How to be a Maths Whizz

Maths becomes easier to notice when it turns up in a snack, a game, a building, or the shape of your own hand. In How to be a Maths Whizz, Dr. Anne-Marie Imafidon brings mathematical ideas out of the worksheet and into hands-on activities children can try with everyday materials.

Across more than 30 activities and crafts, young readers encounter core maths through making, measuring, counting, and asking questions. The result is a lively invitation to see maths not as a collection of isolated sums, but as a way to explore the world.

Numbers you can touch and try 🧮

The book introduces topics such as counting, fractions, place value, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and decimals. Activities give these ideas a concrete starting point: food can prompt fraction-thinking, while simple homemade tools and games help bring number concepts into view.

Shapes, patterns, and clever constructions

Geometry gets a playful treatment with projects involving marshmallows and spaghetti, tessellating biscuits, and designs for a shape-filled city. These activities let children handle the parts of a shape and see how they fit together, rather than meeting geometry only as diagrams on a page.

Maths is all around us

The book follows mathematical ideas into familiar places and experiences: time and distance, calendars and floor plans, plants and patterns, the body, and the natural world. Readers can also explore coordinates through a treasure map and meet statistics through a data-discovery activity.

Meet the people behind the ideas

Profiles of figures including codebreaker Joan Clarke, mathematician Gladys West, and architect Zaha Hadid connect maths to real work and creative problem-solving. These stories offer young readers examples of how mathematical thinking can be used in many different ways.

A lively starting point for young learners

With step-by-step projects, clear explanations, and reminders to involve an adult where needed, this book is suited to children exploring maths around ages 7–9, as well as families looking for engaging activities to share. Pick a project, gather a few everyday supplies, and see where the next question leads.