Sylvan, Kumon, or Neither?

I have heard good things about Mathnasium. They teach the kid according to their specific needs and learning styles. There is one in Beaverton and one in Raleigh Hills.

Good Luck

The tutor is Kerri Trainor. Number is: ###-###-####

Licensed teacher and incredible tutor.

I'm not sure where you live, but my daughter is in 4th grade and has an AWESOME teacher. Math is one of her specialties. She also teaches the high school math at my daughter's school. You know she is a great teacher when the 10-11 year old students are making comments like "I didn't really get math until this year. Now I understand it and it is easy." She will be tutoring over the summer. The school is in Gladstone, but I believe the teacher lives in Milwaukie. If you are interested and would like to give me contact information I can pass it on to her.

I sent my daughter to Sylvan seveal years ago. They weren't able to help her. She did have a "I don't care" attitude. Her attitude was the result of chronic failure during the first years of her life before I adopted her. I was disappointed that they didn't have the resources to successfully challenge her to achieve.

During that time I learned that there are teachers who are not teaching at the moment who tutor. I couldn't find one but then I didnt' try whole heartedly.

My daughter's sister moved, taking her children to a new school district. Her oldest son had been in a non-credited private school. He was behind in all the basics. She has home schooled him this school year. I haven't heard how that went. I've heard that sometimes you can hire someone to home school your child. I wonder if there might be a home schooling mother in your area that would be able to help her catch up over the summer.

Do they have summer schools at grade school level? My daughter did go to summer school in middle school and that seemed to help.

I would call her school's office and ask if they can tell you of someone to tutor. Sometimes I think the office staff has a broader range of knowledge than the teacher. If they don't know they may be able to suggest someone else to call who might know.

Since it is summer perhaps a teacher at her school would be willing to tutor her for a few weeks: perhaps 1 or 2 days/week for most of the summer. You could post a request on the teacher's bulletin board. Other teachers may respond to recommend someone else if you word your request to include referrals.

I know my daughter and now my granddaughter respond better to one on one help. If either business feels personal and seems able to relate well to your daughter that may work well. I recommend that you actually visit with the service and make an assessment yourself. I was working full time and was already taking too much time off for court and counseling appointments that I relied on a phone interview. They didn't tell me until my daughter had missed 2-3 sessions that she wasn't going. A personal relationship with the tutor is important.

Kumon is good if you've got the kind of kid who gets a rush from challenging herself against an inanimate opponent and can triangulate between different goals -- it's based on numerous short time/accuracy trials, not competing against other kids, so the rewards are frequent if that happens to be thrilling to you. And some kids really flourish when they get an unbounded opportunity to zoom right past the topic their class is working on. That was me, and I went from the dunce of fifth-grade math to a math major and graduate studies (I left to get married).

It can be frustrating for a kid who needs to focus on either the speed or the accuracy at any one moment and then can't appreciate the progress on that one side enough to stop worrying about the stagnant scores in the other column. That was my daughter, and eventually it turned out that working with other kids at about her same level was a much better solution -- and she went from severely mathphobic to a grownup job teaching remedial math to scared kids in elementary schools.

So ... how well do you know your kid's study style? Can you talk to the teacher from the old school if the new one isn't helping?

Sylvan Learning has been around for years and years and I have had positive experiences.

My 7 year old daughter has difficulties reading and I feel very compelled to check out Kumon or Sylvian. But after seeing the responses posted I think I will post an ad on Craigslist for a tutor.

As a former teacher, I must admit that I found students who went through Kumon were actually put at a disadvantage in testing. They tended to rush at their work and would make silly mistakes as a result. Getting them to slow down to read problems carefully was terribly difficult. I don't know if their Kumon was poorly run, or what, but...it turned me off of Kumon. I hate when students get the concepts, but their scores don't reflect it.
I can't speak one way or another about Sylvan. I had teacher friends who tutored at them, and may have had some students go through them, but I never noticed any general trend for success or struggle in Sylvan students.

Good luck. One thing you might want to do is talk to whoever her teacher might be next year, and ask for advice. Also- a lot of teachers will do private tutoring if asked. It doesn't sound like the current teacher would be a good pick, but maybe a previous one she liked, or her teacher for next year would be available. Teachers directly are cheaper than going through sylvan usually, so that would be an advantage too.

KUMON ROCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IT is a kinder, gentler Sylvan/Oxford and much cheaper. Yes there is homework, however I imagne there is with all programs. Son went from C to A+ in Grade one and has never looked back. He is in Grade 6 and is currently being studied by Post grad students while in an MRI answering questions asked all students. Obviously the ability has to be there to begin with however Kumon gave him his confidence and he will see you in Emerg.-hopefully not seriously in about 10 years! He read all of Tolkein's works starting in May of Grade 2 and finished be the end of the year. My daughter now attends-she is adopted from Korea and is under enormous external pressure-does no one understand correlation and causation?!!! ARGH! Never question Kumon for a second, it is wonderful and apx. 7000 lbs. of worry off of your chest!! GO KUMON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! London, Ontario Canada

hi.. iam not a mom but a dad who loves to teach math here in the Philippines.. i dont have any idea what is a Sylvan math but we have kumon centers here. i learned from my previous students that kumon are not actually teaching students to learn.. they are being "forced" to understand math through repetitive drills... kumon is a "self discovery math system", and in my opinion is not helping students to understand math better. when i saw the need to teach my daughter to understand math, i discovered a new math system, it is known here as eZ Math system. iand now i teached students in my own way.