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To Kumon or not to Kumon. That is the question.

999 replies

megabored · 17/06/2012 00:28

DD is starting school in September. Below are the Pros and Cons I have been debating recently.

  1. She is bright, so should be okay without extra help in school
  2. It is too early to put her through this
  3. Kumon is expensive and time consuming.

The Pros

  1. It may give her that bit of extra confidence at school
  2. Earlier is better as then she can grow with that system
  3. Its not so expensive as to be prohibitive.

I really cant decide either way. Please someone help?

OP posts:
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Haberdashery · 28/06/2012 11:35

OK, counting on paper or practising mental arithmetic is teaching a particular skill, which may be useful to some people. However, that skill is NOT the same skill as understanding what numbers are and how they behave. Did you read the article that clam posted? It's really interesting.

I'm not sure Reading Eggs would be very appropriate for a preschool child either but having seen it in action I do think it looks a lot more fun than worksheets. And it has been useful to friends of mine who have very reluctant readers, so in that context I can see its use. My daughter tried the free trial and quite liked it but as she is not a reluctant reader I didn't pay for the sub. It's also only thirty quid a year or so, which is £2.50 per month - less than the cost of an actual book.

RosemaryandThyme · 28/06/2012 11:40

I'd love it if mine would lay down for a bit and look at the ceiling - can't even get them to do it at bed-time no matter how much lavender bubble bath they're coated in - bit off the thread but how do families get their children to just be relaxed and chilled ?

Haberdashery · 28/06/2012 11:43

I do a fair bit of staring at the ceiling myself. Maybe my daughter is following my excellent example?! Grin

megabored · 28/06/2012 11:43

haberdashery, I did read that article. My dd is not at that stage where we can differentiate between the two styles mentioned. We are learning to count systematically, learning to hold a pencil correctly, doing straight and wobble lines, trying to recognise numbers, and therefore learning to concentrate on something for longer than 30 secs. I don't mind paying for that. My dd was into reading eggs about a month or so ago. She did it every day because she wanted to. It is fun. However, now she is not interested in reading after reaching level 40 something on that. She is into numbers and how they work. Loves the worksheets and the counting. We played a game where we learnt about shopping yesterday and that 100pence
Make a pound with play money. So I think here, people are generally against paying for something (that seems costly). So f there was a reading eggs style kumon program, it would be okay?

OP posts:
megabored · 28/06/2012 11:46

rose mine is the same. Car journeys work for that but then we become so relaxed that we fall asleep which means a longer story time or later bedtime. Hmm

OP posts:
Haberdashery · 28/06/2012 12:12

I am against Kumon because it appears to deliver little benefit for a lot of money, in a very boring way. I am broadly in favour of Reading Eggs for some children because it appears to deliver some benefit for little money, and crucially because it is also genuinely fun.

I also think Reading Eggs is building reading skills (though I would question its value for an able/keen reader) however I do not believe that Kumon (from what I know of it) is building maths skills. It is building rote-learning skills related to mathematical facts. I cannot think of a more boring thing to be doing. However, I suppose there are people in the world who alphabetise their CD collections and iron underwear. We are all different!

Haberdashery · 28/06/2012 12:18

My dd is not at that stage where we can differentiate between the two styles mentioned.

IMO, this is the stage at which, if you choose to, you can make the choice to encourage her strongly to become someone who naturally gravitates towards developing a real understanding of her academic work and not just how to do it. But I don't think Kumon or similar programmes will help you with that, personally. I hope you get what you want from it, though.

jalanperak · 28/06/2012 13:21

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

megabored · 28/06/2012 14:38

jalanpark, thanks for that unbiased view. I did try to teach Maths by counting apples and raisins etc but I found it very tedious to get her attention or maintain it. As this was hard, I too concentrated only on English. English also tends to give instant gratification when you can recognise cat and dog etc in books. Maths on the other hand is trickier. Let's see if kumon works for what I want it to do. Maybe this would
Have been better as a blog. I am not convinced either way still but I also do not see the huge amount of negatives and unreasoned prejudices people have against math/kumon/learning by rote etc.

OP posts:
mrz · 28/06/2012 18:43

I don't think anyone has said anything negative about you teaching your child maths megabored. They have pointed out there are better ways to do it than to pay Kumon.
If you recall I posted links to two sites that provide lots of free materials to teach instant recall of number facts (which obviously means I'm against rote learning Hmm ). I also pointed out you can purchase the Kumon workbooks for £2 each (try Amazon) so I suggest your facts are very skewed by your prejudices.

clam · 28/06/2012 18:55

megabored: "I did read that article. My dd is not at that stage where we can differentiate between the two styles mentioned"

Erm, it's not for your dd to differentiate between the two. The principles nonetheless stand, regardless of age.

blueyonder22 · 28/06/2012 19:42

Megabored " I did try to teach Maths by counting apples and raisins etc but I found it very tedious to get her attention or maintain it. "

Your child is 4 maybe even 3. You found it tedious getting her attention, well maybe that's because she's far too young and not interested. Perhaps she was trying to show/tell you something. Children learn when they are ready. Poor thing doing all those tedious worksheets at such a young age. Kumon is not enjoyable no matter how you dress it up. Children, esp at a young age learn creatively not by rote. Teachers and parents of older children are questioning its worth and relevance. They speak with experience of the national curriculum and you have been very dismissive of their views and your child hasn't even started school yet! Your poor reception teacher.

