year 2 maths, good books? help plssssss!!!!!!!!

[turquoisenights]

hi all,
i feel my dd 6,5 is way behind the curriculum, she doesnt seem to me a maths type of person, she is not bad in literacy, etc.
also, she is not easy to deal with at home, not easy to study with neither.
one of the reasons that she is behind is i guess she is not concentrating well in class.
when i try to help her with maths homework i am near to pull all my hair out.
i told her teacher she is not able to do those homeworks but she said this is the normal curriculum homework, and i told her my dd is feeeling upset that she is not able to do them. she gets stressed when she sees she cant do, and the other children are able to do.
so in the meantime, i am thinking of finding a good maths book that i can study with her at home.
i am not a teacher so i dont know the methods to teach her.
she is not able to for example to add 30 and 24- she cant do that with hands, also she cant find if the total and one of the numbers are given she cant find the other number to add, and also i dont know how to teach her times table.
as i said i am not a teacher, i know it will be hard for me to study with her, but if there is a good book it can help us.
i cant afford private tutoring.
thanks in advance.

Try the Letts 'Messy maths books' - ds1 loves them.

Adding 30 and 24 sounds quite hard for this stage of Y2 - don't think ds1 could do that, and he is Y2.

thanks tortoiseshell

They don't really start times tables till nearer the end of year 2 and beginning of year 3

Don't think my ds could do that either and he is in year 2. And he certainly doens't know his tables. He's just started to do the 2x table, and isn't really sure of it, and he's "top table' for maths. Why do you think your dd is behind?

I have a young year 2 and he couldn't do that. After a parents evening the teacher said she was trying to get them very familar with number bonds up to 10 so that that next stage would come more easily. He's aware of times tables but they havn't done much with them. The school gets very good marks for SAT's each year.

Checked with ds1 what he could do. He knows his 2,5,10 timestables very well, the first half of the 3 times table, and I taught him the 11 times table in the car at the weekend (because it's easy!).

I asked him what 30+24 was and his first response was to guess wildly. Then we broke it down, and with support could do it (what's 30+20? What's 3+2? so 30+20? So 30+24?)

There are some very good tapes that 'teach' th times tables and simple maths concepts. I used to use them in the car on the way to and from school and some stuff just seemed to get absorbed!

My dd (6 last June) can do 30 + 24 but then maths just seems to have clicked with her recently (previously I was tearing my hair out lol). I must admit I taught her vertical addition in the summer which she seemed to understand very well, but generally breaks it up into chunks of numbers to add up.

If it is tricky to do any 'work' at home, can you do things that involve maths but are not 'work'? Laying the table is always a good one, give him too many / few forks / knives and he has to ask for the correct number back; if he is into footbal or rugby you can count the number of players on the field, group them by colour, position (if you know that much ) add up the teams, plus the subs etc to get to the number in the squad.

Shopping is also excellent - give him a 'budget' for a small shopping expedition and get him to add up what you have bought as you go along - as an added bonus maybe he could keep the change!

Times tables can be fun too - I remember sitting in a shoe shop for an hour waiting our turn and counting all the shoes on the sale racks. There were 7 shoes on each of four rows so dd got some 'practise' at her 4 times table!

If you can get maths into everyday life it will hopefully make it interesting and also show him that it is useful and indeed necessary, something which workbooks alone can never do.

Good luck

thank you so much carbonel, tortoiseshell, homobeads, seeker, blueblob for your so much valuable information you've given me on here.
i wasnt online for a couple of days so i couldnt post.
i will try to apply what i've learnt from you.
thanks a lot.