Printable Resources

Really you only need the cards to get something out of most of these activites but a few resources can help.

First Step

Start with the first activity, Colour Detectives. Start by looking for cards with blue disks and then cards with yellow disks. From there, you can choose more challenging combinations, but before that, try moving on to TT treasure hunt and Colour Match and Catch. Each of the activities in the SEE and READ groups have levelled activities. As you progress in confidence, try a more demanding level.

See through the colours to the Patterns

These activities help you to recognise 1) that there are patterns in numbers and times tables and 2) those patterns are reflected by the colours.
So if you see the colours, the numbers won't be far behind. Start by Investigating the Colours as a colour detective, then go on to use your new found powers of observation on a times tables game. Once you've got that, try doing the Colour Match to Catch game.

Keep this going by starting with low number cards just 2 or 3 disks and work your way up until you can do the activity using the whole deck.

Read the Colours

To really get the most out of Prime Colours, you need to be able to read the cards fluently. That comes with practice. These activities will help you get that practice. Start this with Spot It to help you see how we can build on any numbers we already understand

Experience Multiplication

We all experience addition. It's a natural extension of counting. It's really well linked to our language and we are all bound to have lots of examples of real experiences that fit the idea of addition (or subtraction). Money is a good example. We have to be able to add and subtract money and do it regularly. Multiplication is a bit more complex. We can experience it as repeated addition. To use money as an example, though we might think of getting multiple 5ps together as multiplication, it is indistinguishable from repeated addition (which can be thought of as a form of mulitplication but does not require us to expand our concept to use it. We can experience it as arrays or as rectangles but we can't manipulate them so easily.

With Prime Colours, you can bring abstract multiplication out of your head and into the real world. Once you've experienced the system, you won't believe how easy it all is.