Kumon startegy

[Robindrama]

My y4 DD started kumon in sept. Both English and Maths, both from level 2a ( basic skills - eg Maths addition one digit numbers). The tutor suggested that she needs to reinforce those basic skills to be fluent later on. Fine, no problems with that.
However as time goes by I noticed that she is now given half of a set per day ( standard is 10 per day, she is given 5) in both subjects. In Maths she repeats sets.
I am getting a bit upset now, as I am paying so much for it and there is no indication she needs to slow down: generally 100% correct, sometimes, 1-2 mistakes per set, great timing.
I am happy with my child's attitude and I can see the positive results but on the other hand I seem to be ripped off. I spoke with the tutor and I can understand his approach but I am not sure how honest he is...
Can you please share your experience? Do your kids follow the tables as in the programme?

It may well be a simple question and my DS might be as thick as pig shit for this stage of Year 5 but however he does it, I'm pleased that he can now do it with confidence.

Kumon teaches them various ways to address each type of problem in order that they have different techniques they can utilise. Some of them I have thought are ridiculous methods but they give him another way of approaching each type of problem.

Anyway as I said I am not here to promote Kumon. If you don't like it then don't use it. Very simple. For £6 a session it work for us and the mere fact that you have to do it day in day out has been helpful for him in establishing a routine.

But back to the OP's question I think you need to speak to the teacher and establish whether she is making too many errors to move on or whether she is taking too long.

I meant "I have a simple question ", and it was genuine question.
I wondered if he can calculate easily in his head, why the need for converting.

Fuck knows. He's clearly a 9 year old idiot for not being able to do 0.368 x 7/29 in his head more quickly and accurately than he can do it on paper and I shall send him to school with a dunce's hat on tomorrow.

I don't understand. You said he was mental maths whizz who can calculate in a flash. I just thought that he can do it, so didn't get why needing conversion. Didn't mean to upset you.

I genuinely wonder. If he can convert to decimal or fraction, that means he can do decimal x decimal or fraction x fraction calculation, either in his head or on paper. But the fact he doesn't simply do 0.368 x 7 / 29 clearly shows problem with Kumon way of teaching/repetition?

"I'm not sure how you can say a workbook is better than a Kumon workbook" it's quite easy really

I'm not upset I just think you're being contentious for the sake of it. I said DS2 was struggling with Year 5 maths and yes I said he is now a "mental maths whizz" who can calculate more quickly than me or DH. Its clearly a relative thing. He is quicker than we are (which is perhaps not saying much). He is 9. He's not a Mensa candidate.

He is required to convert the decimal to a fraction. Those are the instructions.

FGS its a personal choice. You might think its rubbish. I think its helping him and building his confidence in his abilities for a fairly low cost. It's very obvious that you think its crap so don't use it.

Can you see what I am trying to say?

"He is required to convert the decimal to a fraction. Those are the instructions."

This is what Kumon do to you. You can't do something different.
I am truly amazed what your ds can do. Genuinely. He can be even better if he can find the way to do it different way.

You can't do something different in this booklet, but the next booklet will probably have a different method of doing the same sum. It teaches various different methods of achieving the same thing.

I have various criticisms of Kumon and I do think the amount of teaching time is poor (although I guess it depends on how busy your kumon centre is - ours is rammed) but it really is helping him consolidate the basics.

With the english I accept your point entirely. In the earlier stages it expects a child to extract the exact sentence from the comprehension text and repeat it whereas DS will put it into his own words. At school it would be marked as correct but in Kumon it isn't (although I personally still mark it as correct).

Doing 0.368 x 7 / 29 in your head is not the basics!

sirfred, I think it's an extension of basic skills.
I do agree, that Kumon may has positive effect on some children. Not being afraid of big numbers is one of them.

atticusclaw2, I did have negative thought about Kumon, but I never intended to ridicule your ds' achievement. I can clearly see the great effect Kumon had on your ds. I was wrong to say Kumon is a waste of money. I am truly sorry.

Don't worry, I was perhaps a little tetchy

I truly do see the negatives from Kumon too. More teaching time is needed (because otherwise its left to the parents who can't always remember how to do it themselves ), additional problem solving questions would be useful since there are not enough IMO and it must also be a bit boring doing 40-50ish of the same type of sum in each booklet. But for the sake of 15 minutes a day he can be bored because the results are evident. Plus he struggles to focus and so the mere act of sitting down and having to complete the booklet within that time is helping him in general to get used to focusing on a task.

Running a Kumon franchise is definitely money for old rope though. Ours has about 40 children. They don't even do the marking, the parents have to do that.

I have no experience with Kumon, so can't say anything about it.
However, I think there is a gap in England education, which is there are not enough practice planned. Children are different massively, some can quickly understand the things taught then remember it. But most children would need some practice.Some need a bit more, some less. Buy doing the practice, teacher can easily identify who hasn't grasp the idea, who has. But I think in the current school system, children just move along.For bright and average above children, this may be fine. But for some children who is behind, they won't be able to catch up without extra practice.
To be honest, I was shocked to find some of our colleague can't do average, percentage etc and young colleague don't check their data.

You have a point autumnsky, but there are plenty of additional resources available for free or much less than kumon would cost.

£12 a week for a bunch of worksheets you have to mark yourself and very little if any teaching is the definition of a rip off. Especially if there are huge gaps that it doesn't cover.

Its all relative. Its "a rip off" if you can't afford it and your child doesn't benefit. If £6 a session is neither here nor there to you and it helps your child then it is by no means a rip off.

And I don't think anyone said there is "no teaching". The teaching is one on one since every child is working on different things. The amount of one on one teaching time will be dependent on whether the child is managing the work easily or whether they need some assistance and will also depend on the number of children in the centre at any particular time.

I may be a crap parent but there is no way on earth that my DS would have sat down every single day of the year and done 15 minutes of worksheets printed off the internet that I asked him to do. Plus I thin I'd quickly run out of free worksheets. For us its worth the £6. Others will chose to spend their money on different things.

I stuck with Kumon for some time with my children but ultimately decided it was a major waste of money. They found it dreadfully boring, not least because it took such a long time to get to the next stage, and I felt that the reality was that progress was so slow not because the child needs it but because it keeps money flowing in to the Kumon centre. Certainly the fact that I was paying for it didn't make them any more willing to sit down and do it! I think you're better off using the online stuff.

Just because you can afford it doesn't mean it's wise to burn bank notes

Mrz, I am not a fan of Kumon. But I came to understand that it's actually working great for atticusclaw2' ds. It's their choice and we should respect that. She isn't selling it to others.

Do you have to do it daily? Howabout 3 times a week then do more of "problem solving" maths. Mental maths is good but at year 5 it might not be enough. To be honest from my point of view, do anything else more from school homework is better than not doing anything. The thing is, from the sound of it, its only mental maths then after year 4 it wont be enough.

Thank you for your comments so far. I would like to hear from parents whose children experienced kumon. Have your kids repeated sets? Set is a 10 double pages of calculations ( as per tables). Have they sometimes received half of them?

My children certainly repeated sets. It's one of the reasons they became totally demotivated.

My DS never gets ten double pages.

Each day he gets about 10 sides (5 pages). 20 sides would take forever and be incredibly boring.