During her 19 years of teaching experience, Alison Hutchison has worked in a variety of settings including Early Years centres, planning teaching and learning for 0-7 year olds. She has held positions within a local authority to devise and deliver training to up-skill practitioners in aspects of Early Years teaching and learning.

Developing a secure understanding of number in the Early Years is key to ensuring number confidence for future stages of learning. A wide variety of meaningful hands-on experiences are required to develop a child's deep understanding of number. 50 Fantastic Ideas for Exploring Number presents ideas that are all about doing - to not only stimulate the senses, but to also provoke thinking and talking, allow questions to be asked, and ensure that links are made between number concepts and the real world. The ideas require little preparation beforehand, can be used by practitioners without any specific expertise in teaching early number, and include easy-to-source materials. Each area of early number sense is covered from adding on and taking away to number stories, identifying and writing numbers.

Alison Hutchison draws on her wealth of experience to present 50 ideas and experiences that make numbers fun and accessible so that, as they explore and investigate, children are fully engaged partners in their learning at this crucial early stage of their number journey.

The activities are designed to allow children to have lots of fun while playing collaboratively in ways that provoke thinking, talking and sharing ideas.