Reception dd cannot do very basic sums!

[yellowparrot]

I was surprised the other day when my ds asked my dd a very basic sum, and she didn't know the answer. At the last parents evening, the teacher said she was good at numeracy. Later on i asked her some more sums eg. 2 add 1, and she struggled. When i showed her with raisins she could easily add and take away. Is this normal for a reception child? She is 5 in April. My ds has always been bizzarely good at maths.

It is definitely within the "normal" range for reception. Don't worry. They talk about one more than and one less than, rather than writing them down as calculations and spend a lot of time counting. She probably understands the concept of "one more than", you are just using different terminology from school so maybe she doesn't recognise it as the same thing.

If often depends on how you ask the question. If you say how many fingers have you got on one hand the child will say five. Then on the other, five. And then all together? Ten.

But if you say what is the product of your combined fingers on both hands you'll get a blank look.

She is really young and I don't think that many reception children can do sums after a term. I think your expectations are unrealistic especially as she is one of the younger ones. Last year your dd would have started school in January in Hertfordshire. It is a fairly recent thing having children with summer birthdays starting full time school in september.

Honestly I don't think that a lot of maths clicked for my son until year 2 and he got a level 3 for keystage 1. Schools are keen for children to understand what they are doing rather than be a parrot. It takes longer but creates better foundations.

Well, no. They can do it, tired. Three year old children can do sums with the correct natation, eg

2+2=4
etc

my daughter can and she's three. But I had to teach her how to. She can't do long division yet or calculate compound interest. These things take time.

In reception a child will usually use objects to help calculate. Young children need physical objects before they can move to the abstract ideas of maths.
The focus will be on knowing what 2 actually looks like (in terms of two objects not the numeral) and how many will you have if you have one more rather than 2 plus 1.

Also, at this age (and older, if dd1 is anything to go by) they can do things one minute and not the next. It took me ages to figure out that dd1 could do sums perfectly well at school, but was too exhausted/bored/unmotivated to do them at home!

Don't panic! Some children 'learn' to do sums, but it can be that they are just reciting the facts from memory not understanding the maths. My DD maths was shocking in R, just didn't doing anything for her. She's all books, art, craft and imaginary play. Anyway, she got a 2b last year in Y2 SATs, national expectancy. We were pleased, mainly because she works hard at something that she finds tricky.
Plenty of fun practical stuff over the coming years will help your child. And giving in a link to the real world - pieces of fruit, teddies, sweets etc. Use numbers in everyday chat.

Thanks everyone. I feel much better. She is fine when using objects to help her do sums, so the abstract idea of maths makes sense mrz.

Hi - I would not worry too much. It may have just been the way you asked the question. If I ask my DS (who is in reception) 'if you have 6 teddies and someone gives you 4 more teddies how many will you have' he will say 10.
However - if I ask him what is 1+1 he looks at me blankly then says 11 lol.

I'm with mrz - we are all too keen to move children on from the concrete to the abstract in maths and every child can make the transition at a different stage - I teach maths support to KS2 children and the first thing I do is go the the infant classrooms to look for the materials that IMO should be in all classrooms throughout primary schools. A slower more measured transition would help a lot of children with the most basic problems in maths .

Rant over if your DD can do it with raisins then she's doing just fine - I find smarties work even better !

My DH said he struggled terribly in maths - I think well beyond Reception age. Why? Because no-one had clearly explained what '+' meant! As soon as someone did explain, he was fine.

Similarly children may not correctly understand 'add' or 'plus' - IIRC from my own childhood it was always said as 'one and one makes two' which is more comprehensible. So think about this in addition to the abstract/concrete question.

Games that require throwing dice and adding them up can be fun approach to basic addition.

e.g. snakes and ladders - add up, then you count out the number, or for older kids work out which square to move to.

My supposedly G and T ds in numeracy though 20 - 2 was 17. He is in year 1 so I wouldn't worry.