need math help for 6 year old

I’d let her add on her fingers for now if there are no pictures. Your daughter isn’t ready to understand math as an abstraction - she still needs it to be concrete. That’s fine and if she can keep feeling confident, she’ll move on to not needing her fingers.

While you’re driving around in the car sometime, you could try this. If you see two police cars, casually ask her if there were one more police car, how many would there be? That kind of situation could help her to move on to thinking of math in an abstract way.

As to counting money, that’s a much harder task than it seems and most kindergarten children can’t do it. That’s a task more commonly associated with 1st or even 2nd grade. Young children can’t understand why things that look so much the same have different values. A nicket and a dime don’t look that different to a child and the nickel is actually bigger than the dime, so why is it worth less? Young children don’t get that.

But they will and so will your daughter in time.

**Please** don’t have her count on her fingers — it’s a dead end. You shortly run out of fingers, and it’s really messy trying to remember which finger is pointing and which is being pointed to. Finger-counting loses accuracy above 5 because of the pointing problem and is a real mess over 10 because of the running out problem. Unfortunately, in kindergarten you spend a lot of time under 5 and in many Grade 1 programs you don’t go over 10 (a real fault of the program, in my opinion) so the kid has two years of the most impressionable part of her life using finger-counting. Then when it slows her down in Grade 2 we just complain that the teacher is too demanding, and when her system collapses in Grade 3 or 4, well, she’s just one more of the millions of kids in this country with math anxiety and math disability.

Yes, she *should* be using concrete objects to count — it’s not only perfectly normal, it’s trecommended by all the research (just do a web search on math teaching.)

On paperwork, teach her to draw dots — five dots and three dots add up to eight dots, every time. A desk abacus is a wonderful tool, and the beads on the abacus translate easily to dots on the paper. Then eitght dotd with three crossed out leaves five, and so on. *Later* on, four rows of six dots each makes twenty-four, and you have multiplication.

Your kindergarten seems to be demanding an awful lot. Many Grade 1 programs pass on kids who can barely add. I keep reading on this website about kindergarten and Grade 1 programs that demand skills levels which are more standard for Grade 2 and which many of the fourth-graders in our local (lousy) districts haven’t mastered. I would perhaps believe that there are simply wonderful systems out there that are educating kids far above the norm — but where are these wonderfuil kids on the other end? If the standard for normal students is two years ahead of average in kindergarten, where are the systems with all their average students finishing Grade 12 with two years of college already completed? I’m not seeing them , so I don’t believe this kindergarten push is working *at all*.

Use as a mantra the old proverb: MORE HASTE, LESS SPEED

Many European countries — France, Germany, Sweden, etc. — ARE educating kids two years ahead of the American average. The *standard* program has all college-bound students doing calculus in Grade 11 (in the US, standard is calculs in first-year college, maybe, if you’re one of the lucky 20% who didn’t die off in Grade 3; very advanced students do it as AP in Grade 12, although half of them have to take it over anyway).

And what do these countries do to go so fast? Well, they start slowly and do it right. (What a weird concept!!) Sweden and Finland don’t even start Grade 1 until age 7. France and Germany start at age 6, and they do NOT try to push the academic work down to the five-year-olds in kindergarten. Their first four years of standards look prety similar to American. BUT they simply learn four or five basic concepts a year, make sure those concepts are mastered, and go on to new work — unlike American schools, which try to cover twenty or thirty concepts and stuff the whole math curriculum into one year, and do nothing well or completely. By Grade 7, European kids have actuallly learned what they’ve been taught and they go on to do algebra in Grades 7 and 8. American students have to spend junior high going over the same twentty or thirty topics two more times and hoping they’ll catch on this time.

Repeat, more haste, less speed.
Try (it’s a hard process, but a noble effort) working with your teachers and school district about this issue.

I too am very concernedas to the demands being placed on your child. These are not developmentally appropriate tasks for
the typical kindergarten student. Are all students in her class
expected to be coounting money and adding/subtacting without
manipulatives in kindergaten? If so I really question the curriculum. Where are you located? Is this a public or private
school? What is the age cut off for entering kindergarten? Are
most kids already 6 going in or do you have kids who are not even five starting out? What are the reading expectations for these
kids? Something here does not add up. If these are just your
personal expectations, please relax.

