AIBU to ask for ideas how to help DD9 who hates maths

[mathsmadness]

DD in Y5 (age 9) hates maths and gets very anxious/upset about doing any maths work! She really struggles with the fundamentals and is way behind at school. She has always been like this. While school have been sympathetic, there hasn't been that much support on this throughout infant/junior (covid has obviously not helped with this and, of course, they have 29 other children to think about in the classroom). The learning keeps moving on and I feel like DD can never catch up.

She did have a tutor once a week pre covid but with limited success for the money involved. So I'm hoping to try and fill some of the gaps myself with her. I have had stints of doing this with her before some some successes and some dramatic failures!

I was hoping to draw on mumsneters tips, resources, and inspirations to help me with this. Any ideas from teachers or parents who've been in the same situation would be brilliant.

I have helped both my DDs over the years. 20-30 minutes every day over the summer could have massive benefit.

• you need to go back to where she first started struggling, even if that is reception level, you can't build maths on shaky foundations
• physical objects are better than just abstract, so collect up 10p, 1p and £1 coins, milk bottle tops, lego bricks of varying sizes.
• talking about pizzas and cakes is useful for fractions
• coins are good for adding and subtracting, including 'going to the bank' to exchange 10x1p for 1x10p etc
• number lines are very good for lots of things too.

• start easy, build success and confidence. Maths is a lot about confidence to have a go.
• I found with mine that giving them permission to not understand opened their mind to trying. So saying 'this may be a bit hard for you right now' made them actually more likely to be able to do it

As pp said go back to basics, try and get her to do a little each day even in holidays, can you help with number bonds and tables..

And lastly.. A tutor. We have fantastic maths tutor m

I would play games with her. For instance take a pack of cards, deal out two each, turn them over, add, subtract or multiply and highest is the winner. Other purchased games like Evens Stevens Odd (dice game) will learn odd and even numbers as well as addition and multiplication. So many maths games available if you look on Amazon.

Long term home edder and we use Khan Academy. Really good explain videos which help kids visualise and understand and walk them step by step through how to understand everything from physical numbers to understanding how queations are phrased. 10 mins at a time, you sitting with her, make it lovely and warm and rewarding so she enjoys the time. Start from the easiest so she builds up a lot of easy success.

We also have a pairs game which I use to look at how groups of numbers repeat within bigger numbers - the pairings make it easy to see for example that a certain number is 3 sixes AND 18 iyswim

As previous posters have suggested go back to basics and do little and often.

My children love TT Rockstars and you can set it up just to concentrate on certain times tables at a time.

It’s a case of incorporating numeracy into everyday life. Have a clock with hands, rather than digital and just ask ‘what would the time be half an hour from now?’. Then once confident with that can change to 15 minutes etc, work backwards with time.

These are great ideas - thanks so much. I was also wondering about some of the online resources too - but I don't know if these are too intensive. School have mathletics but this is pretty dry and most of it far too hard for her.

I agree that little and often is good, but I really struggle with getting her to engage and not get emotional about it all . I'm basically asking her to do something that she hates doing at school and do it at home too (even though it is to try and help her!) Doing that every day would hugely impact our home dynamic - I don't know how to trade that off against the fact things wont improve if I don't try to help her with it.

Totally understand OP. I think that’s why games or incorporating numeracy into everyday life will encourage confidence and then you can progress to more structured learning.

My DS hates literacy so I read to him in silly voices. I expand his vocabulary by hiding a new word under his pillow. Why don’t you bake together and practise measurements? Over lockdown DS was given fraction homework which he found easier to complete when we made Lego towers and divided them up.

@Flakeymcwakey I've not heard of the Khan Academy so will have a look at this - thanks.

School do use Times Tables Rockstars but DD gets so frantic doing this she just guesses all the answers and gets quite stressy with it so I don't think that timed activities really suit her very well.

DS is so competitive on TT Rockstars that he’ll guess too. You can take the timer off if that helps.

Does she like online games? There are lots of games on topmarks.co.uk and many are tablet friendly. My kids loved one called Hit the Button. Very simple maths facts game and you can easily set the level and skill you want - as easy as numbers to 10 to as challenging as 12x12.
Topmarks is one of my go to sites for maths.

Another one that my kids found very engaging is MathProdigy Game. It's free (you can buy extras but there is absolutely no need to) and once the child does a placement test (it is built in as part of the game), the algorithms align to the child's ability and need.

The best bit of advice from a PP is to go back to where she is actually at no matter how low that is. Basic maths must be secure before she moves on.

@motherrunner please don't mention fractions it brings me out in a cold sweat thinking about our homeschooling efforts on them! That was definitely one of our dramatic failures trying to navigate undifferentiated homelearning work on fractions .

How to get her to do it?

• Star charts & rewards.
• Biscuits & hot chocolate.
• Start very easy & lots of praise
• Physical objects to start with not blank paper & pencil

Best way is firstly, don't say anything along the lines of "I always hated/couldn't do maths". If Mum can't do it, then there's no way I will be able to!!

Games are often the way to do it. There are lots on line, but you can do ones yourself.
Treasure hunts. I've done those with a maths bias. Solve the question and it gives you one word towards the final clue.
Simple board games-you can do multiples as well as adding.
Challenges: I need you to go to the shops and get me X, Y, Z X they cost £x, £y, £z, work how much change I'll get from £5 and you can keep it.
Or I need to get as many packets of this for £1, how many can I get?
Recipes: Do a double (or half) recipe. Ask her to work it out for you.
We need to leave at 10:45, how long do we have?

