Good maths practice work books!

[Imsosorryalan]

My dd is in year one and has slipped into the lower group for maths. I'd like to work with her at home to reinforce school work. Can anyone recommend any good maths work books that follow the skills learnt at school?

I think the first thing to do is to ask her teacher which bits of maths she needs help with before you go and spend. A lot of year 1 maths can be tested mentally eg. Counting in 2's, 5s, 10s, Number bonds, doubles etc whilst you wait for her teacher to get back to you.

We did the Letts books, but would second asking the teacher before buying them as it could just be a matter of failing to grasp a few simple concepts that's holding her back in which case books could be a bit ott. With my ds he just took longer to get his head 'round figures in all situations and still has moments where he gets muddled, even though he's capable of quite a bit.

I too used Letts. Going into a book shop and seeing which KS1 books you and your child like is a good idea.

IME doing maths at home will increase their ability in the subject and as KS1 is the curriculum they will be doing at school, going over it at home will help them.

I realise that they are expensive but I think that singapore maths are the best books. There are lots of practical suggestions of games you can play with your child to get them to understand maths in the real world. For example getting your child to count pairs of shoes is a good way of learning to count in twos.

I suggest working through both the singapore early birds standard kindergarten books for ten minutes a day.

www.mathsnoproblem.co.uk/mathematics/foundation-maths/earlybird-kindergarten-standards-edition.html

I think that the reception curriculum is over crowded and not enough time is spent on the boring basics. Childen need to malupulate real objects to understand maths rather than doing lots of work sheets. Ie. there is no point in teaching a child addition if they cannot acturately count objects in the real world.

We have used a couple of the Collins books, which I like because they don't just focus on one topic (eg telling the time) then go on to something else.

Letting them loose on the BBC Bitesize maths zone is good too.

I like Challenge maths from Wh Smith and Schofield and Sims.

If a year 1 child is struggling I too would be using real objects rather than worksheets. Lots of counting in 2, 5 and 10, doubling and halving to 10 then 20 and number bonds to 6, 7, 8, 9 & 10. All of these can be done with whatever you have lying around the house (pasta, lego, forks, sultanas, grapes etc). Different children need different amounts of practise to become completely fluent in a skill - some will grasp it and retain it quickly, but a lot will understand it and be able to do it at the time, but then forget. Little and often is the way to go. Wiltshire have produced a nice pack of games to play at home - if you google for something like Wiltshire KS1 maths games Bare Necessities you'll find it.

Singapore is ahead of most the world in maths because their young children are constantly playing malipulating real life objects. The singapore maths book does have some worksheets, but its mainly ideas for teaching concepts like counting in twos.

Avoid Kumon like the plague!

I have found a link for the bare necessities. Thank you for telling me about it.

www.grove.wilts.sch.uk/PDFs/Wiltshire%20Bare%20Necessities%20KS1.pdf

Hi I'm so sorry

DD2 came home from school with a few photocopied sheets from the Letts Mythical Maths series.

they're fairly colourful with lots of illustrations and maths is also presented as a puzzle, not just concepts.

You can look inside and see the range here on amazon: www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=mythical%20maths&sprefix=mythical+mat%2Caps&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Amythical%20maths

Also if you haven't stumbled across it have a look at Woodlands Junior School maths zone: resources.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/maths/ - it's entirely free with links to all sorts of practice games by subject. So if you want to have more practice - you can go to the appropriate section and see what games are available. It sometimes takes a bit of advanced research - but it has been incredibly helpful to get that extra help understanding how to do things and/or practice.

HTH