Hello,
My wife and I teach in Tifton Ga. at the primary level. I am teaching special ed. kindergarten and have also taught regular ed. second grade. As I read the comments people have made to your question, the more concerned I got. There are a few things you should know.
1. Students all learn at their own pace. It is true that there are stages in grouth which determine what can be learned. If a child is still learning in the concrete (which MOST six year olds are) then there is no way for her to understand in the abstract. This is why most lessons in the k-1 use manuplitives. Fingers are a great manuplitives. They will always be there at their disposal! I know a lot of grown ups that still use their fingers. What is the big deal?

2. Having taught second grade I can assure you that learning to count money is for this age or above student. Usualy in kindergarten students learn what the coins and paper money look like. The student in this grade may also learn what value each coin and paper money is. First grade is an extention of kindergarten (since kindergarten is not required).

3. One of the other responders to your question talked about how in other countries students are more advanced. What you have to take into account is that in many countries students are given a test before they may attend the schools. Because of this the average student is screened out of the school. That only leaves the top % who attend the schools. So of cource they will learn faster. This is also why other countries tend to do better on test comparisons. Ask yourself this question. If our school system does a poor job of teaching then why do other countries send their students to the U.S.A.?

4. One way you might want to start teaching your child about money is to use everyday experiences. For an example: when you go to the store let your child have some change. She will have to decide what she can get for that amount of money. Please do not baby her and try and think everything out for your child. Let her go up to the counter and pay for what she wants. Don’t use the same amount of change every time. She will learn quick that two quarters will buy her a candy bar!!

Chad and Beth:

Please go back and really read my post.

Yes, I do know lots of adults who use their fingers. I know lots of adults who are ashamed and embarrassecd about their inability to do math, who were dead-ended out of college educations and professional jobs because of their lack of math skills, who waste huge amounts of money because they can’t do their business accounting for themselves and lose on both ends, both paying other people to do the work and not doing business efficiently — sure, if this is the future you want for your kids, hey, go ahead and use a dead-end method that is almost guaranteed to stall them at elementary math level for life.

Finger-counting IS a problem, because it is dreadfully inaccurate as well as very slow. It is inaccurate because after five fingers you get mixed who is the pointer and who is the pointee, and after ten you run out of fingers. It’s very slow both because with all this inaccuracy you are always going back and recounting, and because you have no marker for numbers over ten so you get confused and go over even more times. OK if you plan to stall out at the end of Grade 1, not OK if you want a society with real number skills.

YES, use manipulatives, but use something that doesn’t have these flaws, like a real abacus and abacus dots on your paper. The “always wuith you” argument is silly — you mean you can’t get a paper and pencil or a stick to mark in the dirt to make dots? And don’t forget to encourage kids to outgrow the manipulatives after mastering each skill.

The “European schools are more selective but we are wonderful because we are democratic” excuse has always been at least partially false, and has been completely laid to rest by the Third International Math and Science Study, TIMSS, which I strongly recommend you to read. Compare our college-bound kids with their college-bound kids, and we are in a mess, sorry. Compare our non-college kids with their non-college kids, and we are still in a mess, NOT better. The US is consistently behind in math at ALL achievement levels, starting in middle school. (And by the way, for those looking for another excuse, sorry, it’s an American-made test, translated to the other languages. The fact that they’re doing better than Americans on an American test gives pause for thought).

Why are people from other countries coming to the US for school? Well, in public school, they aren’t. People do come here fo economic advantage, but it’s been generations since people thought that American elementary and high schools were better — just cheaper and more available.
A dirty little secret about graduate schools at universities: it is a constant complaint that there are so many foreign students in so many grad schools. Ask any grad school admissions department and they will tell you — THEY LITERALLY CAN NOT FIND ENOUGH QUALIFIED AMERICAN STUDENTS. If your cutoff is, say for example, 750 (on a 1000 point scale) on a certain GRE test — again, an *American* test, and given only in English — and you get five applicants above this cutoff from the US, and fifty from elsewhere, what do you do? You accept all five Americans and ten of the others to fill your fifteen places. And the grad schools are filled up with foreign students. Should they water down their standards and give favourable treatment to unqualified American students who fail their own tests, tests they have been trained for for sixteen years? That is not exactly going to train the world’s best scholars and gain academic reputation for your university.

