Extra educational activities at home?

[Lorna33]

How much time do you think you roughly spend on activities that are educational at home?

Do you know any good websites that provide free resources for parents?

Thanks

[isthistoonosy]

How old are your kids and are they in nursery or school ot home all day?

[Lorna33]

Primary School age

[Misstic]

Beside homework, not much. My son is 5 and he gets about 10-15mins worth of homework everyday. I think it is a lot and would rather not do the homework and instead do other educational stuff with him.

[AnguaResurgam]

What do you count as 'educational'?

Cooking has always popular here, and there are loads of recipe sites and YouTube vids

[user789653241]

Seems a bit vague question from a parent...

[Caroian]

Very vague question! Everything is (can be) educational. We don't spend time doing worksheets or using websites. But we do have lots of fun. We play board games, we write shopping lists and then use money in shops, we weigh things in cooking, we measure things, we mix things, we dig in the garden, we explore, we visit places, we TALK about stuff.... I'd say all of the time that isn't spent mindlessly staring at nothing (erm, very little) or sleeping, is educational.

But maybe you don't define education in the way that I do....

[Tomorrowillbeachicken]

I buy a lot of books but other than that I don't spend much.

[my2bundles]

He plays, learns and instrument and takes part in the in a sport. I would much rather he has fun and relaxes, has time to unwind than do even more academic work. He s 9.

[user1484226561]

most things done with parents are educational, if you have a conversation whilst you are doing it

[bojorojo]

10-15 mins for Recepion is very reasonable! Surely a bit of reading or reading to a child is worth 10-15 minutes a day?

[sirfredfredgeorge]

The difficulty in the question is the use of the word educational.

We have always done nothing to specifically force/reward reading, writing or maths in the home, that's not to say we've discouraged DD's interest in it (summer born year 1 now). But we didn't encourage reading before reception, we don't do maths exercises, or anything like that, we're almost always available to chat about things, and fortunate enough to provide resources.

However almost everything she does is educational, either on a mental level, or fitness/skill based level, and it's what she chooses to do, we place no limits on screen time, or anything else.

I don't know if DD didn't find schoolwork very easy to learn if we'd have done things differently - to force more practice in areas she was weak - but we've been fortunate to not need that. Her choices seem to match well with what she thinks she needs to learn, in schoolwork as much as in practicing jumping around the living room.

[corythatwas]

Everything Caroian said.

[BackforGood]

What Caroion said.

In terms of worksheets - none, ever.
In terms of my dc learning skills - like getting on with people, taking turns, manners, play skills, problem solving, team work. how to amuse themselves, how to have fun in life - then all the time.

[Autumnsky]

I think every child is different, as parents, we do know them well, then we can try to help them . Some children will have to do some extra work at home to help them reinforce what they learn at school, some don't. Some child never need spelling practice, because they just look at it and then remember it, but some child may need practice to remember.
So it really depends on the child, what he/she need?

Generally, reading with DC, encourage DC writing( DS2 loves writing, I used to help him make it into books and now he likes to type it in computer). Discussing interesting topic( DS2 has a map on his wall which he likes to test me to find different places). We have some science and history books, he reads a lot and would ask lots of questions. For math, DS2 is doing well at school, so we only do some word qustion to get him to understand how to apply his math skill.

I do limit DS2's screen time, as for my DS2, if you don't limit, he will play games all the time. By set a time limit, when he is not allowed games and TV, he does think of ideas to play by himself.

[user1485861347]

Real life stuff that helps reinforce his school learning is so useful and builds a love for learning because they will connect the dots when they then learn at school. E.g. Weighing out cooking ingredients and talking about it, reading the time, writing letters to friends or typing letters into search engines or texts, identifying and counting out coins, talking about stories they have seen or had read to them. Board games, etc.

[2014newme]

15 mins a day on school work
We do lots of visiting museums, travel, concerts, theatre, outdoors trips that I believe are enriching.

[2014newme]

We also do a lot of extra curricular activities between 5 and,10 hours per week oer child

[Andcake]

Gosh katiehigham is popping up on a lot of threads recommending Katie's classroom...in fact suspicious this thread overall very in mum language ..hmm may report