Kumon for reception aged child

[Mumofgirls12341]

I’m just wondering if anyone sends their child to kumon? How did it help your child? Did they hate it? How long does it take before your see actual results? Did your child do both English and maths with them?

My DD is a summer born (August) baby who is in reception and I feel like she is really behind compared to her peers. I know I could teach her myself but I honestly don’t have the time to print out endless sheets and the workbooks I have only briefly touch each topic. We do learn through playing, baking etc but it doesn’t seem to be helping.

I would like to enrol her for the English and Maths but I don’t want her to feel overwhelmed by it.

Kumon isnt really popular on here but i started DS just before his 4th bday (so spring term of nursery year) and have found it amazing for him:

1. ds Has some level of SEN, the repetition and technique has just really helped him "click" with numbers. He went from knowing litetally nothing to beong very confident with numbers.

1. He's generally behind with a lot of things so feeling confident with numbers has really helped him at school.

1. DD is younger and quite advanced for her age, for her i got some carol voderman maths books which are actually better for teaching maths genrrally but DS couldn't access this without the framework from kumon

1. It gives me the accountability, sometimes DS can be "hard work" and the last thing i want to do is motivate him but if i know i have to explain to the teacher why no work has been done i get it done and DS actually really looks forward to doing it now

1. ds now learns better through baking etc as the message has "got through".

So in all, for us it has been amazing but I wont do this with DD as she naturally "gets" maths. Maybe try the carol voderman books first then try kumon if that's too much?

Kumon also made us realise that DS needed mainstream as we tried a specialist nursery with him and just thought he didn't understand numbers but actually realised he needed more, MS going great so far and teachers dont feel the methods clash. Methods can clash sometimes but at 5 it's defo complimenting the maths he does at school.

For context I generally believe Maths and English does not need to be taught from books sat at a desk with a parent standing over. There are other ways to do it that won't be as stressful for both parties (especially at that age).

For example I have a tonne of videos of us pretending to be lost so DS would tell us the road name by reading it out around 3 (he's now much older) or adding sticks together while foresting. It was all games within the context of him learning.

Now kumon is something we looked at and quickly assesses that the learning approach isn't ideal (it's similar to kids being taught standard algorithms later rather than the underlying principles).

We had a friend who did it religiously and was top in terms of the progress the kumon centre assesses.

Around the same age as your child, DS and his friends were playing a maths game with me. They were given a simple addition both answered. It was later reversed and the friend got the same question wrong and couldn't understand why the answer was the same (these are additions that are never more than 20).

When I noticed this I tested it a bit more and you quickly saw that kumon was teaching memorisation not maths.

Again to be clear some schooling does this later (multiplication tables, standard algorithms etc.) and maybe this repetition works for some kids who make the connections in their brain (while a lot are just memorising in kumon).

But I feel there are better principles to base teaching on that show better attainment over the long term.

Im guessing that your motivation for considering kumon maths is that you'd like your child to have a great foundation for maths from this age which will help them take on higher level maths better when older.

If this is the case I suggest that you at least take a look at the kind of maths kids will do even a little further up the years, these days. Maybe google 11+ maths papers, primary maths challenge, reasoning papers.. You will quickly see that a very good number and maths sense and dexterity is needed for them to succeed. No one won't be able solve a complex maths problems they've never seen, because they can't calculate numbers quickly.

Then you can decide if drilling arithmetic Kumon way will set your child up for higher level maths in the future.

They do +1 of numbers up to 9 for a while then move to +2, +3..... +10. Then they move on to -1, -2... -10. Then they move straight to column addition and subtraction. I felt that their method really isn't ideal to develop a good and flexible maths sense at that age. For example, a child with a good number sense would approach a simple problem like 29+19 as 30+20-2 just mentally. Their mind might visualise those numbers on number lines, or as number blocks or whatever other creative way. But with Kumon, you're given that question as column method and asked to add up two 9s first and carry up 10... Getting trained so early and getting better at "calculating" things a little mindlessly in my opinion might (or might not) make a child look better at maths in reception or Y1. But if your aim is higher level maths than that, there are more 'right' ways to get there.

If you're after just some daily arithmetic practice but can't really do it in a practical and fun way (maybe you don't have time or you don't feel that you have the knowledge to do it right), you could consider buying maths workbooks from Amazon from different publishers - expose your child to different ways of looking at numbers and maths concepts.