Kumon maths

[Villagedad]

Hi all

After a very long 9 months we have decided with our DS that Kumon is not for us and have decided to stop doing it.

The daily grind of the 10 papers got to our DS and he became miserable each day having to complete the endless sums in a very tight timeslot..., we have therefore decided to look for something new to do which we hope will give our DS the edge with his maths.

We will take the rest of the summer holidays off and maybe start doing some Bond maths work books in September say for an hour each week, or maybe 10 mins each day...

We found the problem with Kumon in the end was the pure inflexibility of doing it every day in a set amount of time. We liked the little and often approach but it seemed that it takes months to move from one level to the next and in that time he must have done thousands of almost identical (it seeemed) sums of horizontal addition & subtraction...

Any views on what we could do to replicate the "little and often" approach (the part that is good about Kumon) without the "rigidity" would be welcomed.

Also we would be grateful for recommendations on which maths workbooks would be useful for a (soon to be) year 3 child in key stage 2.

Best regards
Villagedad

[deontological]

After a very long 9 months we have decided with our DS that Kumon is not for us and have decided to stop doing it.

The daily grind of the 10 papers got to our DS and he became miserable each day having to complete the endless sums in a very tight timeslot..., we have therefore decided to look for something new to do which we hope will give our DS the edge with his maths.

We will take the rest of the summer holidays off and maybe start doing some Bond maths work books in September say for an hour each week, or maybe 10 mins each day...

We found the problem with Kumon in the end was the pure inflexibility of doing it every day in a set amount of time. We liked the little and often approach but it seemed that it takes months to move from one level to the next and in that time he must have done thousands of almost identical (it seeemed) sums of horizontal addition & subtraction...

Any views on what we could do to replicate the "little and often" approach (the part that is good about Kumon) without the "rigidity" would be welcomed.

Also we would be grateful for recommendations on which maths workbooks would be useful for a (soon to be) year 3 child in key stage 2.

Best regards
Villagedad

You'll find most High-Street learning materials from the likes of Letts, Bond, WH Smiths etc. to be fairly user-friendly. The "little and often" approach is a generic approach that is very "relative" depending on the individual learners concerned. Hopefully, as parents, we are in as good a position as possible to decide what that "little and often" approach would mean in practice for our DCs. You'll have to work with your DS on that.

You'll have to decide what are the reasons and objectives for putting your DS through the "additional work". If the reason were to stimulate inherent interest in an academic subject (like maths), then your approach would be quite different to the one that is driven by a reason, say, to have a significant competitive edge for your DS over his classmates.

You'll find that certain materials are now carefully differentiated for different learning styles. For example, at KS1 & 2 levels, Letts produce parallel series that cater for both the more visual learners and the more proficient (or self-confident and self-initiated) learners. You need to find out which types of materials work best for your DS.

Taking an active interest in their DC's education at school and at home could only be a good thing for both the parents and the child. But that choice of doing "additional work" comes at a cost and parents need to be sensitive to the (other) needs of the child without piling on undue pressure in the process. Ask youself what the extra work is intended for and then work closely with your DS to see which workbook, if any, is best suited to your DS's learning style .

[yoyo123]

playing games is a very good way of learning maths, there are plenty online and also board games.

try games like yahtzee, or using a pack of cards to encourage speed at adding and multiplying.
Countdown style games, where you turn up 2 or 3 cards to make a 2 or 3 digit number, then 4 or 5 cards below, the aim of the game is to make the target number from the 5 dealt, by adding, subtracting, multiplying or dividing. First to get the number gets a point, This involves a lot of calculation under time pressure.

or play a game using a hundred square. a die and a counter each.

if you land on a square number you go back to last square number , if you land on a prime number you go on to next prime. if you land on a cubed number you get another go.


Use of mathematics is a very important strand of the curriculum and will enrich what he is learning at school.

I have sent you a pm

[Sally-Anne]

Hi VillageDad

There is a very highly esteemed computer programme called Numbershark, used in many Learning Support departments around the country. It is not cheap, but it covers age 6 - 15, so you will get nearly eight years use out of it just for one child.

(Mind you, when I think how much I paid out today for Wii Sports Resort, Numbershark almost looks like a bargain!)

It is little fiddly to set up, with administrator rights, etc, but once you are through that, there is a great variety of games on it, and it really does improve the speed of a child's mental maths - at least, it did for us! It also a lot more fun than sitting doing papers.

