How to make maths fun for kids with Rachel Riley

Packed with puzzles, games, music, and a whole squad of adventure-loving characters, Rachel’s Pocket Tonie shows kids that maths isn’t just about sums and times tables – it’s an everyday superpower! From cracking codes to tackling day-to-day problems, this little Pocket Tonie makes maths as easy as pie (not just the number kind!).

So read on as Rachel spills the beans on how she turned numbers into lots of fun, shares her top tips for getting kids to fall in love with maths, and reveals a little behind-the-scenes of creating the Maths Magic Clever Pocket Tonie…

I’m the mother of two little girls. One loves broccoli, the other won’t touch it. Peas and carrots? In unison, no thanks! One loves cauliflower, the other… you get the gist! But shepherd’s pie, you say? Sign them up! 12 is my record for the number of different vegetables I’ve managed to sneak in there and still have repeated requests for more. Packaging and presentation are everything. And when it comes to maths, whether it’s seen as the cherry on top of the ice cream, or as popular as Brussel sprouts, there’s always a way to make it that bit more flavourful and perhaps even moreish.

I’m a big believer in making learning fun. When it’s fun, you want to do more of it, and exercising your maths muscles, just like with any training, makes for faster and stronger m/athletes. Practice makes progress, and progress makes for more confident and engaged learners, and so, this positive cycle is self-reinforcing.  

When it came to creating my Clever Pocket Tonie, my first thoughts were around what my kids particularly enjoy doing, and how much real world maths can I metaphorically chop up and hide under the mashed potato?  

It was a proud parenting moment for me when my eldest asked earnestly if we could all go to the Maths Magic Theme Park she had heard me describe. Alas, it doesn’t exist, yet… (one can but dream!) Thankfully she’s been happily satisfied through copious visits via her Toniebox and it’s been a joy for me to see her reach for a tape measure for checking her jumps, to run around a soft play centre looking for different shapes and to request to play our octopus maths logic game in the back of the car.

It’s a well-known memory technique to have visual cues to help with recalling information. In fact, the weirder the better for a stronger mental hook. I’ve long been an advocate for kids having tangible, real world examples to hang their maths learning on. It creates a more deep-rooted understanding of, let's be honest, what can sometimes be quite a dry and abstract set of ideas for young minds to grasp. That's why my Maths Magic Clever Pocket Tonie has a whole host of entertaining characters in fun-for-kids settings, designed to guide them through age appropriate maths content with stories and music for an engaging and interactive experience.

First and foremost I hope your little ones will have fun listening to Rachel Riley’s Maths Magic Clever Pocket Tonie. I hope the enthusiasm, positivity and encouragement I’ve tried to bake into it rubs off on all of you, and I hope that together you will start spotting ways you can incorporate a maths version of your five-a-day fruit and veg tally, into your family’s daily edu-tainment fuelled diet.

Want to get your hands on this brain-boosting, adventure-filled Clever Pocket Tonie? Head over to tonies.com and grab Rachel Riley’s Maths Magic today! Let’s make numbers a little more magical – and a lot more fun for our kids.