How worried should I be that DS (Yr 2) is struggling with maths?

[Buda]

The teacher has asked if he can do extra maths at home and I have said yes. However we really struggled to get him to do his maths homework from last week - he says he hates maths and it is his worst subject.

Should I be worried or not yet? My own feeling is that he will get it - is an August birthday so I tend to make allowances. DH is a bit concerned though - he has a maths degree!

Just wondering really if by struggling now in Yr 2 he will really struggle in Yr 3.

Maybe try to do extra maths without him realising it's extra maths. Like maths type activites in the garden (counting out rows of bulbs and working out how many he needs if they need to be 10cm apart) or by getting him to keep a pocket money allowance book for example so he gets used to thinking logically every day but without thinking "oh no - not maths again".

Has his teacher told you what level he's working at and if it's maths generally or just a few different bits, like subtraction?

I would really recommend maths whizz which is helping my son (yr2) a lot.

Maths whizz is an online maths tutor program for kids aged 4 to 13 (I think) for £27.50 a month. Anyway, check out their website and decide for yourself - www.whizz.com

Thanks luciemule. I think he is just struggling generally - too lazy to work it all out have the time. He had too pages of his homework left from last night and I sat down with him and we got through it. He hates using a number line (and to be honest I don't like them either) but he did get there in the end and worked stuff out. Prefers to guess usually though!

Creole - have just spent the last half hour on here looking up old threads for suggestions and have bookmarked it! I think we will try it for a couple of months and see how we go.

Hi Buda sounds just like my ds2
He is just 7, and at the moment academically just not interested. trying to get him to write a couple of thank you cards for presents this week was like climbing Mount Everest.
Maths is also his biggest problem, but he has dyscalculia.
Don't worry about it too much at the moment, even if there is a problem, they won't do anything about it until he's a least 7. And as you say he is very very young in the year.
Encourage him to try the maths websites..
bbc have some really good ones..
here
this is a good times table one
Don't try and push him too much though, I have discovered it makes home life very miserable and they won't do it until they're ready
HTH's

I wouldn't worry too much; he's only little. My ds was the same and going up to junior school made a big difference to his attitude. He's still in bottom sets for maths, but he seems to see the point of doing it iyswim, so I have good hope for the future.

I wouldn't worry too much, ds was quite bad at maths at that age, struggled with it, he's now at Upper School and has worked really hard and he's now in the top stream for maths. As he's got older (he's 14) he's learnt to knuckle down but, it took a few years.

Thanks ingles2 - had forgotten about BBC websites - have book marked.

I know what you are saying cory but unfortunately he does up into Yr 3 next year and I worry that if he hasn't mastered the basics from Yr 2 he will really struggle with the new stuff.

But we have the summer to sort it out.

Gentle encouragement is the way to go, I feel but I wouldn't get too hung up on it. I found with ds that he just seemed to click with maths when he went up to Middle (which is at 9 here).

I agree with what Issy says about children of this age struggling with the concepts because they get distracted by the calculations. Being able to do number bonds and times tables automatically is the key to making maths seem much, much easier. I have tutored GCSE students who didn't know their times tables, were horrified when I made them learn them to the stage where answers to random multiplication facts were completely automatic - and were then delighted when suddenly equivalent fractions, etc. made perfect sense! Five minutes of mental maths a day (you could take it in turns - let him have a calculator so he can test you as well, checking the answer to the question he has asked you on the calculator) - or playing some of the maths games for five minutes a day will help greatly. You might find something to interest him here:

www.primarygames.com/math.htm
ot
or www.rainforestmaths.com/

but there are masses of maths games on the internet so I am sure you'll find some games that he'll really enjoy!

Visual aids really help as well and as flaming toaster said number bonds and x tables are the key...
So start with number bonds to 5
ie 2+3 = 5 3+2 =5
Use number squares, lines, buttons, lego, cards doesn't matter what just something to build up their confidence if he is struggling to keep the numbers in his head.

I wouldn't worry about it too much - but don't ignore it. My dd struggled badly with maths and I wish I had started doing something about it a bit earlier.It was the beginning of year 4 before I realized.

I would do lots of stuff at home that isn't sitting down to maths. "Could you set the table please - there's 6 of us tonight, so how many knives and forks do we need altogether?" "Let's count the steps until we get to school" "Ohh look, there's 4 biscuits left - how many each?" And so on.

Also (I am indebted to my brother for this) most children suddenly get more interested in maths when it involves money! My dd earned lots of pennies doing maths practice!

Thanks everyone.

Issy - that is exactly how I am feeling - that if he doesn't get the basics now how will he have the ability/confidence to move on.

I think I was a bit confused about it all yesterday but lots of suggestions here for ways of making it easy and fun and more importantly I will keep it to 10 mins or so a day.

Dd struggled with maths and it just seems to have clicked with her in the past few weeks. BUT - we had to make atleast a half an hour a day to go over the basics again and again. That's the only thing that helped and it really was worth it.

Go back to the basic adding and taking away with numbers up to ten, when he can do that without having to think about it - go up to 20. Times tables are the same just keep repeating them again and again. We did one a day at breakfast I would say let's do the 4 times tables and I'd do it with her and then let her do the first 5 and so on. Before bed go through it again.

I know it's controversial generally, but I really recommend Kumon for children who are struggling with arithmetic. It's absolutely true that difficulty in basics hinders them from getting on with more complex stuff. It is dead boring, and expensive, but they learn number facts in 10 minutes a day. It's transformed DS1's confidence; I wish I had done it before Y4 (he is Y5 now) because it's made such a difference to his belief in himself.

However, you do have to commit to it and it is a struggle at times. The commitment though is what makes it work. I know you're in Hungary.

There are lots of really good suggestions for websites on here, and I second that regular, short practice is the answer, whichever resources you use.

Thanks - i wondered about Kumon - not sure if available here - certainly haven't heard anyone mention it.

I will try a few weeks of on-line games and things and see how we go.

Kumon didn't suit my dd - she found it very stressful and intense - and so did we (although it isn't supposed to be) We hated the relentlessness of it - didn't suit our lives at all!

Kumon certainly is relentless, and DS1 goes through good Kumon phases and bad Kumon phases - right now he's in a good phase and is keen to beat his times and get on quickly. Sometimes, for a couple of weeks, he's really down on it and then it is hard to keep going. And I know someone who's just stopped because it was too miserable.

I looked at the Power of 2 link that Issy posted and that seems a more low-key (and cheaper!) version of the same thing.

For my dd what helped was huge amounts of maths-as-life. Cooking, measuring threads for beads, how many packets of cat food do we need for the holiday........ Real life stuff.

I had a look too and may order it to do over the summer. It makes sense to me.

I remember as a child not only doing multiplication tables but also addition and subtraction. I think know those real basic things is key. The basics are the building blocks after all.

Yes it is innate, to a degree.
Ds (scarily innate) was able to "see" that - for instance - you can't have exactly identical triplets. (After hours of brain-cudgelling, including help from here, I was finally able to understand his explanation that, if the cell mass is doubling + doubling, there is no point when it can be divisible exactly by 3.)

The point of which anecdote is that doing maths with him has done wonders for my maths, & I would really recommend getting involved in working with any child, whether struggling or not. (Issy, that means you should mark the Kumon!)

have you tried www.mathswhizz.com

brilliant. dd2 (who is very good at maths) loves it as it stretches her - dd1 does it to improve - they set it to your child's level - and it is fun too with loads of incentives (games etc that you need to 'earn' points to get by doing lessons)