Any tips to help dd with maths please?

[Frenchplait]

Dd is 6 (y2) She has mild learning difficulties and has a statement. She's progressing wonderfully with reading, assessed 6 months ahead of her chronological age, and generally doing well across the curriculum. But she is really struggling to grasp even basic maths concepts, such as one more or less.

I've asked her teacher how to best support her at home, but she thinks that maths isn't important(!) and we should concentrate on reading and writing.

I don't want to push her, as she loses confidence easily, but I'm growing increasingly concerned. Any ideas how I can help her please?

Food. If you get her to 'help' you with the food shopping and cooking you have loads of opportunities to do maths. Counting fruit and veg into bags, working out how many yoghurts to buy so everyone can have two each, slicing pizza, splitting sweets into equal shares etc etc

But as you've said about her confidence you wouldn't want to put her on the spot to answer, more like narrate what you're doing eg "We need two peppers for this, there are one, two, three peppers in the bag. So we take out one, two peppers and that leaves one to go back into the fridge." Praise her for helping cook and she'll take it as part of the process.

Ah, food, one of her favourite pastimes! It would certainly help with subtraction thanks for the suggestion.

Does she like board games? There are lots to play even without realising that she needs to count.

Ludo, we sometimes play "Let's beat Daddy" , Monopoly Party, Bus Stop, a game I came to hate but it is great for a simple number game.

With "Let's beat Daddy" I meant that DD and I club together with harder rules to beat DH. DD finds it hilarious. So we play the normal Monopoly instead of the dimple one.

She loves board games. We have lots of Orchard Toys games, but not the bus stop one. I hadn't thought of monopoly and the like. She'd definitely enjoy teaming up to beat daddy! Thanks for the ideas

Shut the Box is a great game for getting them to practise number bonds - it's simple but quite addictive.

I've got a set of plastic pirate treasure coins which are great for hands on counting. If you want something more formal then Numicon resources are great - our school uses it and ds3 has been sent home with a bag of stuff to play with. He loves it.

We have a card game called ooky spooky where you put down the same number or one higher or lower, which you could do with ordinary cards.

Lots of practical physical examples. Food, number of plates you need, cutlery.

Lego bricks, measuring things with rulers and kitchen scales, just talk about thinks using numbers and maths terms like more, less, bigger, small, add and take away.

I remember Yahtzee helped me with my maths a lot. Might be a year or two young though...worth a try?

Or how about suggesting she sets up a shop and you and dh buy things from her? (Get lots of pennies to keep things simple to start with, you can build up to adding in other coins later)

Great ideas, thanks all.

Hi French

Lots of great ideas there - I think what may help you in supporting your DD is to work out which she responds better to - visual examples of how to do it (so addition/ subtraction with objects) or whether she prefers traditional numeric problems.

My DD1 really struggled with maths (no specific learning difficulties) but clearly learned by doing/ seeing rather than by being presented with dry numbers on a white board with verbal instructions.

We started to talk through concepts with objects and it really helped.

Again - I don't know what your DD will respond to best - but try and explore what works for her and use that to your advantage.

HTH

Hi, a further thought for you - in many countries in Europe, kids will only start school at 6 or even 7, and thus have had no formal teaching in maths (or reading) yet, at all. And yet, some will not pick it up immediately as they start school, but still people won't be worried. So a 6 year old not being able to do -1 would be the norm rather than the exception.

Also I second the point about learning styles: Some children find it easy to 'memorise' 6-1=5, without any real understanding of what they are doing. This is not right or wrong. Memorising these things is extremely important no matter what, and is one of the building blocks for everything that follows. Understanding CAN grow at a later stage.
Other children will really struggle with the 'mindless' memorising, but will need to understand what they are doing. So have 6 sweeties, eat 1, how many left? Counting the 6 first, then the one that is eaten, then the 5 that are left. Whilst actually doing it. Putting 3 + 4 Lego blocks together. Comparing 5 coins and 6 coins - how many more? Then, at a more abstract level, realising that you can see it as going backwards on a number line, or matching the 5 and the 6 in pairs and counting those (the one) that is left over, or whatever way you choose to abstract it. Again, there is no right or wrong, and your child might find this understanding essential for progressing, and might not memorise the results for ages, but know exactly how to work it out. (BUT as long as they still have to 'work out' that 6-1=5 rather than just 'knowing', from memory, they will really struggle to progress. However there is something to be said about first getting a solid understanding of the fundamentals.)

