advice on extra tuition

[liveinazoo]

2 of my children ar ein primary education.attending local state run school,average for the area i live

ds is 6 and isnt progressing well-he is quiet and well behaved and goes under the teachers "radar".ive discussed this with her to no avail
dd2 is nearly 8 and her maths skills shock me as woefuly inadequate
i can help and encourage ds but have no idea where to start with dd.

is extra private tuition any good?
or has anyone got any ideas that i might be able to try myself.they are both "average" in their class but by the standards of schooling dd1 got(when we lived in a different area 8 yrs previously) i am growing increasingly concerned.
changing schols isnt an option as this is the best of a bad bunch.i cant afford private education full time. they are being raised to love books and learning(at home mind,not particularly at school)and i want to nurture this
HELP!!!!!
TIA

Try Bond books (or the WH Smith ones) - DD likes those. If your children work well with you, then save yourself the cost of private tuition. Or if her maths is really woeful, then try Singapore Maths (Maths No Problem) which I think is good.

For mental maths, we play a kind of game of grandmother's footsteps - forwards when she gets it right, back or stay still when she gets it wrong. DD (Yr 1) has been known to keep it up until I am completely sick of making up questions. But we have learnt times tables that way too. There is a section on here that says what children are doing in each year which is helpful. Good luck!

We use Whizz.com which is an excellent online tutorial package that starts at the basics and works through the whole curriculum step by step. The exercises are set so that a child has to cover every single topic, whereas most online programmes allow children to select what they want and they avoid the ones they dont like or cant do.

You start off which a test (free) which sets a general base line. If your child cant do the exercise it steps back a level. It has been a fantastic programme for filling in lts of gaps and made me realise how much is actually involved in the curriculum.

It is expensive (but much cheaper than paying a private tutor. You can also redo the exercises many times and I strongly recommend it.

It does depend on your child though. Some wont use computers, some wont use books.

We also use Mathletics but this is better for revision rather than teaching.

thanks for the responses
have picked up a couple of books and will investigate Whizz.com
thanks again

Hi liveinazoo:

We were so there when DD1 was in Y2. She could barely take 1 from 10.

We have been faithfully using maths factor for the last 19 months to great success. I can't praise it enough - it's made a huge difference to our DD1 (now Y4) and got DD2 who started in Y1 off to a great start. Also as a rather older thing myself. Being 'middle aged' myself, I absolutely find it brilliant that Carol Vorderman used the money received for unfair dismissal (due to age) from Countdown to set this up. I don't know if it is for everybody - but we found it very useful because the explanations of how to do things and the careful work with teaching number patterns and number bonds have made a huge difference.

Info here: themathsfactor.com/

Some example lessons here: www.youtube.com/user/mathsfactor/videos

If there is trouble in other areas - try www.bbc.co.uk/schools/teachers/ - click the appropriate key stage (KS1 or KS2) and then click the appropriate topic in the orange box (middle left).

BBC Bitesize KS1/ KS2 also have very useful games to practice core elements of the curriculum for preparation for KS1 SATs/ KS2 SATs: www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/

Hope that helps

thankspastsellbyate most useful