Grounds for Learning, the school grounds charity, has come up with a few ideas for primary schools to help warm up brains and bodies and kick- start a lesson in numeracy outdoors, linked to the Curriculum for Excellence draft outcomes.

For “I can use addition, subtraction, multiplication and division when solving problems”, it suggests a game called Sharks: chalk number “islands” on the ground - one per child. Call out sums and ask them to run to the correct island - without being caught by a “shark”.

For “I have investigated angles in the environment”, Angle Detectives gives each pupil coloured flags - red for right angles, black for acute and orange for obtuse. They have to place the correct flag wherever they find an angle around the school.

For “I have begun to develop a sense of how long tasks take”, Walk, Skip, Run gets children to travel across the length of the playground by walking, skipping or running, estimating and then timing how long it takes. Use different timers - egg timers, stop watches and so on.

www.gflscotland.org.uk.