Lunar New Year Maths Ideas

This Lunar New Year Maths Activities Pack is a flexible, idea-rich resource designed to support meaningful maths learning across EYFS, KS1 and KS2 , using engaging cultural contexts linked to Lunar New Year celebrations . The resource provides a range of practical, open-ended maths activities that can be easily adapted to suit different year groups, abilities and curriculum units. Teachers can select activities to match current learning while embedding maths into a rich, cross-curricular theme. Included activity ideas support: Problem solving and reasoning – creating maths problems linked to the 12 zodiac animals Word problems and literacy links – writing shopping lists for festive items (e.g. dumplings, firecrackers) and using pretend money to shop Number and counting – exploring the lunar calendar, counting days in celebrations and creating date-based maths problems Pattern and rhythm – dragon dance number patterns, clapping and skip counting in 2s, 3s and 5s Early patterning – repeating patterns using coloured dragon scales for younger children Number properties – exploring lucky and unlucky numbers and creating ‘lucky number’ maths challenges Sorting, data handling and statistics – dumpling sorting, tallying, graphing and creating bar charts or pie charts Shape, space and measure – exploring symmetry with paper lanterns and calculating perimeter and area for older pupils Geometry – using tangrams and 2D shapes to create zodiac animals, naming shapes or measuring angles Calculation and fluency – firecracker skip counting, ordering numbers and solving multiplication or division problems Fractions – using fortune cookies to introduce fractions or reveal word problem answers The pack includes blank firecrackers, dumplings and fortune cookies , allowing teachers and pupils to create their own differentiated maths tasks. This makes the resource ideal for mixed-age classes , enrichment weeks or whole-school Lunar New Year learning.