Year 2 Reasoning, convincing and proving

You'll need a collection of cups for this activity.

In these addition games, you'll need to think strategically to get closest to the target.

Are these statements relating to odd and even numbers always true, sometimes true or never true?

Here is a selection of different shapes. Can you work out which ones are triangles, and why?

Try out this number trick. What happens with different starting numbers? What do you notice?

Order these four calculations from easiest to hardest. How did you decide?

Which two items of fruit could Kate and Sam choose? Can you order the prices from lowest to highest?

Vincent and Tara are making triangles with the class construction set. They have a pile of strips of different lengths. How many different triangles can they make?

In this town, houses are built with one room for each person. There are some families of seven people living in the town. In how many different ways can they build their houses?

We have a box of cubes, triangular prisms, cones, cuboids, cylinders and tetrahedrons. Which of the buildings would fall down if we tried to make them?

In how many different ways can you break up a stick of seven interlocking cubes? Now try with a stick of eight cubes and a stick of six cubes. What do you notice?

Here are some rods that are different colours. How could I make a yellow rod using white and red rods?

Ben and his mum are planting garlic. Can you find out how many cloves of garlic they might have had?

Can you sort these triangles into three different families and explain how you did it?

You have a set of the digits from 0 to 9. Can you arrange these in the five boxes to make two-digit numbers as close to the targets as possible?

Use your addition and subtraction skills, combined with some strategic thinking, to beat your partner at this game.

Two children made up a game as they walked along the garden paths. Can you find out their scores? Can you find some paths of your own?

Can you place these quantities in order from smallest to largest?

How would you create the largest possible two-digit even number from the digit I've given you and one of your choice?

This investigates one particular property of number by looking closely at an example of adding two odd numbers together.

This ladybird is taking a walk round a triangle. Can you see how much she has turned when she gets back to where she started?

How could you estimate the number of pencils/pens in these pictures?

Noah saw 12 legs walk by into the Ark. How many creatures did he see?

Explore ways of colouring this set of triangles. Can you make symmetrical patterns?

Arrange the shapes in a line so that you change either colour or shape in the next piece along. Can you find several ways to start with a blue triangle and end with a red circle?

How many balls of modelling clay and how many straws does it take to make these skeleton shapes?

Four bags contain a large number of 1s, 3s, 5s and 7s. Can you pick any ten numbers from the bags so that their total is 37?

Choose four of the numbers from 1 to 9 to put in the squares so that the differences between joined squares are odd.

How many possible symmetrical necklaces can you find? How do you know you've found them all?

Here are shadows of some 3D shapes. What shapes could have made them?

If there are 3 squares in the ring, can you place three different numbers in them so that their differences are odd? Try with different numbers of squares around the ring. What do you notice?

This problem looks at how one example of your choice can show something about the general structure of multiplication.