Hulababy · 28/06/2012 20:42

If she finds counting apples tedious - try counting sweeties and chocolate, that appeals to most children even at 3 and 4 years old. You can then use them to add, subtract, multiply and divide. Cake is great for fractions and division too. Shapes is easily done using wooden blocks or plastic ones - you can make pictures using shapes such as squares, triangles, circles, etc. Money - use real money, let her add pennies to pay for something. Show her the coins and which ones they are. Play shops at home.

Hulababy · 28/06/2012 20:44

Some of the Orchard Games are great for maths skills too.
The shopping one works very well once she gets older.

Haberdashery · 28/06/2012 21:46

Counting Smarties concentrates the mind wonderfully. Particularly if you allow the child to eat the subtracted ones.

Seriously, though, I am not at all negative about teaching children to be comfortable with maths or about teaching them maths. I did a heavily science based subject which required a lot of higher level maths for my first degree and my mother was a maths teacher for many years and taught in some fairly challenging environments, including a couple of borstals. She was a good teacher and I think she taught me to be one too, in the small home-based arena where I have the opportunity to practice that skill. However, arithmetic is not maths (although it is valuable in its own right) and rote learning number facts is not maths (although it may be useful for a small subset of children).

It's a bit like phonics, actually, a subject close to the Primary Education topic's heart. Either you can give the children tools to enable them to discover words on their own or you can encourage them to learn whole words one by one and remember them. If you're quite bright or maybe just reasonably interested, you'll probably work out the phonics code alone from the latter type of teaching, but many children will just keep remembering the facts they have learnt. Kumon is a bit like whole word recognition. It's practice and recall and doing it as quickly as you can. It's not without value, as those skills are useful, just as it's useful to be able to look at a word and read it without looking at its component parts. But it's not the whole story and actually I think that it isn't developing the maths part of the brain as well as doing something maths based that isn't so restrictive. I also think that possibly focusing on those recall elements of maths is directing the child's learning along a path that is ultimately not very helpful to the things that come later and which require more than remembering things. Having said that, some instant recall of eg number bonds is helpful just to speed up your mathematical life.

I see that you say that your daughter wasn't engaged with counting apples and raisins. Maybe she's just not ready for it. If she likes the worksheets and completing them more than she likes counting and adding and subtracting and dividing raisins, then IMHO you are encouraging her to like the reward of getting it right better than the reward of finding something out and I think that is a shame, particularly for a child who isn't even at school yet. You say she's bright and perhaps it won't matter to her - maybe she will just work out the code alone. But it's a missed opportunity in my view. And possibly she will bypass the finding things out stage, be great at arithmetic but not really get the ideas behind it which will be far more valuable to her later on than any amount of good mental maths. I am saying this, btw, as someone who is good at maths and did a lot of it at university and yet is still rather shaky on arithmetic. It honestly made very little difference to me. Interestingly, my mother's good grounding in real maths meant that as things got harder, I got better at them. I would rather by far that my child was good at GCSE or later maths

As you say, it needn't take long, but I think counting leaves in the park for ten minutes is hundreds of times more valuable than counting leaves on a sheet of paper.

Strix · 28/06/2012 22:07

I think Kumon gave me the structure and the discipline to set forth study habits of little and often. This is something I apply to all learning now: viola lesson, spelling tests, etc. this has been a great start to establishing productive study habits. I won't claim that my children (or I) always found Kumon fun. But it has been good for them. It's not the only way to learn math, but it is certainly one way.

Haberdashery · 28/06/2012 22:19

It doesn't teach you Maths. It teaches you arithmetic.

I came back because I'd forgotten to say that those Orchard games, as recommended by Hulababy, are fantastic. They are really good fun and genuinely educational.

2kidsintow · 28/06/2012 22:22

Kumon maths has given a boy in my class an enviable recall of times tables and basic number facts, above the standard of the rest of my very good group.

He is no-where near as confident when working on more practical areas of maths or when the work requires him to change between different types of questions. Doesn't score very well in tests as a result.

What it HAS also done is give his Dad an totally unrealistic expectation of the level that he is working at as he has only seen his son succeed with the repetitive drilling in the Kumon approach.

learnandsay · 28/06/2012 22:29

Don't diss repetitive drilling. It's never done the British Army any harm.

Feenie · 28/06/2012 22:35

The British Army aren't 4 - what a ridiculous analogy.

clam · 28/06/2012 22:49

"What it HAS also done is give his Dad an totally unrealistic expectation of the level that he is working at as he has only seen his son succeed with the repetitive drilling in the Kumon approach."

Good point.

mrz · 29/06/2012 06:20

Who is dissing drill learnandsay?

seeker · 29/06/2012 06:43

I have no negative thoughts about maths, or even learning by rote. I am a fanatic about tables learning- don't, for example, get me started on the idiocy of teaching children to count in 2s, 3s or whatever- if you're going to teach them that, then teach them 2x3,3X3 and so on.

There are just better/cheaper ways, particularly with very small children, than Kumon- I won't repeat all the reasons for this- they have been laid out very clearly for anyone who is interested.

What puzzles me, OP, is why you think your child needs a confidence boost about maths. She's not at school yet, is she? I know that it's perfectly possible for a clid at school to lose confidence in their maths ability through bad teaching, unhelpful peer group or whatever, but I've never heard of it happening before school.What happened?

exoticfruits · 29/06/2012 06:59

What has happened is competitive parenting. It is treating it like a race and giving a head start. It doesn't work like that - always as well to call to mind 'the Hare and the Tortoise'- Aesop was very wise!

MissAnnersley · 29/06/2012 09:28

That's very true exoticfruits. Some children take a bit more time to 'get started'. It doesn't mean they are any less able.

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