Are there any primary school on line courses, to make sure we're covering everything??

[mummyloveslucy]

Hi, I'm going to be officially HEing my daughter from the 5th of Jan. She'll be 6 in Feb but has some learning difficulties.

I've been testing it out over the hollidays and she seems to love maths. She's been given some work sheets from her old school and is getting on very well with them. She does need everything explaining very carefully, but she's compleating tasks for 5-7 year olds when she's ment to be delayed by 2 years. She's not so keen on the reading and writing books as she finds these much harder. She has quite a severe speech problem and can't seem to here all the sounds. I think she possibly has an auditory processing disorder, but that can't be tested for until she's at least 7.

She likes routeen and a structured approach with loads of praise. She likes to be able to see the progress she's made too.
As she's doing so well with her work sheets, I wondered if there is any sort of course we could sign up too just so we know that everything is being covered. If she goes into school at some stage, I don't want her to have fallen further behind.

The work books also work out expensive as she's compleating a book every 2-3 days. She just wants to keep going. So maybe a course would work out cheeper?

If you have any reccomendations, please let me know. Thanks.

How exciting it that, MLL??? Let me get this straight - your daughter, who you have been firmly told is very delayed developmentally, is showing (having been out of school for a whole two weeks) that she is completely capable of keeping up with her peers in the one area of the curriculum that you've seriously started exploring?????

all over my face!!!!

I bet if you google for keystage 1 maths worksheets, you'll get hundreds of them to print off - that's presumably what lots of teachers do! I've heard of these people before: here they've been recommended on the HE threads before I think.

I wouldn't bother with formal reading schemes or reading workbooks, myself, just read to her, read to her and read to her, from your home collection of books. Take trips to charity shops to choose new ones. Join the local library.

A good thing to do might be story time every day. She tells you a story and you carefully write it down for her, and then you read it back to her. Maybe she could draw a picture to go with it? She doesn't actually have to be doing either the writing or the reading explicitly to be getting a huge amount out of that sort of activity. Either she could tell you a story out of her imagination, or she could re-tell a story she knows from the TV or from a book. We had the most incredibly convoluted story last night, involving airplanes and various Dora the Explorer characters and all sorts of narrative tension. I could hardly write it down, I was laughing so much!

www.cimt.plymouth.ac.uk/projects/mep/default.htm

Quite a few home-edders use this maths programme which was developed by the University of Plymouth, and is based (I think) on the Hungarian system of teaching mathematics.

Some years are now available on-line, but otherwise you can print everything out - FREE! - and your DD can complete at her leisure.

Some kids find it a bit 'dry': it's short on colour and 'fun' stuff, but the routine layout etc might be just what your daughter likes/needs. And did I mention that it's free? Good luck!

Thank you ommmward, It's fantastic isn't it.

Great idea about writing down her stories. That sounds fun and a great thing to look back on.

We do read a lot, but she dosn't follow the words with her fingers, I find that slows it down too much and I find it harder to make it sound exciting for her.

She can recognise most of the letters of the alphabet, but some she dosn't seem to hear. Like L, U, E and R.

I think this is going to be hard as she needs to be able to hear these sounds in order to learn to read.

CSLewis- that sounds great!! Especially the "free" bit. I'll add that to favourates.

I've never done that "follow the words with your fingers" thing. We just read. A child gets the visual cue of the words at exactly the level they are ready to get the cue at.

Also, children don't always feel like doing the reading themselves, even if they can. It's nice to be read to, just to have the words go effortlessly by so you can concentrate on the meaning.

I wouldn't worry about those letters she doesn't seem to be hearing. Even if L and R are a bit muddled in her mind, well, that muddle doesn't stop hundreds of thousands of Japanese people learning to read and speak English to an understandable level, does it?

Just relax, keep communicating with her lots, keep using written media whenever everyone feels like it, and she'll learn to read without even discussing it with you. Bet you.

Om's recom'd site looks v good. You can cut coloured paper pizza's for fractions. Also cut the Tangram shapes in various colours and make puzzles. Libraries may have extra books for tangrams. Great fun .

The CSLewis link is v good You can cut coloured cards and draw the numbers with DD in various colours. Games with dice are great especially when adding the numbers of the 2 dice is learning fun.

DD really enjoys mathletics. It's not free but they did give us a home ed discount.

I'm delighted to hear that your daughter is having fun and loves maths. She may like to participate in World Maths Day, which is free. The event is in March and practice games start in early February, but you can pre-register now. We actually enjoyed the so-called "practice" as much as the event itself.

Play short timed competitions against other children from all over the world, via the internet. Locations are shown on a world map, which has been good for my geography! Adults are allowed to sign up too.

My only gripe is that there is no flexibility in the difficulty level of the problems. You get problems which are considered appropriate for an average person in your age group, and that's what you are stuck with. This year I think we might register several fictitious children of different ages so my daughter can play at the right level for her.

Thank you, that sounds like fun. I'll probubly register Lucy as being 4, that way she'll have a fair chance. She still needs a fair bit of help with basic maths but at least she's enjoying it now. I never thought this would happen.