Anyone have a negative outcome with jr kumon/kumon?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't even like dittos in the classroom. Dittos and workbooks were used to train the masses for factory work. It keeps the children quiet and busy. I want a real 21st century education for DC with a lot of hands on activities, discussion, cooperative learning and higher level thinking.

I am so sorry that you bought into this kind of hype. Please do not complain when your child does not learn.

cooperative learning = 1 kid does all the work while the others goof off.

Lol, that is often true!

Anyway, you can have better 'cooperative learning' when all the kids have some basic skills. There are some things that simply need to be practice. You have to build muscle memory to write letters and numbers quickly and accurately.

[Anonymous]

Cooperative learning is oxymoron. The kid has to be able to do the work independently before he can collaborate on something. It only sounds good at first.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Whatever happened to Sesame Street! Forget Kumon...get your kid swim lessons instead.

My kiddies both. We join the community pool every summer. DD isn't a great swimmer yet, I'll admit. But, she's learning. Regardless, she spends a ton of time outdoors in the summer with her two older siblings.

There still happens to be 10 mins a day to practice writing letters/numbers. It's really not a big deal.

OP here. Our son also does swim lessons and soccer. We ride bikes, fly kites, run around, play with trains, cars, trucks, etc. We go to birthday parties, zoos, museums. We will plant a garden in backyard. There are a lot of hours in a week.

Our kids don't like to watch Sesame Place but they like Leap Frog.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Not the PP, but I wondered the same thing. Not trying to flame here, but worksheets aren't developmentally appropriate, and many kids aren't developmentally ready to learn from worksheets alone as they are abstract. Kids need concrete objects to learn from first.

Parents who push their kids at 4 are the same ones who complain when their child isn't being challenged enough in K. There shouldn't be a rush to push kids to be able to sit and do seat work and worksheets. They will have some worksheets in K and then have from at least 1st-12th grade for that. You can reinforce some concepts at home with actual objects, but there's no need to push it. Playdough, stringing beads, moon sand, tearing/cutting paper, coloring, etc are all great for developing fine motor skills. If your worried about pencil grip you can reinforce it while coloring and also when she/he is writing at home. If there are true concerns about delays for K, that's one thing but most kids should be fine especially if they've attended preschool.

Signed, a Pre-K/K teacher (with a Bachelors degree in Early Childhood and a Masters degree in Special Education)

If you really are a teacher, that means that you have worked with tons of different kids. So, you should understand that all kids are different. Some kids will find worksheets and writing practice tedious at age 4, but some kids will do fine with it.

There is no need to make across the board generalizations. Yes, I agree that kids need to see concrete examples of how 4 Cheerios plus 4 Cheerios equals 8 Cheerios. But some 4 year olds will also enjoy practicing how to write the number 4.

Your post sounds as if you want to actively discourage parents from practicing writing/reading with their 4 year olds. That is silly. Yes, I would discourage any high pressure, intense tactics, but gently guiding your child has way more benefits that harmful results.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Whatever happened to Sesame Street! Forget Kumon...get your kid swim lessons instead.

Have you watched Sesame Street recently? It's terrible!

I used to watch it all the time as a kid, so was excited to share it with DD. But, I find that it's not all that great.

PBS has some other great shows now - SuperWhy, Martha Speaks, Sid the Science Kid. But, Sesame Street? It's uninspired and stale, IMHo.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Cooperative learning is oxymoron. The kid has to be able to do the work independently before he can collaborate on something. It only sounds good at first.

I may be an outlier, but I don't know any highly successful people who don't learn cooperatively. That is the essense of being a senior executive to me. You work with others to tackle problems that lack simple correct/incorrect answers. You influence the motivation and desires of others to achieve shared goals. Those involved in corporate management, law, government, and politics take this for granted. Even most science/tech types work within the context of a large organizations that require cooperative learning. How many CEOs are the technical expert in their firm?

So for me, sending my DC to a school that cares about things like cooperative learning is a way to make sure he doesn't end up stuck in a middle management cubicle.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Cooperative learning is oxymoron. The kid has to be able to do the work independently before he can collaborate on something. It only sounds good at first.

I may be an outlier, but I don't know any highly successful people who don't learn cooperatively. That is the essense of being a senior executive to me. You work with others to tackle problems that lack simple correct/incorrect answers. You influence the motivation and desires of others to achieve shared goals. Those involved in corporate management, law, government, and politics take this for granted. Even most science/tech types work within the context of a large organizations that require cooperative learning. How many CEOs are the technical expert in their firm?

So for me, sending my DC to a school that cares about things like cooperative learning is a way to make sure he doesn't end up stuck in a middle management cubicle.

What you are talking about is collaboration and team work, not cooperative learning. This is a good post from the blog out in left field. According to WSJ, the best way for a boss to increase the group's productivity is to teach the group member more productive skills.

