numeracy

[assumpta]

Does anyone have children who attend Kumon maths classes. If so what are your opinions, my dd is having difficulty grasping numeracy in the classroom and i thought this might help as they go right back to basics. The thing is they have to do a work book every day (365 days a year), it takes 10 - 15 mins and she is not quite 7. Any opinions/advice would be gratefully appreciated.

I have a friend who did it with their son from about 7 or 8 and swears by it.

has anyone else out there taken part in Kumon? If so how did you find it?

assumpta - we did give Kumon a try with my DS1 when he was about 6/7 as we quite rightly realised maths is not his strong point - however, the 10-15 mins a day soon became a real struggle with tears and tantrums, the workbooks are really tedious and boring, the ones my son had entailed looking at a page and counting the dots on it (or something like that). So we let it drop. I think it has it's place, however we found it a bit expensive and it did'nt work for us. DS1 has just done KS2 sats and we await his results with interest.

We tried it with ds when he was 7 and know several people who swear by it. It is very good but if you have ason like ours who also cried at doing the same sums every day with little variation then it wont work. We went through a lot of stress with it and now have a tutor for an hour instead a week. this suits ds far better although it really does depend on your child.

My ds2 who is in Year 3 started doing Kumon about a year ago as he was really struggling with basic maths. As you say, they go right back to basics and he started off writing numbers and counting dots! He has made fantastic progress and will soon be working at a level six months ahead of his year group.
It is sometimes a pain getting him to do the work every day but it's not too bad because the work is always at a level that he finds reasonably easy. With Kumon a child never moves on until they have fully mastered the concept they are working on unlike school where everyone must move on at the same pace and some (like my ds2) get left behind.
Anyway, I am so pleased with DS2's progress that I have now enrolled DS1 in the hope that it will be as helpful to him.
Oh and as an incentive for doing the work every day, the children get paid 'Kumon money' for each workbook they complete and for each time they attend class. They can save this up and then buy small toys etc. from their class teacher. This helps a bit!

great, thanks for all your comments. I will research further but it is quite encouraging that wordgirl's son is now nearly 6 months ahead. Keep up the good work.