The teaching of mathematics in the primary school by the new approach, otherwise known as “discovery” learning,is a challenging and rewarding experience for children and their teacher. Primary school children, whose ages in most countries range from five to twelve years, learn to discover for themselves mathematical concepts, patterns and relationships and to solve problems in mathematics. In countries like Britain, where syllabuses are not externally imposed and head teachers are free to devise their own schemes of work and classroom methods, it is easy for teachers to try the new approach, which consists of getting children to work in small groups or individually, encouraging them to think for themselves and investigate mathematical problems, which they do in individual and sometimes highly original ways.