Today was the last day of ‘home school’ in this house

[BasinHaircut]

I’m fucking done.

It’s only causing arguments and I don’t think it’s worth it. I’m trying to work (as is DH) and DS (7) just doesn’t want to do it anymore.

I’m going to just try and enjoy this time and ensure that DS enjoys it too. All he wants to do is watch TV and play video games but I’d rather steer him towards more educational things to watch than try and make him do another bloody maths worksheet.

My girl is 7 and needs so much 1-1 and motivation so ive given up!

I hear so many go on about how it won’t affect them, they’ll catch up etc

I don’t get why people aren’t worried about them slipping behind

Even if they go behind and are given work to catch up, they’ll still be behind their peers

Dds are in years 9&7 and both do 3 hours formal work a day and complete every weekly task they are given

If they don’t I expect they’ll drop sets

How can people say that won’t affect them? They’re only set twice a year and it’s hard to make up the work to move back up

Mine are both still assessed remotely every half term as they would be in school

Of course there are so many working from
home and I sympathise but equally I know so many parents who are simply lazy and can’t control their kids!

Not saying that’s you OP but I don’t understand why it’s a battle for some

Kids surely have been brought up to do as their told?

If my kids don’t do it they know they lose their phones end of! That alone forces their hand but it never comes to that

I totally get where you're coming from, we never re-started after half term so second week or doing nothing. 7yo in the process of being assessed for autism and not dealing well with the concept of school at home and 9yo who wants a lot of interaction, I'm WFH full time with additional Covid-19 work and just can't hack trying to fit it all in.

@DragonflyInn @BasinHaircut @PogoBob @Scruffyoak

DD is the same age as well - 7.

I gave up a few weeks ago.
I'm working Monday to Friday 7 til 4.30/5 with ds6 and ds 11months here. I cannot give him the time or attention he needs to help ds6 with his school work. We were sitting down together to do it in the evenings once the baby was in bed, but neither mine nor ds concentration is very good at 6pm.
Now we just do a bit at the weekend while the baby naps, and I'm leaving the things that he can already do well and just focusing on the bits that I know he needs to work on.

We are still doing it but we've had to really reduce the amount of sitting at a desk learning.

So a bit of handwriting, reading a few chapters of his book and 5-10 mins on his maths app are things he can do on his own whilst I'm getting on with things.

Then we sit and do either a maths or literacy lesson for 20-30 mins together.

Then after that it's really low key things like watching a nature documentary and drawing a picture of his favourite animal from it. Watching a geography now video on YouTube. Drawing a picture of a house and then making it out of Lego.

Lots of playing in the garden as well and limiting free screen time when he can pick what he watches or play games to just once after lunch for a little bit and then again after 3/4 ish.

That balance seems to work for us but everyone is going to be different. I think as long as your are doing the most you can do without it impacting on yours or your child's health and well being then that's enough.

daisymay, OP's ds is 7. There's plenty of time for him to catch up. Of course it's a different story in secondary.

And I don't think OP's ds will be behind, in lower primary, what she is doing is best for children anyway.

I hear you OP, Ive three primary age kids and it’s getting harder with each passing week to keep them (&me) motivated.
Im trying keep going till the end of this month & then they are officially on school holidays here.

I dont know if my efforts are actually making any difference as I dont think they have learnt anything ‘new’.

If you don’t think they’ll fall behind then your basically saying kids do nothing in school for four months of the academic year 🤷‍♀️

@daisymay133

I hear so many go on about how it won’t affect them, they’ll catch up etc

I don’t get why people aren’t worried about them slipping behind

Even if they go behind and are given work to catch up, they’ll still be behind their peers

Dds are in years 9&7 and both do 3 hours formal work a day and complete every weekly task they are given

If they don’t I expect they’ll drop sets

How can people say that won’t affect them? They’re only set twice a year and it’s hard to make up the work to move back up

Mine are both still assessed remotely every half term as they would be in school

Of course there are so many working from
home and I sympathise but equally I know so many parents who are simply lazy and can’t control their kids!

Not saying that’s you OP but I don’t understand why it’s a battle for some

Kids surely have been brought up to do as their told?

If my kids don’t do it they know they lose their phones end of! That alone forces their hand but it never comes to that

Well done you and your children, medals in the post, but not relevant to a 7 year old

I don't know if this is helpful but we didn't even try in the beginning for various reasons, then we tried and it didn't go well... but we did stop screens. This had the effect of driving them towards playing outside, baking, rediscovering lego etc. reading more etc.

Upshot is that now, weeks (well months) later they are both actually choosing to do schoolwork (of some sort, following their interests which is fine by me) and reading a great deal. This is is nothing short of miraculous and frankly I think we accidentally 'unschooled'.

Getting bored because no screens (kept them only for actual learning) seems to have been key though.

daisymay, like I said, it really depend on the child's age. Think about other countries. In a lot of countries, school only start when children are 6/7. In England, they start at 4/5. Do all English children be better academically when they are at Uni age?
In early years, encouraging children to love learning in general is better than completing worksheets.