Monday, October 29, 2012
Real-world group work
One of the justifications given by today's educators for making students spend so much of their days working in groups is that it will prepare them for today's cooperative workplace environments. As in so many other ways, today's educators assume that the relevant classroom dynamics mimic those of the real world.

Real-world workplace cooperation bears little ressemblance to what happens in classrooms. Today's prefered teacher-assigned, mixed-ability classroom groupings look nothing like groupings of professionals collaborating with related professionals. In most workplace collaborations, most of the work is divvied up and done separately by individuals. And often the groups are at least somewhat hierarchical, with professionally-trained leaders with significant influence over how cooperative and productive the group is.

Here are some findings reported in a recent Wall Street Journal article:

Bosses matter a lot, according to a study of a large technology firm whose operations, closely monitored by computer, provided ready measures of productivity.
Going from a boss in the bottom 10% of quality to one in the top 10% improved productivity among the supervised employees by as much as adding another worker to a nine-member team.
Going from a boss in the bottom 10% of quality to one in the top 10% improved productivity among the supervised employees by as much as adding another worker to a nine-member team. More surprising, the boss made his or her biggest contribution not by motivating workers but by teaching more productive skills. [Boldface mine.]
So much for motivational cheer leading--at least in the workplace. And, given that the closest thing classrooms have to bosses are teachers, there may be something suggestive here about how teachers can help students become more productive.

[Anonymous]

The race to nowhere...

[Anonymous]

OP, my preschooler at a play-based preschool progressed exactly the same level without any supplemental classes. It is a natural development. He can do simple math, count high, write letters and numbers, etc. There has been a huge spike in his learning from age 4.5 until this month when he turned 5.

I didn't supplement at all for my first child and he was pulled out for gifted. My kids are very creative and surprise the hell out of me with the way they approach and solve problems. Firstborn wasn't reading when he started K a year ago and by June he was at a second grade level.

I think this Kumon crap at 4 is sapping kids of real learning/natural brain development. Rote facts and memorization is not real intelligence.

Think outside the box.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, my preschooler at a play-based preschool progressed exactly the same level without any supplemental classes. It is a natural development. He can do simple math, count high, write letters and numbers, etc. There has been a huge spike in his learning from age 4.5 until this month when he turned 5.

I didn't supplement at all for my first child and he was pulled out for gifted. My kids are very creative and surprise the hell out of me with the way they approach and solve problems. Firstborn wasn't reading when he started K a year ago and by June he was at a second grade level.

I think this Kumon crap at 4 is sapping kids of real learning/natural brain development. Rote facts and memorization is not real intelligence.

Think outside the box.

I don't do any outside supplementation...but rote facts are required for math facts.

[Anonymous]

What is real intelligence (as opposed to fake)?

Let's hear from Ms Neuroscience?

[Anonymous]

The race to nowhere... or Podunk U for some.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I think this Kumon crap at 4 is sapping kids of real learning/natural brain development. Rote facts and memorization is not real intelligence.

Think outside the box.

Not the OP, but 'think outside the box'?? Lol

And could you point me to some studies on how Kumon workbooks sap kids of natural brain development? Or, are you just talking out of your a$$?

What do you consider to be 'real' intelligence?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I think this Kumon crap at 4 is sapping kids of real learning/natural brain development. Rote facts and memorization is not real intelligence.

Think outside the box.

Not the OP, but 'think outside the box'?? Lol

And could you point me to some studies on how Kumon workbooks sap kids of natural brain development? Or, are you just talking out of your a$$?

What do you consider to be 'real' intelligence?

Creating nice little factory workers that can follow direction. Our GT Director weeds out the Kumon-advantaged kids from the truly gifted. It's pretty clear some can only regurgitate and not extrapolate or think independently.

The advantages of early play-learning become clear by third-4th grade.

[Anonymous]

The title of this thread asks whether anyone had a negative outcome with Kumon. DC never went to a Kumon center, but we did use the numbers to 120 workbook in k; that worked ok, especially the connect the dots exercises.

The summer following first grade, I started DC on Kumon's addition book. DC really didn't like it...not sure if you would call that a negative outcome. I showed my educator sister in law both the Kumon workbooks and Singapore math workbooks; she much preferred the latter in that they really help build conceptual understanding, starting with use of manipulatives, then progressing to pictures, only then operations. My dc loves to use them, and enjoys/is dong well in math at school; much more engagement/ time commitment required on my part with Singapore.

While kumon workbooks are limited in scope to math fact drilling, it's all in; you buy the basic addition workbook, you practice basic addition math facts. With Singapore, in addition to the teacher's guide and textbook and workbook, we use workbooks for extra practice and for testing; the program includes some drills and we also use on-line drills. Singpore also provides ideas for around-the-house, real-life math activities for those of us challenged in the creative enrichment department. (Once we got started, it is not as complicated/heavy as it sounds; we take it bit by bit.)

So I wouldn't characterize our outcome with Kumon workbooks as negative; it's just that in the end, we found a richer approach to math supplementation more suitable for our dc and her learning style.