Our Blog

At Kumon, we’ve continued to connect with new families during a time when meeting face-to-face hasn’t been possible. We’ve been chatting with Mark, a father to six-year-old daughter, Sophia, to find out why he chose to enrol her with Instructor Sharon Carlin of the Kumon Urmston Study Centre, and to hear about their experience so far.

With children missing school and our usual, busy routines being so dramatically disrupted, many families have been using the lockdown period to start studying with Kumon, to ensure their children’s maths and English ability doesn’t suffer.

We recently interviewed Louise, a parent from Londonderry, Northern Ireland to ask her about her experience of joining Kumon during lockdown.

Rosalin, her husband and young daughter, Mary didn't expect to find a Kumon centre in their town in mid-Wales and were pleasantly surprised to have been able to join a centre that was offering online video classes. Three-year-old Mary is already progressing quickly; working closely with mum, the Kumon materials and getting the support she needs from their instructor.

Starting a new learning experience like Kumon, while we’re all at home, might have felt like a challenge too far for some parents, but it’s proved to be the ideal thing for five-year-old Almira, and her mother, Demet. 

As a Kumon Instructor, I am sometimes asked why we require repeated practice of basic mental addition without allowing our students to count on their fingers? If they get the right answer using their fingers, why do they need to keep practising 3+2, 8+2, 6+2, mentally?
Why do many of our students, even those who are already dealing with multiplication or fractions at school, often start the Kumon programme on basic addition (plus 1, plus 2, plus 3) before progressing to mixed addition and subtraction, multiplication and division, fractions and higher maths?

The answer is that we are laying the foundations for future success in more advanced maths.