@daisymay133 I don’t think anyone is saying they won’t fall behind?

I think pretty much ALL the kids are behind now, regardless. The education system has got a mammoth job on its hands to try and regain the ground lost in every single school aged child’s education and the combined effort of every parent isn’t going to make much of a dent in that. For my year 2 child I don’t think I can add much value to his academic education at this point without a cost to my family’s mental wellbeing.

I’m also in a critical public health role and unfortunately for my son my priority has to be my job.

Keyworker here mine r bk in school now. They do the work set by the teacher and play all day. But they do the work and I need do nothing after work. Was bloody hard home schooling

I would recommend taking a look at outschool if he might like to do some online learning in a group on subjects that interest him. My dad (yr 1) has enjoyed some outschool classes on various science subjects.

One of our teachers rang up and said, I am not ringing to see how much school work you've done, I'm ringing to see if you are all OK and managing. She said as long as the kids are happy and well that is all that matters. If I could have slid down the phone and kissed her I would have!

I've not been able to - both are in secondary so they'd be too far behind otherwise. DS is in year 8 so I'm just doing the core subjects with him and the ones he wants to choose for GCSES (so anything like art, music, textiles etc is out). He has SEN and is a stubborn little bugger so I have to sit with him for every lesson. Luckily for me (if you can call it that!) I work part time and don't have set hours so do my work when the kids are finished. DS does about 3 hours a day. DD is in year 10 so does the full 5 hours plus an hour of extra work (either catch up on RE where she was already a bit behind or art as she has lots of coursework).

If they were at primary I might let it slip but for secondary no way. It's very stressful though - I'm looking forward to the summer holidays (even if I don't get to go anywhere!).

@daisymay133 I'm lucky that I'm on furlough so spend a lot of time with DD8 doing school work (she isn't one to 'just get on with it') but apart from fractions the work being set by school is nothing new so whilst she's doing work everyday she isn't going to be ahead of anyone else.

I am still going
Getting up at 5 going to bed at midnight,WFH,FT,home schooling
It's shit
Am knackered and don't see how I can go on much longer

Sometimes just logging in, reading what's required, getting your head round it and printing the relevant stuff is time consuming enough.

I'm an ex teacher...and not doing the set work... i have a toddler and I'm wfh with no help. I've just had to prioritise. We've read together in the evenings and have done a lot of mental maths. I try to throw mine mental maths questions throughout the day (no prep required).

Maybe just explain it to him and say you're both not enjoying it but you dont want him to be left behind. Then you could come up with a compromise together eg no more worksheets but he'll do 10 mins of online mental maths games or read a page of his book each night? Or he could come up with an idea.

If he's not in the mood to do the worksheets i doubt he's learning as much as he would doing a quality activity with you.

I can’t see how it’s possible for me and DH to do our jobs from home and be home schooling at the same time. We are failing at all of it and are considering getting a tutor.

We sort of gave up not long after DS stopped school (he’s yr5) as we were struggling and falling out. We did what a pp suggested and we worked together to come up with a plan.
So he preferred a timetable and he seems to do better with ‘longer’ projects. My mum trained as a primary school teacher 35 yrs ago and when she trained it was all about projects and covering all subjects within the project.
We’ve set DS a garden design project (he wants a pond) and he loves everything camouflage, so a sort of history of that with the end being him designing his own pattern for a bedroom wall.
Two things have kept me going - 1. They do not do 6 hrs of school a day. They are there 6 hrs but def not the same and 2. We’ll be middle of the road and honest about it. We don’t make up how much we are doing, we aren’t doing school days and he is doing more than nothing. We are not teachers and both working out the home, and having an extension built so other stuff going on.

I really don't think people should get worked up about this. In lower primary, they only need to read and get concept of numbers. In upper primary, writing, reading, fractions, times tables, place values are important, but you can incorporate it in everyday life.
Secondary, they should be able to engage themselves. If not, they won't anyway, even if the school is open.

YANBU. My son is too young for formal education, but he's learnt his alphabet and numbers from being stuck in front of countless Youtube videos as we try to wfh. I'm not proud of it, but survival comes first. If that means 6+ hours of screen time a day...We have bills to pay.

My neighbours have primary age children and we hear the arguments daily. They are unbelievably stressed. If the teacher starts getting at you for not submitting work, I'd just tell them to go away and stop harassing you. We've all gone collectively mad to assume that parents can simultaneously work and home educate...Why are we making parents feel bad for failing to do the impossible?

It used to be the case that companies denied wfh requests unless you could show you had childcare sorted...There was a reason for that.

In your shoes, I'd play to your son's strengths and choose some activities he enjoys. Or, if you feel you have to complete the set work, I'd just bribe him to do the stupid worksheets - 'pay per worksheet' might motivate him a bit better and avoid arguments. I use chocolate buttons as bribes here, but the price might have to be a bit higher for a 7 year old.