At your daughter's age I would suggest working to her strengths. If she can memorise reasonably easily but just can't grasp how to work it out, then focus on activities that help with and practise the memorising. If however she really struggles with memorising anything, but actually 'gets it' when you're using fingers and sweeties and the such, then focus on that for a bit. By working to her strengths you will be doing much for her confidence, and the understanding (if she can memorise) can grow later; or the memorising (such as 'knowing your number bonds') will come in time if you keep on doing stuff with her where she is working them out in different ways.

BUT I'm just an interested lay person! So take with a grain of salt ;)

I was going to write something similar to Meita. I think that children need quite a lot of experience of the world before they are ready for abstractions. This is no less true of children with learning difficulties.

My daughter is 7.5 and coincidentally, in the last few weeks this one-more and one-less notion has just suddenly grabbed her imagination for the first time. It seemed an alien concept to her before. Now, repeatedly throughout the day she wants to know how old her teenaged sister was last year, then how old she will be next year, then the year after that. She sings "Nine Green Bottles" and pauses to ask me what number is one less than six, so she can get the next verse right. She strings four paperclips together and wants to know what one more than four will be, before adding another paperclip to her chain. She asks for help to count the few remaining peas on her plate and discusses how the number dwindles as she eats them.

Somehow I think that no amount of practice would have hurried this moment along. She does need lots and lots of practice, but she didn't need it last year when she had no idea what was going on with counting up and down. She needs it now, because this is when it makes sense to her and when she actually wants to do it.

This idea was borne out when several schools in poor areas of New York removed maths from the primary curriculum entirely in the 1930s.

www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201003/when-less-is-more-the-case-teaching-less-math-in-school

Games with smarties as counters (if you get the mini ones even better) work well. You can do things like "how many more green ones are them than pink?" "How many blue ones do you need to eat to have the same number as purple?" and things like that.

We loved playing with smarties in Year 1. DD got a maths workbook each term to do at home and more than one of the tasks involved playing with smarties...

I'll give you my standard info for these sort of queries:

QUOTE:

Practical things are best for grasping number concepts - bricks, Lego, beads, counters, money, shapes, weights, measuring, cooking.

Do adding, taking away, multiplication (repeated addition), division (sharing), using REAL OBJECTS as just 'numbers' can be too abstract for some children.

Number Bonds of Ten forms the basis of much maths work, so try to learn them. Using Lego or something similar, use a LOT of bricks (of just TWO colours, if you have enough) lay them out so the pattern can be seen of one colour INCREASING while the other colour DECREASES. Lay them down, or build up like steps.

So:

ten of one colour none of other
nine of one colour one of other
eight of one colour two of other
seven of one colour three of other

etc, etc

then of course, the sides are equal at 5 and 5; after which the colours 'swap over' as to increasing/decreasing.

To learn TABLES, do them in groups that have a relationship, thus:

x2, x4, x8

x3, x6, x12

5 and 10 are easy

7 and 9 are rather harder.

Starting with TWO times TABLE, I always say: "Imagine the class is lining up in pairs; each child will have a partner, if there is an EVEN number in the class. If one child is left without a partner, then the number is ODD, because an odd one is left out."

Use Lego bricks again, lay them out in a column of 2 wide to learn 2x table. Go half way down the column, and move half the bricks up, so that now the column is 4 bricks wide. That gives the start of 4x table.

Then do similar things with 3x and 6x.

With 5x, try and count in 'fives', and notice the relationship with 'ten' - they will alternate, ending in 5 then 10.

It is important to try and UNDERSTAND the relationships between numbers, and not just learn them 'by rote'.

I am sorry it seems complicated trying to explain these concepts, but using Lego or counters should make understanding easier.

An inexpensive solar powered calculator (no battery to run out!) can help learn tables by 'repeated addition'. So: enter 2+2 and press = to give 4. KEEP PRESSING = and it should add on 2 each time, giving 2 times table.

There are good web sites, which can be fun to use :

www.ictgames.com/

www.resources.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/maths/index.html

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