Please fess up, how many hours a day schoolwork are your Primary school juniors doing each day?

[JMAngel1]

Just read a survey on BBC website that said poorer families are only doing 4.5 hours each day with their children whereas wealthier families are doing 6 hours.
My two are year 3 and 5 and we do 1.5 hours in the morning of. maths and english and then 1 hour in the afternoon on their school website looking at history/science/RE powerpoints thatkind of thing.
I thought we were doing a lot!
They do Jo Wickes, creative art time, chores and we go for a walk or cycle so we still fill the school day with activities.

What are your junior primary school children doing each day?

I spent an hour doing some writing with my 7yo this morning (trying to get to describe how her plants are growing).

She produced.. one paragraph. She has a short attention span, and gets upset over little mistakes. That included a couple of flounces. Her 8yo sister produced 4 paragraphs in the same time, plus diagrams.

She does a lot better at school.

About 60-90 minutes a day broken into chunks.

DC is really kicking back at doing school work and it's a challenge.

3 hours here: 1 hour set by school, 2 hours set by me, then I have to work so that's it for the day. (Child will not do a thing unless supervised).

I thought I was doing really well! Glad to hear I'm not the only one surprised to hear the news today.

Good grief! I’m a teacher of KS2 and 2 hours concentrated Maths and English (combined, spread out or together) is perfectly sufficient so long as they are doing other ‘wholesome’ stuff around it whether playing, drawing, going on the trampoline, baking etc.

1.5 hours in the morning and the same in the afternoon. It’s enough.
Handwriting, English, Maths, other subjects.
We go out late afternoon or after dinner for exercise. Great to have fresh air and energy to run off before bed.

6 hours is ridiculous. That's a full working day for some adults. No child does six hours at school. Imagine being on lockdown, no social interaction with friends n then having to do 6 hours of work with a 10 min break. Imagine what that does to a child's mental health. Imagine what they will remember years from now.

I have one child in year 2. Monday-Thursday she’s doing about 21/2 -3 hours work. Friday is practically nothing, maybe an hour. She’s doing everything set, there’s reading on top of that.

DC in Y4 & Y6.
DH and I both WFH, they've been doing brilliantly unsupervised so we've let them get on with it.
I reckon with BBC BiteSize & school projects (we don't have any zoom lessons or any of that thank fuck) they're probably doing max 2hrs a day proper school - other stuff they do is reading, telly, lego, baking, trampoline, playing with puppy.
They're still getting on together and quite happy at home, so I am also happy.
DD Y6 has finally cracked today, so she's just making popcorn and planting seeds.

@Ihaventgottimeforthis that all sounds so lovely!

My Year 6 probably spends about 3-4 hours a day, but that varies massively really, some days he does lots more and some days it's less than one hour. He's consistent about doing the Maths and topic work but isn't following reading suggestions at all. He is reading though, a lot, and a good half of his youtube time seems to be spent watching videos about topics that have come up via schoolwork so that's good. I think.

Kurri I feel a bit odd saying it, but it has been lovely in so many ways. We decided right from the off we couldn't do supervised schooling, so there have been virtually zero arguments.
I'm lucky in that the DC are clever and enjoy learning, no additional needs for either of them. And their school has always been very good at avoiding stress.
We're also within walking distance of the beach.
I think lockdown has been easier for us than for most people, I'm incredibly thankful for that.

I have 3 in primary. We are doing NOTHING formal.
That said we are swimming, trampoline, games, walks, board games, cooking, Minecraft, zooming friends, watching classic films, making stuff, and general chilling out.

I could stand over them and argue them into doing the stuff set by school but it’s all out of context, and I don’t believe that they actual internalise learning under stress.

We are not even getting dressed mostly.

Oh, Jainey, I’m envious of the swimming. Is that sea, lake or your own pool. I’d love a swim right now.

My Y6 does work set and no more! It can take a couple of hours but as little as 45 mins and as much as 3.

Less than an hour, and it's more learning by exploration than anything that involves writing....

LoisI splurged on a big above-ground pool, complete with filter and steps etc. It’s unheated but the kids have wet suits and are in there all the time! It’s cost about £500 all in, which we would have easily burned through on a few days out with all three of them. It looks shit, the garden is a tip but they absolutely love it. We have done a bit of chemistry by dipping the water and the chemicals you have to add. And collecting bugs in the net!

We’ve spent a lot of time outside in the evening. I got a tiny garden wood burner and most nights we put one of those clean-burn logs in a wrapper, inside and have a hot chocolate all wrapped up on the bench. We’ve been writing wishes on bits of wood and leaves and putting those in, we use the garden much more than we used to.

Eldest has been looking at the stars, there seems to be less light pollution somehow. We also lie in the hammock at dusk and watch the bats.

I know I sound like a really worthy type with all this. In reality we are still living on chicken nuggets and I can’t remember when I last wore a bra.

Virtually zero. We both work full-time. So bored of reading how poorer kids are going to be behind. I think it'll be the kids with two working parents who will be behind all the SAHPs!

I think it really depends what you count as educational activities! We are doing a max of an hour in the morning and afternoon (so 2 hours total) plus half am hour reading. But if you count half an hour of Joe Wicks, half an hour of music practice, an hour of gardening, a dog walk in the woods, helping with cooking etc then it starts to look like a lot more.

I’m working from home, 2 primary age children doing about 2 hours of set work between them per day. Not including art, outdoor activities and cooking. I’m happy with this but I will continue with the set work from school if we are not finished by the time the summer holidays come.

6 hours a week maybe!

About 1.5 to 2 hours a day for year 2 ds. Both parents are working from home. About the same for year 7 ds as well as he speeds through anything set. The schools are not setting much and I have limited time to hunt out resources.

I am a lone parent wfh with one DD, year 3. At first, we did try to keep up with the work set but I realised that it was just too stressful for both of us to do this. As time's gone on, my DD has done less and less and we are both much happier.

Its a real battle now to get her to do anything that the teachers have set and she really just wants to do TT Rock Stars or Language Angels. I have said that's fine as long as she reads a book too. When its a sunny day like today I really don't want her to be inside behind a screen and so I am happy for her to play outside (as long as she has at least done something!), jump on her trampoline and generally potter.

Today she started off by doing about an hour of some online educational games (not set by the school), then TT Rockstars for about 45 mins, lunch, some reading in her tee-pee of a series of books that she loves, followed by about half an hour of Language Angels. The rest of the afternoon she has constructed a water slide by herself in the garden, got thoroughly soaked and had a lovely time!

6 hours?!!! No chance I'd get DS to be that cooperative

School set Maths, English, a subject ( french, science, RE, computing, PE) , a quick maths quiz and spellings every day. Usually takes DS 3-4 hours with breaks. Sometimes we adapt it if he's getting too stressed ( he has some SEN) as I feel that's counter productive

Half an hour to an hour a day. I have two other children who need chasing up too and my own shit going on.

My year 5 does probably about 3 hours a day.(max) Even if we did all the optional work or challenges it would be nowhere near 6