Year 2 maths - what can I do to help?

[Wellhellojonsnow]

I have just had parents evening and my summer born DD is below expected in maths (yr 2). Does anyone have suggestions on websites, books etc that I can use to help?

I’ve heard Singapore maths is good but have no idea about resources to use... 🤔

When my Dd was in year 2 her teacher recommended:
DoodleMaths
Squeebles
Buying a bag of Numicon
Doing number bonds to 10 with counters, pegs, pencils... whatever.

I got her a tutor in y3 and she finally met (scraped) expectations /expected level for the first time at the end of that year.

Painful stuff. Good luck OP

What does your child actually struggle with?
Whatever you do,make sure they have a good basic knowledge..numbers,place value,number bonds,adding,taking away etc.

Well, are you thinking of buying that book ? I wonder how it differs from other exercise books?

Do you have a plan ?

Iceni - for counting in twos, I've been getting DS to guess the next house number on the way home from school. Obviously this won't work in some streets - but he seems to enjoy it. He seems to have got the hang of counting in tens so not so worried about that at the moment. With DS, I find that he's extremely resistant to anything that seems like homework. So books don't work unless I can figure out a way to work the exercises into something innocuous. Guessing house numbers seems to work so far.

I kind of need the maths equivalent of those frozen pureed cubes of veg you can buy to "hide" veg in meals.

What do they struggle with? Do you have a abacus or not? We’ve been using some simple age appropriate workbooks from the local bookstore which helps. Also I make up oral sums on the spot for her to answer.
Little and often is best for small children I’ve found. If I’m cooking with her helping me I subtly weave some simple math skills into it. We use mathematical phrases and words.

I’ve got a clock to use as well during the math lessons. It’s also a good way to teach her about numbers and time.

My DD has number squares, work books etc and we do things in car, walking etc plus 15 minutes a day but she still doesn't understand things like 'If I have 4 grapes and you have 3, how many more do I have?' with the grapes in front of us. She will say four.

She can't do addition such as 11 + 4 without fingers and lots of time. Subtraction is out. She does know number bonds for 10 and 20, although not up to, and I think times tables 10 and 2 and half of 5 as that is by rote.

I just hope it hasn't clicked yet and it will soon?

Variation is your friend here! I would be using maths little and often throughout the day. By all means use a workbook as part of your routine but don’t be a slave to it. You can practice number bonds by getting (say) nine toys and hiding three behind your back and asking her to guess how many you’re hiding. Constantly ask her little word problems (subtly! So she doesn’t feel she’s being tested). Use games or make pieces of artwork that involve patterns. If she’s not too grown up for it watch CBeebies Numberblocks which is fantastic. Don’t be afraid to go over Year One work - she needs to be completely fluent with the basics in order to move on.
It’s also worth working with the school. Find out what’s on their curriculum this year and exactly where she’s struggling (I’d do an email rather than ask at the gates so the teacher has time to think about it).

IceniSky , number square is good, but it's not really a thing that you can see how number works visually.

If you use physical object, she can actually see what's happening.
Get 12 candies. take away 3. That makes 9. Abacus is handy for doing this too.
For times table, Lego pieces are perfect. lego with 2 dots x 3 = 6, etc, etc.

She can't do addition such as 11 + 4 without fingers and lots of time. Subtraction is out. She does know number bonds for 10 and 20, although not up to, and I think times tables 10 and 2 and half of 5 as that is by rote.

DS and DD2 were super slow picking up number bonds and time tables. Percy Parker song helped as did numericon with adding and subtracting - main thing that finally got them there was practise.

They'd do 20 minutes of maths every day, often more at Christams and Summer holidays, and at some point both of them stopped working it out and started just knowing - DS is now very fast.

DD2 was really late with some time tables - 3 * 8 was a particularly bad one for her but as it's needed with fractions and her current topic of long mulicplication on mathsfactor - she knows it. It's taken way longer than I thought it ever would and needed a lot more work to fix it in her memory than most children around her needed.

I'd check she understands place value as DD1 hadn't so subtraction beyond 20 she couldn't do.

Older DC are using IXL having completed mathsfactor - which has no teaching so they are still doing practise every day .

Well, that book you linked to has a 9 day online trial. I've started that today.

I also bought some numicon and DD was surprised that 100 meant 100 holes and each 10 plate has 10 holes. I really think she doesn't understand numbers at all. She worked it out herself and was excited to show me.

I'm just surprised she was marked on target at her end of year 1 report but clearly isn't meeting year 1 requirements yet.

My DTs found the Place Value House videos on YouTube quite helpful for really getting to grips with understanding numbers.

They also love this Place Value Set and enjoy quizzing each other with it. This alongside Numicon and Snap Cubes has been a brilliant set of resources and really helped my DTs along. I will say that if getting the snap cubes it’s good to get 2 sets because at some point you’re going to have to go past 100, and add larger numbers like say 50 + 30 + 30 and having more than 100 cubes to work with has been helpful. I found my DTs struggle with things that I had no idea they struggled with once we started going to bigger numbers. For instance if we were counting in 10s they would get to 100 and then go to 101 instead of 110. Or if I asked them to add 1 onto 100 they would answer 200.

We did some workbooks over the summer with them and have then really pushed it with the resources and videos since the new term and it’s incredible how far they’ve come in 8 weeks

Wellhell I have been spending 10 - 15s a day 5 times a week doing short bursts plus questions in the car, how are you going ?

Been working through 123maths and DD finds questions such as 'what number is in between 5 - 6' difficult, along with subtraction and anything where you have to write the sum when given the answer is completely beyond her. I've been following the advise on here. I'm still really worried she simply just does not get it.

We have a term plan from the teacher too to help. We are putting the time, but she says the other kids know the answers while she is still thinking. It feels like these children fly through with little help and DD is struggling with lots of help. Although I don't know this. I have no idea what an average child should know by now.

I'm guessing I just chip away until the holidays and then see what her report says? If there are big issues they would say ?

Tami Thanks! Ordered the snap cubes and they arrived today - looking forward to playing with them with DS.

We've been trying counting forward and backward from random points (e.g. start at 57 count up) and the same in tens - I notice that he often skips some. He seems to have got the idea of odd and even though.