How to teach your own kids?

[OmarM]

My first post here!
I've got 3 kids - 12, 8 and 4.

For the eldest one, I find it REALLY hard to teach. I become frustrated, upset and we can somehow end up both shouting!

He's an amazing kid and I think he's so bright. But I just find it hard to teach my own kids. Similar for the 8 year old.

I could teach any other child or a group of children fine!

Am I the only one?

Can't afford tuition - so have no choice.

Are there any books anyone would recommend?
Or maybe youtube videos that would help?
What websites do you use with your kids?
The problem with the net is that there's tooo much information :(

Just looking for advice

[user789653241]

Khanacademy maths, English grammar, computing, science, history
mathantics maths videos
readtheory reading comprehension
duolingo MFL
crashcoursekidsscience videos

[user789653241]

All free sites.

[elephantscansing]

Hold on a sec. Your Ds is 12, you are home schooling, and you're only just now asking about school books? What have you been using up to now?

Why are you home schooling? And what teaching experience do you have?

[BackforGood]

Teach them what ?
How to play a musical instrument?
To coach them as part of a sports team?
To tie their shoelaces?
To explain some homework?
Or are you home educating ?

[OmarM]

thanks for the links
i'll follow up later

khanacademy - in the past read great things about - but found frustrating and unintuitive to navigate

@BackforGood @elephantscansing not home schooling - i wouldn't be able to cope! just talking about helping with school homework :)

@BackforGood you mentioned shoe laces... this is a subject i know a LOT about. i am starting a new business selling something that solves shoelace problems! (still in the planning stage. waiting for goods to come from china!)

[user789653241]

Khan(maths) is easier to navigate either by subject or year group. Or if you need to practice particular skills, just search it.

nrich is a great maths site as well.

[titchy]

Not sure you should actively help tbh - homework should reflect what THEY know. Support and enable yes, but teach, no.

[user1471537877]

You might get better responses in the home ed section op

[MilkRunningOutAgain]

It does depend on the DC. My DS is resistant to my teaching, as he's got older I've left him to it, he's now 14. But DD is very teachable and will listen & concentrate. She is 10. I do help her, and often teach too. Her school has annual parents 'lessons' to show us how they teach, so I don't confuse her with my ancient methods. DD likes workbooks rather than on-line sites, so I buy them from Smiths, DD likes Carol Vorderman ones. Shoelaces? DD learnt this skill when I was attempting to show her older brother. He still can't do them! So may need your product OmarM.

[JustRichmal]

Teaching requires a lot of listening to the child. Find out his perspective on you helping. Does he want you to teach him? Are there times when he does not want to learn and others when he does? Does he want your help to go over what he has done is class and with homework or does he want to learn other things? Why does he want to learn? Are getting good grades at GCSE important to him? Is he concerned the work may get too difficult for him? Explain to him why you want to teach him. Work out together what would be best.

If you do sit down to teach him something, keep it fun, keep him involved, and keep listening to him.

Also people learn by doing, not by being told.

[Autumnsky]

OP, do you ask them do stuff that school hasn't taught? I think your DS1 is 12, unless the school is really bad, it should be fine as long as he keeps up with school homework, exams. I stopped help DS1 with any school work once he started secondary school, I only asked what subjects he had at school, has he got any homeworks etc. DS1 never expeceted me to help him either. The main reason is English is my second language, it would be hard for me to help him in any subjects, I will need to check dictionery all the time. But the nice thing about it is DS1 is good at organising his study himself.

As for your 2 younger ones, I would agree to set some homework youself, but should be in line with the school. Which means the homeworks are for reinforce what they have learnt at school. I don't think there are much teaching needed.

My DS2 who is 9, the school never set any home work, so we do some ourselves. DS2 doesn't like I teach him, but he can do most of the work I give him, the ones that he made mistake, he will listen to me. But if the method I use is different to what school use, he won't listen.

[user789653241]

Same as Autumn, I am a foreigner, so I don't teach my ds(9).
He self studies what he wants to do.
I sometimes find youtube video of the topic he is doing at school, or give him interesting nrich topic to explore.

[JustRichmal]

I'm probably wandering off topic slightly, but picking up on what irvineoneohone said, dd loves the "crash course" videos on youtube. Sparking their enthusiasm for a subject is just as important as teaching, so they are worth a look at.

[GHGN]

I am teaching my DC Maths and the thing that worries me is she will be taught contradictory methods at school. How do you deal with that?

[JustRichmal]

I taught dd maths. Methods are not contradictory as the results will be the same, they are just different ways of doing the same thing. I like the modern methods of partitioning to add and subtract, grid method to multiply and chunking to divide. However, if your DC learns one method at home and another at school, it does not really matter. It will just deepen her understanding. If you get a KS1 revision guide and workbook you will know what they should be learning in the curriculum.
The only problem I had with dd was she got so far ahead the school was unable to differentiate and would not test her to find where she was so they did not have to.

[user789653241]

One of my ds's maths teacher once said he does things differently from how they teach sometimes, but it's fine, since he understand the procedure, knows alternative methods and get the answer correctly.

[GHGN]

I am quite against chunking and partitioning or the way they teach number bond in the UK for example. It is quite ineffective because it takes too many steps to get to the answer. When I learnt number bond, I learnt all the combinations from 1+1 to 9+9 and added numbers in column in my head.

I am not against looking at different approaches to more complex problems but for simple stuff, isn't better just to know one method really really well than knowing a few different methods. When I need to do a multiplication for example, I automatically put it down in column and finish the calculation before the students I teach can even press the On button on their calculator or setting up their grid or whatever method that they use.