We are in the third week of school for DD1, who is 5 in March. I KNOW I'm being daft here, and if I read someone else saying this, I would roll my eyes.
But...
She is whizzing through the work, and is moaning that they hardly do any reading and writing in school, and she likes the choosing but the table time is silly. I know 4yo children talk rubbish, and the school is known for being quite strict and pushy, but the homework doesn't seem very ambitious either (eg it asks for grown ups to do all the very simple writing, she was asked to just memorise the names of the ORT characters on the flashcards, she read her reading book at the first sitting). She did much more than was asked (off her own bat) for this weeks homework (my sister, who is a teacher, was shocked at how hard the original homework was for reception), then went off and did her Jolly Phonics workbook as well, and made me write down a story she had made up. We have a box of colouring in that I have printed off the internet (eg cbeebies type things) and the odd puzzle sheet or whatever, and she always finds the puzzle sheets or a map to do, so it's not that she is being forced to do these things.
Gah. Even reading this back, I know I need to chill out.
So, is there anything I can do to keep her learning while the teacher gets round to sorting out harder work? (I know the teacher is busy and needs to help the kids who maybe haven't had the same luck as to had a burst of learning before school, and I am not thinking she will be some kind of genius, but I don't want her bored and turned off for now. I'm happy for her to play at school and us provide more interesting stuff for her at home for now.)
I know she isn't hugely ahead, and there could be areas where she is behind, I wouldn't know as this is the first time we have really seen what seems to be expected. I kind of lean towards going over stuff now to make sure it is firm in her head, but how can I do that without her getting annoyed and bored? If we were still doing HE, I know what I would do - keep on with reading, work our way through the story of the world, do harder sums with buttons etc to help her count, and easier ones in her head, find things to research, write stories, etc, but would that fit with school or confuse her?
Should I make her do more colouring in? She doesn't like colouring in - I don't think she sees any point in it, but I suppose it will help her pen control.
Join our Primary Education forum to discuss starting school and helping your child get the most out of it.
Primary education
Argh, this is the thread I said I wouldn't make.
ButterAndPie · 03/10/2011 09:41
This reply has been deleted
Message withdrawn at poster's request.
This reply has been deleted
Message withdrawn at poster's request.
at yummybunny
I've looked at kumon previously, and we have better resources than that at home - due to a previous job, I have stacks of educational games, reading books and so on hanging around the house. We were going to HE, so we have quite a few books, workbooks and so on, but not sure where they fit with the NC.
OP: STEP BACK FROM THE CHILD.
now breathe
better?
...and now throw the colouring in pens in the bin, and go and do something fun after schools, like playing with friends or going to the park or just playing at home.
I suspect it is "silly" because she thinks it is easy. We have to rein her in a bit sometimes, she can be quite bigheaded - she was the only child and only grandchild on both sides until DD2 came along, so she has picked up quite a large vocabulary from being talked to by adults, and so people say she is clever. It's not so much that, as she talks like a little old woman
Senorita - I think you may have hit the nail on the head re literacy. She definitely prefers that and history/geography to the more maths/science type stuff we do at home, and she pretty much uses the art stuff we have to make geometric shapes (she's a strange child!)
She does gymnastics and football, and is asking to do dancing (but I'm resisting, at least until she has been at school a bit longer) and we go out for long walks with plenty of clambering, jumping in puddles, etc.
Socially, I do think she needs some work tbh, but not sure how we could engineer that more than school - if she is at school all day (and sometimes gym or football) we don't have much time to take her to meet more people. She says please and thankyou, and will talk to most people, and can do imaginative play and "look after" her baby sister.
I didn't expect homework tbh, but school send it home, so we do it. This week she had flashcards, a reading book, a sharing book and she had to find leaves and put them in order of size and tell an adult some things bigger and smaller than the leaves. She got a ruler and measured the leaves, then measured things around the house and wrote them down herself. Her spelling is awful (eg "coNcre instead of conker), but she is four, lol.
It is a catholic state school, quite small (one form per year) and she seems to be amusing herself learning all the catholic stuff, as we aren't religious.
We aren't pushing her, but we do want to let her learn if she wants to - both mine and DHs memories of school are full of people telling us to stop asking so many questions and do boring work that was far too easy - we don't want her to be bored of learning. She can be bored if she likes, I quite often engineer boredom at home so they play with thier toys and so on, just not bored of learning.
I also don't want her to think learning is too easy, so that she gives up when she comes up against something hard (like I say, she isn't so advanced that she won't become well within average quite naturally at some point)
One thing she is rubbish at is going to the toilet, but we have tried everything, we even had the health visitor out, who just gave us some reward charts she had printed off sparklebox 
- obviously we already do that, but we are quite relaxed about it. I probably am getting a bit stressed there though, but our nearly two year old is asking for the potty, so I get frustrated that our nearly five year old is still wetting herself. Maybe I should get somehow more onto that?
Don’t want to miss threads like this?
Weekly
Sign up to our weekly round up and get all the best threads sent straight to your inbox!
Log in to update your newsletter preferences.
You've subscribed!
To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account.