Or are we still learning? As a rule, children want to play, and parents want to spend time usefully. Thanks to the Japanese KUMON education system, children and parents have the opportunity to combine business with pleasure.
«Let’s glue!» «Let’s cut!» «Let’s put the pictures together!» are just a few of the titles of fun learning aids offered by the self-contained and detailed Japanese learning system KUMON. The KUMON methodology has been used by more than four million children and adolescents aged 2 to 17 and is used in schools in 47 countries. Russia — 48th thanks to the Moscow Lyceum No. 1451, who dared to experiment.
KUMON workbooks, since they are designed to accompany your child into the world of knowledge for 15 years in a row, are very different. Two-three-year-old kids learn to cut and fold pictures from the First Steps notebooks, preschoolers get acquainted with simple lines, learn to count and tell time, recognize the letters of the Russian and English alphabets, glue and draw. Now you can get acquainted with the program for children under 10 years old, but the MIF publishing house is also going to publish notebooks with the secondary school program.
Why exactly KUMONs, because there are hundreds of pedagogical methods?
Just remember how it was in reality — with you or your friends. Like a child takes scissors with round safe ends, how crooked lines get fuzzy, sharp corners are not cut out, squares of colored paper fold as you like, just not exactly in half, stationery glue spills, PVA sticks, and paper glue instantly breaks. Just remember how many times you called the minute hand — minute, until your child learned to distinguish it from the second. Even if you never shouted, did not raise your eyes to the sky, did not sigh in impotence, but showed miracles of patience and sensitivity, the children are still offended. It’s very disappointing and you don’t want to try anything, and it’s impossible to believe in yourself and in the success of the undertaking, when over and over again it doesn’t turn out as great as in the task picture, even if mom smiles and assures that it turned out great, or sadly says: “Well, then I’ve seen you try, dear.»
The tasks of KUMON notebooks are arranged in such a way that they are obtained from the very beginning. Is always. Everyone has. And for children of speech therapy groups — too. And in children with problems in the development of motor skills and hand-eye coordination — too. The same goes for children with Attention Deficit Disorder. The first five tasks from any notebook, appropriate for age, the child does with delight: “I can do anything!”
And then the system gradually, almost imperceptibly, increases the complexity of the tasks, and they also turn out one by one, because the complication is dosed so carefully that it seems to me impossible to dose it yourself and at home. At least I didn’t succeed. Ultimately, the KUMON method forms in the child respect for his work, for his achievements, for himself, the ability to evaluate his results and feel the joy of learning. Of course, this is a hundred times more important than the ability to distinguish a straight line from a curve and the letters of the English alphabet.
A series of workbooks and tutorials KUMON (Mann, Ivanov, Ferber, 2015).