You can lead her through things. I'm planting 9 potatoes, each plant produces about 4 potatoes, how would I find out how many I should have in total. What do you think it is?
So thinking about things logically. Just in discussion. eg I wonder how many blades of grass are in the lawn? Shall we guess? How might we estimate (count number in small area and multiply up). You don't need to do it (or do it together) but it gets her thinking about how to do maths, and if she can understand it then it will help with her confidence.
You can do similar things: How many books on her bookshelf, how many in the library? How many bricks to build the house?

Games like darts, where she has to add up the score.

We have a card game which is good for basic adding. My mum made the game up as a child and it's still my dc's favourite game. It's known as "Granny's game". I knew it as "Mum's game".
Take the picture cards out.
For round 1 you get 1 card, round 2 you get 2, all the way up to round 10.
You have to put the cards in groups that add up to the number in the round.
So, for example in round 6, you might win with
6, 3,2,A 5A

Round 10 you might have
10, 8,2 8,2 6,3,A 5,5

You start with the cards in your hand and pick one and throw one each turn. You can pick up the last discarded card, or one from the pile. Between each round you reshuffle the cards.

Main thing is to make her feel confident. If she's wrong, then take a look together. if she's right, then be pleased.

The skills focus worksheets from Numeracy Ninjas start at a very low level - you pick a skill and focus on it for 10 days if there's anything you know she is particularly weak at.

www.numeracyninjas.org/?page_id=165

Thanks everyone. It's definitely brought home that a big mistake I've made in the past is trying to teach the Y4/Y5 work to help support her with her school work. When, it pains me to say it, she just isn't ready for it yet.

It's really brought it home this week when my Y2 DD (who is like me and really likes maths) has started doing 2 and 3 digit simple sums in her head that I know DD1 couldn't do. DD2 'gets' numbers and the basics in a way that DD1 simply doesn't. DD1 hasn't got the basic feel for numbers and solid foundations and that is making all the subsequent learning very shaky and confusing for her. I really need to work on this and her confidence firstly.

The online maths/ games websites where you start from.absolute scratch. You earn badges and coins to customise things. They allow practice and can grow confidence with numbers.

Similarly simple card games, such as Uno, just to make her feel at home with numbers.

If you get maths (I have a maths degree) it can be very hard to break it down into small enough chunks. I used to break things down into what I thought were small chunks and it turns out they were still way to big for DD1. You learn eventually.

I would highly recommend Math Antics. The videos are all free but the worksheets require a really small annual fee and are well worth it. I discovered during lockdown that my daughter, who was 10 at the time, had only a veneer of understanding for maths. She could do things but didn't really understand why she was doing what she did. I went back to basics using Math Antics. It doesn't dumb down the mathematics (I have a maths degree although decades ago, and was impressed at the rigour of the videos - all age appropriate), just presents it in a child appropriate way.

She is now finding the algebra her class are covering 'really easy' as she has the foundations in place. It has helped her confidence a lot as she feels good at maths, which is a complete turn around as before i couldn't understand why she thought she was 'bad at maths' when she could answer the questions she was set. She needed the conceptual basics to put it all together. Even understanding of the relationship between 4 basic operators makes a big difference.

@BB33Fr33 - these sound good - can you suggest any particularly good ones?

I always had anxiety around maths as a child, I hated it and just struggled to get it. My advice would be to take the pressure out of it and to build up her confidence with maths. If she struggles with a particular problem , put it away and do something else and then come back to it. Sitting there for ages struggling with it used to make me feel so sick.

My son clearly has gaps in early foundation work and he's year 4 now. During homeschooling we abandoned some class work and used numberblocks, Okido magazine and early years books. It's helped immensely. We had rewards and his confidence once he realised how much he did know despite not been where his peers are started to grow.

His teacher sent me a thank you card this term for the improvement and he was very supportive of what we could do during lock down.

@GingersHaveSoulsToo this sounds just like my DD. She has learnt the process of what to do to limp through the lesson just about. But really has no idea why she is doing it. Therefore in a weeks time she has no idea and just starts muddling up all the different processes she's learnt. Will take a look at Maths Antics - thanks.

mathantics.com/

If she doesn't have the basics then do the arithmetic section first. My daughter is dyslexic and struggles with times tables - it isn't the be all and end all.

I would do 30 mins twice a week with her to start, doing basics. This will build up her knowledge and also her confidence as you are going back to fundamentals so she is plugging holes not learning entirely new things. I watched the videos for each session then we did them together. It gives you a designed programme to work through but in sections so you pick the relevant order.

@romdowa thank you for saying that and reminding me how DD feels about it. In homeschooling I was certainly guilty of saying let me explain it to you one more time - thinking she'd finally get it. And to be honest she'd totally had enough and was getting pretty upset . I didn't help and I feel guilty about it in hindsight.

Mathsfactor

They run summer schools every year - might be a good palce to start when they open - but the main bit was fantastic for my children - they are rock solid in the basics but it is a paid for one - though there are montly, quarterly and annual payment options.

DD2 also enjoyed prodigy which was more play - think older two enjoyed the games on BBC site at similar age.

When she gets to algerbra dragon box was fantatsic but again you have to pay for the download.

Both primary schools gave access to mathletics - which I though was useless till last update then there were some lessons parts which and DD2 worked through those happily reinforced what she'd learned.