Number Gym @ school - does it help?

[erin34]

My kids school are using the number gym package to improve numeracy skills. It's timed exercises in maths usually bonds and x tables. My daughter is okay with it but my son who is dyslexic hates it. He has working memory difficulties due by his condition and cannot instantly recall number facts - such a x table answers. This is the point of the number gym.

He gets very upset about having to use it especially because it's timed. Has anyone else had this problem? Should / could I tell school to stop making him do it? I don't know. Please help if you can.

I've only just joined and seen this post. We found that the timer did cause some children stress and so, in the current version you can hide it.
As a parent or teacher it's important to celebrate any improvement in the time taken as the child repeats the activity over days and sometimes weeks. Don't focus or even mention the hope-for goal of 1 minute unless they are getting close to it.
NumerGym provides many other numeracy activities which are not time dependent and help to build number bonds from different perspectives. It's important to give the child a wide range of number, shape and pattern experiences.