So American students are failing American tests and young people who speak other languages are outperforming them on these same tests — doesn’t that say to you that somewhere the system is not doing what it intends to be doing?? (The question of the whole value of the testing systems is another issue. These are the tests that our students have supposedly been trained for in the present system.) And the foreign students who outperform American students on said tests are NOT getting test training in school and Kaplan afterwards, but going in cold, in a foreign language. Of course, in school, they tend to focus on learning more and testing and grades less; strange how that in the end leads to better grades …

I suggest that you do not have your daughter begin counting
on her fingers. That is a very hard habit to break. She is
still very young and all other avenues should be taken first.
Later, if she can not grasp the math concept with out using her fingers then I would say go for it. At her age math is
still a very concrete concept. I must suggest to you to look
into Touch Math. This a multi-sensory math system. It is
an excellent tool for teaching math concepts. It also addresses money. It begins with kindergarten math such as counting and addition and continues on up to multiplication
and division. I have used this system in my classroom with
LD students and it works! It applies to all of the students different senses. In the beginning it is a tactile tool.Through
touch the student learn the value of a number. Each number
has that many dots on it. For example, the number 3 has three
dots or (touch points) on it. When counting, the student counts the touch points. Go to www.touchmath.com and
check it out. I really believe this will help your daughter.

Thanks for all of the advice!
My daughter attends a private school in Little Rock, AR.
The teachers told me that she should be able to count money,
and add and subtract without pictures/manipulatives.
I have been so stressed trying to teach her to count the money.
She can’t do it!! I made a “store” in our kitchen with a menu of snacks
and a price for each snack. i then gave her a bunch of change, and
when she wants a snack she “pays” for it with the money.
I have to help her count out the correct amount. From what I am
reading from you all, this is not age appropriate. My daughter
has severe CAPD and i have enrolled her in public school next
year due to the extreme demands of the private academy she attended.
She is only 6 and I am trying to do my best to parent an LD child.

Having taught kinderagrten, they are only expected to be able to add/subtract with a picture story (and/or manipulatives). They are also expected to know when to add and when to subtract (i.e. give a math story and ask what process to use to get the answer). The Scott-Foresman series that many districts use comes with it’s own sets of manipultaives-many kids with LD need to see concrete explanations and as well many average studenst do also. Those children who never use them and grasp the concept right away are accelerated. Counting fingers is something that we suggest for K-1, after that the facts should be memorized.

A 6 year old counting her finger is perfectly normal, she won’t lose them like she may lose manipulatives. If she is still using fingers after 8, then worry. Of 3 children, 2 never needed manipulatives, one still does at age 9. We are working on that this summer, unfortunately she is my step daughter and her mother is of absolutelyn no help. Definite WIIFM.

Have you ever seen touch points. In touch point math, there are dots drawn in a prescribed place on each number. The student counts the dots and that is the answer to the addition problem. Soon, students don’t even need the dots drawn for addition. For subtraction, you count downwards. Check with your school principal and see if they have pages to practice with. The kids learn very quickly where the dots are and soon are doing it themselves. Carol

Have you ever seen touch points. In touch point math, there are dots drawn in a prescribed place on each number. The student counts the dots and that is the answer to the addition problem. Soon, students don’t even need the dots drawn for addition. For subtraction, you count downwards. Check with your school principal and see if they have pages to practice with. The kids learn very quickly where the dots are and soon are doing it themselves. Carol

Your approach to math performance with US kids is sharp. How could US kids benefit from the Japanese way of teaching math concepts? I understand only 4 or 5 concepts are introduced during one year. I would like to know just HOW they do this. For those kids who just don’t “get” the connection between concrete and semi-abstract, would Chisanbop be a decent alternative for these kids to bridge into higher order thinking? I also just heard about Visual Math’s way of having the student discuss his/her approach to problem solving.

I would love to hear your thoughts because I will be working with some kids who need the extra help.

Thanks,
Lorna