Homeschooling going to shit - a support thread

[Brokenchair1]

Schoolmum WhatsApp group rapidly filling with messages about people doing the Joe Wicks live PE, photos of kids sitting at desks dressed and working, mum's joking about how lovely it is to home school.

Meanwhile in the broken household....single mum here, I have a Skype meeting at 1 I need to prep for, DD 7 currently refusing to do anything and keeps sitting on me saying she wants to play. 3 months of this 😭

Anyone else where homeschooling isn't filled with colourful timetables and colour coded snack trays...join here for support and commiseration.

Families who home educate in normal circumstances are generally not following rigid timetables and using worksheets as it just joyless! Kids, like adults, learn more when they are genuinely interested in something, and this waxes and wanes over time, which is fine. Let yourself off the hook, this is such an usual situation, with so many pressures, that we all just need to do what we can go get through this with our sanity and relationships intact. For some that might mean routine, for others it might be just be going with the flow.

Most of the micromanaged 'fun learning activities' that people are posting online are no more educational than letting the kids explore something on their own.

carolblack.org/a-thousand-rivers

This beautiful piece about how children learn is incredibly thought provoking. You might find it helpful.

Lone key parent WFH as much as I can with a 5 year old.

Today horrible histories on the TV is counting as a history lesson 😳

I can't cope! I've given up. We are doing and hoc learning, so every now and again we will do a work sheet or some reading. Playing in the garden is the best activity so far 🤦🏻‍♀️

I read to him, we do counting games, he isn't going to forget what he's learnt, and me shouting and struggling with him isn't going to make anything sink in. So I've taken a deep breath, taken a big step back and we've gone to survival mode 😂

It really doesn't matter how kids learn...not can I let them explore and learn in a non rigid set up. School has given them six hours a day of work plus homework which needs to be submitted.

I'm just trying to get through that.

I barely have any time for them to do anything extra.

Another day over and I'm on the 🍷 Still not managed to do much of my own work today but at least no meltdowns (yet).

Printed out a few worksheets in case DD fancies them tomorrow. Stepping back and relaxing is definitely the way forward.

I've realized I need to stop going on social media as for every person posting about the things they've done with their kids I'm so tempted to comment "what do you want, a fucking medal"!😂

Dyson Engineering activity cards

TwoZero he is 6, so those ideas sound very good for him! It's just hard to find the balance between catering to his intellectual and emotional ability - one is ahead of his age, the other behind. The joys of ASD.
Class WhatsApp is also driving me bonkers with the 'jolly ideas' that people lovingly craft all day with their children while mine play rugby tackle in the living room or kill each other in Minecraft!

My 5yo is playing minecraft while I work. I'm a single parent and need to do my job. I am feeling guilty that he's not "being educated". My fear is when we return to school he will be asked to take the exercise book we were given and it will be BLANK.

He has done some junk modelling and art (about minecraft). He bounces on trampoline. I read to him at bedtime.

But I cant persuade him to pick up a pencil. Any hint of a learning opportunity and he gets all stubborn. He wont even paint a rainbow for our window.

Another day begins...

Yesterday was a better day with dd1. I set a more rigid timetable for her with timeframes to get the work done. There were moans and groans and dramatics at times but she got there (and so did I!). I’m hoping that we’re a bit more on top of things now and it will become easier.... ha!

Dd2 continues to be a mode pupil... blasted through all her work in the morning then had time are the history project (!!) her teacher sent through in the afternoon. Teachers pet eh!

Good luck today everyone

I spent a good half hour setting up DS's play shop and making a price list yesterday so we could do an activity on money and addition. He then knocked it over and screamed "I want to go back to school, then ran upstairs and sobbed for an hour."

Homeschooling is not going well....

That’s a good idea though, maybe I’ll try a price list for shopping!

@nellmangel I'm a lone parent too and feel the same but I have to do my own work. I'm currently only managing max 2 effective hours per day which is not enough.

Remember that this is not forever (hopefully) and the majority of kids will catch up.

I get it though. Being just me and DD 24/7 is starting to grate and bedtimes are getting later so literally no me time. Oh how I'll treasure an hour in a coffee shop on my own once all this is over 😭

So in the Broken household I have declared today the first day of Easter holidays even though DD would have gone to school today. So now two weeks to fill with no school work but doesn't really seem fair to force her to do anything when in normal circumstances she would not have done anything (in normal circumstances we would have also been flying off on holiday next week :()

Hopefully holidays will mean a reduction in homeschooling posts although it has already tailed off a bit here. Maybe the novelty of coloured timetables wore off in the first week!

Is anyone else doing any homeschooling over the next two weeks?

We should have broken up last Friday but we're now operating a "reduced timetable"

That means no crawling online by 8.45 for registration and trying to split myself in two helping DD follow the online classwork while getting my own work done. But we've kept the morning video call to read to grandparents, the ten minutes each on maths and English aps, and 2 segments a day that have to be filled with something vaguely productive (this ranges from diary or letter writing, to touch typing games, to work on Brownie badges, etc). There's a chunk of time in the garden too which handily coincides with whichever phone calls I have to actually focus on

Today is an inset day

I might keep them doing some maths and reading activities over the hols. Nothing too strenuous but gets us doing something. Ds said today that he was bored and I asked if he wanted to do some writing. He actually said yes He hates writing! It lasted half an hour but has almost finished his non-chronological report and I almost fell off my chair

At the end of the second week off school DC1(year 4) finally managed to log on to the bit of the website where the tasks that must be completed this week are. This is a website we have never used before (BGFL), tasks are set and it includes Word/ Powerpoint/ some other thing in which to write stuff. Neither of us know how to use this. She is supposed to find out about a topic and present what she has researched including youtube links and pictures. I don't know how to get these on. There is tonnes of work on there that we obviously didn't do any of, partly because we couldn't get the log in to work until today and partly because I am a keyworker so she was at school Monday and Tuesday so no time for education (I don't see my DC on work days because of the hours I work). I also have a DC in Reception, most of the work set for both them is online, we have 1 ipad between them, a small room so they constantly disturb each other, the need to be reasonably quiet because DH is in meetings in the next room. It all feels impossible today. Looking at the school website they might have set work for next week too even though the school is shut even for keyworkers, which is not what I was expecting (I need the school holiday to catch up on what we didn't do this week).
They made Easter bonnets yesterday afternoon, and this morning they did an 'assembly' that DH was invited to where they wore there Easter bonnets and did a play about an Easter egg hunt. We achieved absolutely nothing academic. DC1 cried because she wanted to eat something for lunch that we didn't have...

Teachers are getting more and more insistent in set tasks that work must be done and if not work will be set in the Easter holidays.

Ds is not going to be any less disabled in the holidays. Violent meltdowns are still going to hurt.

We will carry on during holidays, weekends and evenings. The trick is not to let him notice.

We’re going to keep doing a bit as there are a lot of days we don’t get anything done with the younger who is a bit behind anyway and the elder one hasn’t finished the work they were set. Mine have had an extra one week for the elder and two weeks off for the younger and that was holiday as no work had been set then.

Is anyone else doing any homeschooling over the next two weeks?

I haven't done any yet. I thought it was just for those who wanted something to do?

We're all going to catch up a bit over Easter. I'm on annual leave, so will be phone/email off, but have decided to spend an hour each evening breaking the back of a few reports I'm behind on. The DC each have an untouched project and I've suggested that they each do a morning on those. They're fine with that, as they've had a fair few Mario afternoons.