EY educators as they seek to implement mathematical ideas from the meetings in their own settings.

The project equips EY educators to explore and extend maths with children ‘where they are at’, allowing them to pose their own questions and choose the direction they take their investigations.

This website

In this website, we aim to re-create some of the open-ended, child-led nature of the Young Minds Big Maths meetings. By finding articles using the topic filters you can hopefully find some maths that is relevant to the interests of the children you work with, and some ideas of how to explore that maths in a number of ways. Although the project is focussed on early years children, we hope it might be useful for those working with children of all ages.

We have tried to keep the articles very specific to one idea or connection each, but the topics mean it should be easy to find collections of related articles. If you’d like to contribute an article, you can find out how to do so here.

Recent news

IAA funding

Earlier this year we were successful in applying for an ESRC Impact Accelerator grant, with an aim to developing this website and writing a book (aimed at EY educators) all about exploring maths with young children through ramp play. The book will be freely available later in the year.

Education Durham collaboration

We’re delighted that Education Durham (Durham County Council) are now on board as collaborators. As well as giving us some much needed organisational support, this collaboration has also given us reach to many more local early years settings. We’re excited to have 10 new participating settings starting in September 2025.

Publications

Rachel Oughton, Kathryn Nichols, David S Bolden, Sarah Dixon-Jones, Sam Fearn, Sophia Darwin, Mrita Mistry, Norbert Peyerimhoff & Adam Townsend (2024) Developing ‘deep mathematical thinking’ in geometry with 3- and 4-year-olds: a collaborative study between early years teachers and university-based mathematicians, Mathematical Thinking and Learning, 26(3) DOI: 10.1080/10986065.2022.2119497

Oughton, Rachel H., Wheadon, Dan M., Bolden, David S., Nichols, Kathryn, Fearn, Sam, Darwin, Sophia, Dixon-Jones, Sarah, Mistry, Mrita, Peyerimhoff, Norbert & Townsend, Adam (2023). Going round in circles: Geometry in the early years. Mathematics Teaching 286: 29-34. Shared with the kind permission of the journal.