Maths Mela

Chapter 1 of the Class 3 Maths NCERT textbook (Maths Mela), "What's in a Name?", introduces young learners to early counting and grouping ideas through a story about cowherds using tally marks, activities on comparing name lengths by counting letters, spelling out number names and counting their letters, and sorting objects into groups.

• 1Deba and Deep use tally marks — one mark per cow going out, one strike-out per cow coming in — to track animals without knowing how to count formally.
• 2One-to-one matching with tally marks is an early strategy for keeping track of quantities before learning numbers.
• 3Children compare animal names (tiger, elephant, dog, ox, etc.) by counting letters to find the longest and shortest name.
• 4Number names between 1 and 99 are built from word cards and their letters are counted, for example Forty-three has 10 letters.
• 5A thinking challenge asks children to find all numbers between 1 and 99 whose names contain 8 letters, like fifty-six and forty-two.

Chapter 2 of the Class 3 Maths NCERT textbook (Maths Mela), "Toy Joy", introduces young learners to 3D shapes — cube, cuboid, cylinder, cone, and sphere — through hands-on activities involving toys, boxes, and everyday objects, helping children identify, name, and describe the faces, edges, and corners of each shape.

• 1Five 3D shapes are taught: cube, cuboid, cylinder, cone, and sphere.
• 2Each shape is described by its faces (flat or curved), edges (straight or curved), and corners.
• 3A cube is a special type of cuboid.
• 4Opposite faces on a die (cube) always add up to 7 — for example, the face opposite 1 has 6 dots.
• 5Children count and record how many of each shape make up a toy engine (cylinders, cones, cuboids, and cubes).

Chapter 3 of the Class 3 Maths NCERT textbook (Maths Mela), "Double Century", teaches children to understand, read, and write numbers from 100 up to 200 using bundles and sticks, number lines, and number sentences, while also introducing the history of how ancient Indians invented our ten-symbol number system.

• 1Ancient Indians invented a number system using ten symbols (0–9) that is now used all over the world.
• 2The symbol 0, meaning nothing, is what makes the entire number system work.
• 3100 equals 10 bundles of 10 sticks; this idea of grouping helps children count and understand large numbers.
• 4Numbers from 101 to 200 are formed by adding to 100, for example 100 and 7 makes 107 (One Hundred Seven).
• 5200, called a Double Century, is built up step by step through the chapter using tables, number lines, and activities.

Chapter 4 of the Class 3 Maths NCERT textbook (Maths Mela), "Vacation with My Nani Maa", follows Chirag and Nandini on a visit to their grandmother (Nani Maa) and uses everyday situations — counting marbles, sharing sweets, collecting stamps, picking radishes and apples — to teach addition and subtraction of numbers up to 200 using number lines, the ginladi (abacus-like bead tool), bundles-and-sticks, box diagrams, and a 1–100 number grid, as well as skills like estimation, skip counting by 5, 6, 9 and 10, and completing magic-square number puzzles.

• 1Addition and subtraction are practiced with numbers up to at least 200 using real-life story contexts such as balushahi sweets, stamps, radishes, and apples.
• 2Children use four strategies for the same calculation: number line jumps, ginladi (bead tool), bundles and sticks, and box diagrams.
• 3A hidden-marbles magic trick introduces the idea of finding an unknown part when the total is known, which is the concept behind subtraction.
• 4Skip counting by 5, 6, 9 and 10 is practiced on a 1–100 number grid through frog and grasshopper jumping exercises.
• 5Estimation is built in before every calculation — children guess a total first, then check with exact working.

Chapter 5 of the Class 3 Maths NCERT textbook (Maths Mela), "Fun with Shapes", introduces children to 2D shapes — rectangles, squares, triangles, and circles — through hands-on activities like making rangoli patterns, tracing faces of boxes, folding paper plates, and using matchsticks and tangram pieces to explore the properties and corners of each shape.

