Parents who have children in Elementary school probably knows how difficult it is to stay on top of their children’s academic learning especially in Math. To provide help for their children, many parents are turning to Kumon education centers.
As you can imagine, these centers are not cheap. I believe the average going rate is around $100 per month. I guess this is a small price to pay when it comes to our kids’ education. However, I do believe there are alternatives besides paying $1200 annually per kid to these types of education centers on one subject.
My daughter, who is in third grade this year, took a math placement test and made the Gifted & Talented Program. As her parent, I am so proud of her for doing well in Math. I know she is not the brightest student but with some hard work, she received a solid foundation in Math during her first two years of Elementary school, which is now paying off all the hard work.
I believe the parents must get involved with our children’s learning in general. However, it becomes very critical for the parents to monitor and continually teach their children. Obviously, the earlier you start spending time with your children, the better their learning foundation will be.
As Math gets introduced in First Grade, some kids may struggle by missing some of the important foundational concepts. I witnessed many parents turning to Kumon to help their children do better in Math, which I know it helps the students a lot. However, I felt the cost was too steep for one subject nor could we afford to spend that much for each of our kids. That’s when I decided to turn to another method, which is not really all that creative or complicated. This is what I did with my daughter starting in First Grade.
I had heard from a friend who found Kumon workbooks online to help their children. So, I searched and found out these Kumon workbooks are being sold at Amazon. I found “Simple Addition” and “Addition” for ages 5 and 6 respectively. I also found “Simple Subtraction” and “Subtraction” for ages 6 or 7. I quickly purchased these books and immediately started to go through the “Simple Addition” workbook every day.
The important factor here is that you, as the parent, must spend the time with your kid when solving problems in the workbooks. Having done this, I know this is not a simple task for parents. But I do want to encourage the parents to take at minimum 20 minutes per day to spend time to explain carefully the basic Math concepts.
Once my daughter understood the Addition and Subtraction concepts and can easily solve problems, I bought more workbooks, “Simple Multiplication” and “Multiplication” for age 7. I also bought multiplication flash cards for additional reinforcement. By beginning of Second grade, she was able to memorize all the multiplication factors up to 12×12. I also found workbooks such as word problem and fractions were very helpful. It helped my daughter as a daily reinforcement.
My daughter is doing well in Math as a third grader and I plan to continue to support her learning by daily getting involved with her in math as she continues to go through these types of workbooks. And someday, she will make the right decision about her college.
Note: Amazon is currently offering buy 3 Kumon workbooks and get 1 free
You hit the nail on the head. “go through it with your kids everyday”. Honestly, if more parents took the time to go through their kids homework more kids would excel in the basics. I applaud you for taking the initiative!
Thanks YFS! I agree with you that more parents need to spend time with their kids hw. It’s really difficult to do what is suppose to be simple. I think we as parents have become little too lazy including myself. This is the reason why I really have to force myself in helping my kids studies even at when they are young age.
Ditto to that. Parents need to be parents. That sounds simple but in this day and age it seems to be lacking. Kids require an investment of our time and energy to be successful and they deserve that.
It is so difficult to be a parent. Never knew how hard it is to raise a child. I think it is harder today compared to say 20-30 years ago. It requires too much of your time and energy. Is there anything that we can do to help alleviate this difficulty?
I will be working with my grandson in the near future…(he is only 2 1/2 right now) and will definitely research these books. Do they have them for younger children?
Yes, they do. I think it starts as early as age 2 or 3. There is My First Book Of Tracing for age 2 and My Book Of Number Games for age 3.
I’ve got an 18 month old and love teaching her as much as I can. It could get tricky when it come to the math stuff a little later on though and a structured and easy to follow approach sounds like a great way to go. My younger brother did kumon and is now breezing through university, definitely a good option I think.
I highly recommend looking into Kumon workbooks.
My son is in second grade and loves reading and writing, but struggles with math. This summer we found some free online math sites that he worked on. I sat with him and helped him if he got stuck. He was motivated because the program made it feel more like a game than work. I have tried the workbooks, and he will spend time doing them, but they are not as much fun for him. However, it is important to find what will work for your child, and it sounds like you did.
You’re right. There are some good online math help too. My daughter used them as well. She also liked online math problems more than the workbooks. Unfortunately, good online websites have fees associated with them. The free ones are not as good… If you know of any good free websites, please share with us. Thanks.
Math is probably one of the most important classes! Not for the arithmetic, but the logic, organization and problem solving skills. Math teaches us all those things and improves our judgment too. As a teacher, I see a lot of students who do not like math purely because they have difficulty.
It seems like learning math requires repetition and a lot of them. Daily practice really helps.
My dad used to always give me math problems every single day after school, I believe it really paid off
Great article!
Glad to hear your dad helped you learn math. Thanks for sharing!
From the perspective of a teacher for the past 24 years, grades 3-12, and as a teen financial educator, I couldn’t be more thrilled to hear this! The time you are spending making math a part of your relationship with her makes her experience at school REAL, not separate from life. You are an inspiration!
Thanks and I hope to continue into Middle school. Not sure how much I can help once she starts learning past Algebra. hehe…
I applaud your message of Parent’s spending time working with their children on basic skills. Statistics show that if a child is behind in the 3rd Grade they continue to struggle the rest of their time in school.
I believe that statistics. It is critical that students have good foundation early in their learning.
I constantly see high students hate math because they never learned the fundamentals properly. I think we need to put some incentives in place to encourage more pure math teachers to go into elementary. Right now, elementary teachers are hugely disproportioned towards humanities degrees. I think we should do way more to subsidize math-heavy professions instead of so many scholarships in fields that are already saturated.
You’re right. We cannot solely rely on the teachers because they cannot focus on every students in their class. It is imperative that you as parents review what your kids learn in school almost daily if not at minimum weekly.
My son is a kindergartner and we’ve been working on reading at home, going through Hooked on Phonics in addition to playing reading games online, working on site words, and doing the workbook pages sent home from school. His reading has improved substantially with the simple time we spend together working on it.
We’ve done natural number games with things in his world – counting and sorting Halloween candy, adding or subtracting Legos from a tower, etc. – but haven’t done any formal math at home yet.
Parents can make such a difference by participating in their kids’ education.
Great story. Another successful story when the parents get involved with their kids learning. Thanks for sharing!
The kind of education and family system I grew up in required us to be master of maths, arts and language all at the same time and in early school days. We didn’t have luxury of private tutors. My parents took every pain to teach us. I can’t do anything else other than wholeheartedly supporting you.
Kudos to your parents! It sounds like they really cared for you. I hope I could do the same to my kids. It’s amazingly difficult but I know it’s worth every second I spend time with my kids.