Both Harvey and I have dipped into More Maths for Mums and Dads The Teenage Years and both feel that it will be useful to have "up our sleeves". Its early chapters set the scene on how you can help, should you help, does your teenager want you to help and ideas on how to motivate your child with regards to Maths – what’s the point?
Rob Eastaway and Mike Askew acknowledge that depending on how old you are, it was done differently "in our day". My children glaze over when I talk about slide rules and log books. They cannot comprehend what I am actually talking about! In reality, we have not used 90 per cent of what we learned over 30 years ago and indeed have forgotten most of it.
Two thirds of the book is about How to do the Maths. It is a book for adults so there is quite a bit of theory and background to each section, but there are also short tests for us to complete after each section. Some of the theory lost me a bit, maybe it is a bit wordy, but I can see that if my 11 year old was really stuck with his maths homework I could use this book to at least help me to help him understand the principles. I am not sure how useful it would be for helping my 15 year old who is in her first year of the iGCSE syllabus. Some of the work she is doing is hard and we have now agreed that we are probably beyond helping her!
I’d recommend getting More Maths for Mums and Dads The Teenage Years from the library first if you want to give it a go, so that you could see if its format suits your style of learning.
PWT rating: ♥♥♥♥♥/♥♥♥♥♥
Published by Square Peg, More Maths for Mums and Dads