• 1Rectangles have 4 sides and 4 corners, with only opposite sides equal in length; squares have 4 equal sides and 4 equal corners.
• 2Both squares and rectangles have square corners (right angles); children use paper strips to compare square, less-than-square, and more-than-square corners.
• 3Triangles have 3 sides and 3 corners; children count triangles in rangoli designs and make triangles by cutting a square along dotted lines.
• 4The faces of a cuboid are rectangles or squares; tracing a matchbox gives three different rectangles.
• 5The center of a circle is found by folding a paper plate in half twice and marking where the fold lines meet.

Chapter 6 of the Class 3 Maths NCERT textbook (Maths Mela), "House of Hundreds - I", teaches children to count, read, write, and compare 3-digit numbers beyond 200, using real-life mela objects like triangular torans, bangles, and toffees, and activities such as number lines, number sliders, apartment house-number grids, and Dienes block representations to build a strong understanding of hundreds, tens, and ones up to 800 and beyond.

• 1Children count objects like triangular torans (250), bangles (280), and toffees (298) to reach and cross 300.
• 2Place value is shown using matchstick bundles and Dienes blocks — H boxes (100), T boxes (10), and loose O packets (1).
• 3Numbers are expressed in multiple ways: '200 and 35 more', '15 less than 250', and as addition sentences like 200 + 10 + 1 = 211.
• 4Number lines help children locate 3-digit numbers, find distances between numbers, and count up to 500.
• 5A flag guessing game uses higher/lower clues to narrow down a secret number between 200 and 210, building logical thinking.

Chapter 7 of the Class 3 Maths NCERT textbook (Maths Mela), "Raksha Bandhan", uses the Raksha Bandhan festival as a setting to introduce children to multiplication as repeated addition and division as equal sharing, building up times tables for 1 through 10 through hands-on activities like making rakhis, counting laddoos, distributing kaju katlis, skip jumping on a number track, and drawing sticks to form tables.

• 1Multiplication is taught as repeated addition using festival items like rakhis, flowers, threads, and beads.
• 25 rakhis needing 4 beads each gives 4 + 4 + 4 + 4 + 4 = 5 x 4 = 20 beads, shown step by step.
• 3Division is introduced as equal sharing: 18 laddoos shared equally among 9 people gives 18 divided by 9 = 2 each.
• 4Skip jumping on a number track from 0, stepping by 3 or 6 at a time, builds the corresponding times table.
• 5Drawing intersecting sticks and counting their crossing points is shown as another way to build multiplication tables.

Chapter 8 of the Class 3 Maths NCERT textbook (Maths Mela), "Fair Share", introduces young learners to the concept of equal sharing, teaching them to identify and make halves and quarters of shapes, objects, and quantities, and to understand the relationship between half and double.

• 1When 1 whole is divided equally between 2 people, each part is called a half
• 2Two halves make one whole
• 3When a whole is divided equally among 4 people, each part is called a quarter
• 4Four quarters make one whole, and 2 quarters equal one half
• 5Halves and quarters can be shown in different ways by folding rectangular or square paper

Chapter 9 of the Class 3 Maths NCERT textbook (Maths Mela), "House of Hundreds - II", teaches children to read, write, represent, and explore three-digit numbers up to 1000 through activities like placing numbers on a number line, completing skip-counting patterns, solving number puzzles, playing a Tambola grid game, and discovering special number patterns such as palindromes, twin digits, and an ancient Indian system of word numerals called Bhutasankhya.

• 1Children represent three-digit numbers up to 1000 using hundreds, tens, and ones tiles drawn in a notebook.
• 2A Tambola (bingo-style) game asks children to fill a grid with numbers between 570 and 630 and strike out numbers matching given clues.
• 3Number line activities cover placing numbers in the range 500 to 900 and calculating how many steps a crane needs to reach its food.
• 4Skip-counting sequences use varying step sizes including 10, 15, 25, 30, and 100, reaching all the way to 1000.
• 5Children find palindrome numbers (same forwards and backwards, e.g. 353, 868), twin-digit numbers (11, 22, 33), and triplet-digit numbers (111, 222, 333).

Chapter 10 of the Class 3 Maths NCERT textbook (Maths Mela), "Fun at Class Party!", introduces children to measurement of length through a class party setting, covering informal tools like hand spans, footsteps, and paper strings, comparing lengths, and introducing the metre as a standard unit along with half metre and quarter metre.

