Please help me with my sons maths homework as i cant do it!!

[pinkheart]

ds1 has some maths home work , which im stuck on, it seems easy and i thought it would be fun but i cant get close to the answer his teacher has given! (he is in yr 6)

So, he has been given the numbers 75, 10, 88, 72 and has to use them to get to 648.
he can use and equations i can get to 708 but cannot get lower!!

(im quite ashamed as im now doing Mlevel study and cant do yr 6 maths!! )

thanks SweetGrapes, not 100% sure if they are allowed to use exponentiation

Some one once told me that the reason we all have to learn qudratic equations is so that when we grow up we can help our children with their homework .

Reading through this thread I can't believe no-one has pointed out the obvious - ITS HIS HOMEWORK.
And if he can't do it cos he hasn't written it down properly then that's his fault. If he gets told off for it, he'll pay more attention next time.

[tough love mother emoticon]

moom I was thinking the exact same thing... I sometimes get asked to help my sister (13) with their homework as mum can't do it. They both get annoyed with me as I won't give the answer, instead encouraging sister to work it out after we talk about what she learnt in class. It takes longer but usually works and sis is more confident that she can do things!

Yeah, sorry if I came across a bit harsh then, but I have a teacher friend who has always helped her daughter to the extent of practically doing her GCSE coursework. Now she is doing A levels in stuff her mother can't help her with, the wheels are really falling off and it is not a pleasant thing to watch.
Tis a slippery slope. Its okay to let your kid get stuff wrong and find their own level.

well, he had wrote the numbers down wrong, he was meant to write 7,5,10,8,8,7 and 2.

Mooms, i know it was his homework but he really struggles in maths so i try to help/guide him in figuring them out. i dont have to help him with any other subject as hes good at them. i just dont want him to end up like me, and struggle at maths all the way through school as no one explained it to me in an easy way. it wasnt till i was 22 and went back to college to redo my gcse maths that the i felt brave enough to ask the teacher for help as i was so crap at maths!! still am but better than i was, i dont panic and breakout in a cold sweat anymore.

Pinkheart I do get where you're coming from. Dd1 is on the whole pretty reasonable academically but absolutely hopeless at Maths. Her primary school saw the SATS results as the be all and end all. Apparently the Head wandered round the room during the SATS exam saying things like "look at number 5 again, do number 6 using the bus stop method" and even "for goodness sake girl the answer is 3!"
Dd1 got a level 5. No way was she a level 5. She was put in the top set at High school, floundered badly and lost all her confidence in Maths.She's got it back a little bit now she's gone down to set two, but still quite often asks me to explain things because she doesn't grasp them the first time round in class.
So I do agree that helping and guiding them is important Pinkheart. But at the end of the day they have to be able to do it themselves don't they?

mooms i know, but i got a letter home today telling me he has a spelling and reading age of a 15.3 yr old (how do they figure the .3) and he has only just turned 11. he is fantastic at english but maths he so struggles with. i just remember the feeling all so well..

Just to pick up on the point of 'helping' him, as a teacher if someone comes in with their hwk done correctly I will assume that they understand and move on. If there are things he can't do make sure his teacher either knows that you have done it for him (or half of mumsnet have!) or let him do as much as he can and take that in. At least then the teacher knows what (s)he is dealing with and can do her job accordingly.