Sally-Anne

[yoyo123]

I used numbershark with my year 3/4 class\they loved it!

[Villagedad]

You'll have to decide what are the reasons and objectives for putting your DS through the "additional work". If the reason were to stimulate inherent interest in an academic subject (like maths), then your approach would be quite different to the one that is driven by a reason, say, to have a significant competitive edge for your DS over his classmates.

For us it's to ensure he stays confident with maths and doesn't slip into the zone where he looses confidence and falls behind.

[Villagedad]

Use of mathematics is a very important strand of the curriculum and will enrich what he is learning at school.

I have sent you a pm

Thanks yoyo123, appreciate your comments and pm.
Best wishes
Villagedad

[Chai]

"We found the problem with Kumon in the end was the pure inflexibility of doing it every day in a set amount of time. We liked the little and often approach but it seemed that it takes months to move from one level to the next and in that time he must have done thousands of almost identical (it seeemed) sums of horizontal addition & subtraction... "

But that is how the Verbal Reasoning paper in 11+ is - 80 to potentially 100 questions in 50 minutes. Same with maths problem solving - a set amount of questions in a very tight timeslot.

You are right in a way though. I remember my daughter being extremely frustrated with Kumon level A. The instructor said something like level A was crucial for level B. I didn't buy into it at that time and thought it was a load of poppycock. But I also had no time, running around working and all that. So we stuck with Kumon (the lazy way out I suppose) until I could find an alternative solution. It turned out when my daughter got on to level B, that everything slotted in and I began to see how it was actually working as she whizzed through level C onto D (another difficult level and then onwards) and we are now not turning back and changing after all.

Please don't pelt me with "hear hear" comments. You have your views, I have mine. I can only say how it has worked for us. And if you will remember, I also mentioned in my previous post that it didn't work for others too.

If anything, I learned that there is no quick fix to progressing up the learning ladder. Also, doing something to help your child learn -like in your case, Kumon clearly doesn't work and is making your DS miserable and so you quit and are now looking for alternative methods - is better than doing nothing at all.
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[mystery]

Out of desperation I am considering Kumon Maths and /or English for my child. But I do remember my nephew doing it for a while. He never did it daily so the boring old repetition was even more obvious when he did a big batch on one day. I suggested to his Mum that they drop it as he seemed to be able to do it all easily. Looking back, it's a shame he could not just have been bumped up a level, but it seems that's not the way it works. Or is it that some people run their franchise better in some localities than others? As a fee paper, can't you ask to miss some of the stuff out?

It seems like a good approach in addition to a more stimulating way of teaching maths, but it would seem to need an intelligent being behind the administration of the worksheets. Someone who can say no more repetition is needed of this particular thing so let's skip on.

I don't know what age your child is, or what materials you are trying to cover, but try looking at the books available on the Power of 2 website. These are based on the little and often approach, but you don't need to do it daily - they recommend 3 to 4 times a week - and you could decide to skip on if appropriate, or go back again if not. It works on the principle of getting a question right on 3 consecutive occasions (on separate days) in order not to repeat that question again.

When my nephew dumped Kumon, he used to enjoy announcing that Mr Kumon was dead.

[Villagedad]

Hi all

I thought I would update you on post kumon activity we are doing with our DS.

We have decided to continue with kumon, but under a different guise.

We have discovered that you can buy kumon workbooks on Amazon (just type in kumon workbooks on Amazon uk) which are almost identical to the worksheets they give you at the kumon centres, although in a much more child friendly workbook style.

The books are priced about £4-£5 each (96 pages long per subject), and they cover all the various kumon subjects right from basic horizontal addition and subtraction, through to fractions and decimals, via division and times tables. They are published by kumon North America but perfectly suitable for the UK market.

I worked it out that we could buy ALL the books to cover the kumon maths curriculum for both our boys, more chealy than what it costs for a months subscription to a kumon centre (£50 per child per month for maths).

The beauty for us is we can do this at our own pace without having to repeat whole sections.. We don't time it and have weekends plus school holidays off.

This revised approach will hopefully allow us to overcome the problems we had with the kumon centre as reported below, as well as saving us a lot of money!

"We found the problem with Kumon in the end was the pure inflexibility of doing it every day in a set amount of time. We liked the little and often approach but it seemed that it takes months to move from one level to the next and in that time he must have done thousands of almost identical (it seeemed) sums of horizontal addition & subtraction... "

Regards
Villagedad