• 1Children use hand spans, footsteps, and paper strings as informal measurement tools
• 2Leena and Adi may get different measurements for the same table because hand spans differ from person to person
• 3Shelly and Adi use a thread to measure the table and compare it to the door width before moving it
• 4A metre is introduced as the standard unit of length, made by marking one metre on a rope using a metre rod
• 5Folding a metre rope in half gives half a metre, and folding again gives a quarter metre

Chapter 11 of the Class 3 Maths NCERT textbook (Maths Mela), "Filling and Lifting", introduces young learners to the concepts of capacity (how much a container can hold) and weight (how heavy an object is), using everyday objects like glasses, jugs, bowls, and a pan-balance to compare, estimate, and measure.

• 1Children compare how much liquid different glasses or vessels can hold by pouring contents into same-sized containers.
• 2The litre is introduced as the standard unit for measuring liquid capacity; children also learn half litre and quarter litre.
• 3Everyday vessels like a jug, glass, bowl, mug, and bucket are compared against a 1-litre bottle to judge their capacity.
• 4Weight is introduced by holding objects in both hands and using a pan-balance with coins, erasers, or sand-filled matchboxes as informal weights.
• 5The kilogram is introduced as a standard unit of weight; a 1 kg salt packet is used as a reference for estimating other objects.

Chapter 12 of the Class 3 Maths NCERT textbook (Maths Mela), "Give and Take", teaches children how to add and subtract 3-digit numbers using box diagrams, Hundreds-Tens-Ones (HTO) blocks, and number lines, set in real-life contexts such as a plant nursery and a village shopkeeper's daily earnings.

• 1Add and subtract 3-digit numbers using Hundreds, Tens, Ones (HTO) blocks
• 2Use box diagrams to picture a problem before solving it
• 3Regroup across place values: change 1 ten into 10 ones when subtracting, or combine 10 tens into 1 hundred when adding
• 4Use a number line for addition and subtraction of 3-digit numbers
• 5Work with Indian rupee notes and coins — match equivalent values and find multiple ways to pay the same amount

Chapter 13 of the Class 3 Maths NCERT textbook (Maths Mela), "Time Goes On", teaches young learners to read and use calendars, understand months and days of a year, read analog and digital clocks, calculate time durations in minutes, and develop a sense of how long everyday activities take.

• 1Children make a calendar for July 2024 and answer questions about how many Sundays it has, which dates fall on Thursdays, and what date school reopens after a 15-day holiday.
• 2All 12 months of the year are listed, and children identify which month has fewer than 30 days and count the total days and weeks in a year.
• 3The chapter introduces reading analog clock faces, drawing hour and minute hands for times like 8:15 (quarter past 8) and 8:30 (half past 8), and finding how many minutes have passed between two times.
• 4Digital clocks (showing time in digits) and analog clocks (with hands) are compared, and children learn where each type is commonly found.
• 5Children estimate and record how long everyday activities take — from minutes (brushing teeth, taking a shower) to hours, days, weeks, and months (knitting a sweater, changing seasons).

Chapter 14 of the Class 3 Maths NCERT textbook (Maths Mela), "The Surajkund Fair", follows two children, Soni and Avi, as they visit the famous Surajkund fair in Faridabad, Haryana, and uses the sights and activities of the fair to introduce children to symmetry, mirror images, tiling patterns, map reading, and navigating directions.

• 1Symmetry is introduced through bead malas: a mala is symmetrical when its two halves are exactly the same
• 2Children explore rangoli traditions from across India, including kolam from Tamil Nadu, Pookalam from Kerala, and Aipan from Uttarakhand, and complete half-drawn symmetrical rangolis
• 3A mask-making activity shows that folding paper down the middle and cutting one half creates a symmetrical shape
• 4The mirror game with counters teaches children to place objects so that one side is the mirror image of the other
• 5Tiling activities use rangometry shapes to fill paths and areas with no gaps and no overlaps, building an early sense of tessellation