If you had a reception age child at home in the last school closures...

[Anotherunimaginativeusername]

...please can you give me your hints, tips and words of wisdom for home learning? School closures are looking increasingly likely.

DS is in reception, enjoying school and making progress with reading/phonics. But he is quite behind with fine motor, does not enjoy drawing, can't colour in, finds it hard to exert enough pressure with his pencil etc. Is very resistant to any drawing/writing activities. Won't spend any time doing threading activities, beads etc. If I can get him to draw he will just draw the same picture over and over (a boat, he is quite fixed in his interests).

He also has some speech issues, he is still unable to make certain sounds, I have chased up speech therapy through school but we are still waiting for assessment.

He loves numbers and has a good understanding of a lot of number concepts so I'm less concerned about that.

I'm most worried he will end up back in school in the summer term still unable to write. He's also quite difficult to engage in activities if he's not really interested, so I'm concerned about how I'll motivate him. He likes doing things on apps on the tablet (eg phonics app) but isn't good with video calls, he just gets silly after a few mins. I also have a small baby at home so quite a bit to juggle.

Any hints and tips for helping along a reluctant writer and just general tips for home learning in reception year very gratefully received. And is there any kit I should buy? Beyond paper/pencils,pens, glue, etc. He tells me he writes on a whiteboard at school? We have an android tablet.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions and tips.

My son was in EYFS during the main lockdown. He also hates writing but he was happy to do lots of phonics activities that didn't involve a pen.

In terms of writing, we did short activities and we based these entirely around my sons interests. Definitely use different media. We used chalk, painting with water/paint, pencil, felt tip, writing icing pens on biscuits and whiteboards. The most successful thing we had was using a whiteboard pen directly onto the tile or laminate floor. Started with drawing train tracks etc and then labelled the houses. Window chalk had the same effect. We also drew with our fingers on each other's backs and made sentences with letter stickers.

The teacher part of me thinks you need to be really careful not to put him off writing even further. Reading and telling stories, being silly with words and songs - these are just as important

Gosh, so many helpful responses. Thank you everyone. I will go through and make a list of ideas. This is all really helpful. Since posting I have got him (very reluctantly) to make a Christmas card for his brother, and after much encouragement he did actually write "To xxxx" and signed his own name at the end. I wrote the "merry christmas, love from" bit in the middle. Gave him lots of praise. So that feels positive.

I am not a teacher, but the impression I got with colouring activities is that they are provided by the school because they hekpo hand eye coordination but are also fun for lots of children. If you child doesnt enjoy drawing/colouring in there are probably lots of other activities that work too - there is nothing magical about couloring in specifically.
Finally - my son was reluctant at that age to do drawing/colouring in. He enjoys it more now he is older and better at it, but when he was reception age I found the best way was to settle down with a cup of tea and some felt tips and start doing some colouring in/doodling myself without specifically inviting him. Thats when it became super interesting to him and he wanted to join in.

In the summer we bought a pile of number blocks magazines. They were good.

I attempted to homeschool a Reception child in the first lockdown as well as a year 4 child. Year 4 child had much more work set by the school obviously, so helping her with it took priority, rightly or wrongly, over my younger child. We did reading books from the Oxford Owl website, Maths activities were suggested by the school and I occasionally had time to create a worksheet but we didn't have a printer and I was also working 13hr shifts outside the home, I don't think she wrote more than 2 words together until 1 day in the summer when, at her request, I wrote the title Minecraft in her book and she wrote a few sentences so base your activities on whatever he is interested in. I remember teaching maths by cutting out pictures of cakes from supermarket magazines to help! She was quite interested in year 4 Science topic on food webs too. School suggested some Maths games websites and she enjoyed Teach Your Monster To Read even though she already knew basic phonics. We decorated 'tricky words' with craft materials and stuck them on the wall (they are still there). She taught herself spelling from a game she found online somewhere. There are some good games for basic maths and phonics on the Cbeebies website.
It was really really hard and I am absolutely dreading a repeat, but she is now in Year 1, meeting expectations and doing well despite my poor attempts at teaching her. I tried to remember that Reception is about learning through play (though then her sister complained that she had to work while DD2 was playing), so she was learning by playing with toys, exploring the forest, cooking. One day she replicated Learning Through Play herself by setting up a shop, deciding how much things cost and telling me to come and buy things, then she told me I had to pay with real money!!

I found having a daily routine helped - once DS got used to it, it meant we didn't have daily battles about doing work. I also always used to provide some choice, some a few different worksheets to pick between etc which seemed to help.

We used to do a mix of a few worksheets (for no more than 20 min), something exercise based (cosmic kids yoga on YouTube or Amazon Prime or Andy's wild workouts on iPlayer), a phonics video (lettersandsounds.org.uk/for-home/reception ) and then a more game type piece of learning. This site had some good ideas for phonics / reading games phonicsfamilycom.wordpress.com/ .

I had a ds who (still at 13yo) hated and hates putting pen to paper.

However at reception age, I found that he was writing on his Nintendo dsi messages to his sisters.
There's a message area, and a drawing pen, and they were writing to each other.

Reading eggs is excellent

Jumbo chalks drawing on the pavement here. DD loved it and didn't realise it was writing practice! I also drew an exercise outline that she decorated with colouring in, small words like run + jump, and then we used it most days till it rained! I saw it on a FB group.

Definitely yes to the whiteboard.
Sand in a baking tray. Shaving foam on the worktop is fun.
But I wouldn’t force it either, nothing more likely to turn him off.
As someone says Lego etc for fine motor development.
Big thick pencils .
I wouldn’t be slavish to things sent home, try to do similar it tailored to his interests.

Reading - We did a lot of phonics sounds and red words (the ones you can't sound out), she was thoroughly drilled

Maths - school sent home a maths exercise each week, we watched a lot of numberblocks and we had a few activity books.

Writing - activity books, either maths or English based.

Dc had to do a certain amount of schoolwork each day then their time was their own. I would write out a list and they either had to pick 3 things or do the whole list, depended how creative I was feeling! DH did the actual work with them in a 2 hour window every morning, they both needed input so actual effort on their part was probably 1 hour each per day if that.

The Teach your Monster to Read app taught our monster to read, so I'd recommend that!

Treasure hunts are fun for reception age kids with written clues. It’s an arse ache thinking up the clues to fit with their phonics and their high frequency works but if pays off as they read without it being a chore. You need things they can read like “look on the stair” “on top of the book” “next to the chair” and so on and at each stage they get a new clue - then at the end maybe an activity they might like which has hidden learning in it. E.g in the case of your child something to do with a boat, like a colouring page of a boat or a dot to dot of a boat!

Or a treasure hunt in the run up to snack time and the prize is the snack that you’d have given them anyway.

Lots of great advice here. I also agree with what many posters have said here - it will suddenly "click" for them. So don't be too hard on yourself (and your DS) - you're doing a great job of raising your children!

Scrunching up newspaper one handed then trying to get it in the bin in one is good for building up hand strength and throwing skills.

My advice is don’t push stuff they don’t enjoy, it may turn him right off writing for a while if you do, plus in lockdowns it’s more important that they feel happy and relaxed than make great progress. I’m assuming any closure will be short...

So focus on phonics and reading as he likes those. For writing, literally anything fine motor or developing upper body strength will contribute in some way, so pick stuff he enjoys.

I got much too stressy about school work in the first lockdown and wish I hadn’t now.

Our boy also had speech delay/difficulties in reception and we found that the structure of phonics really helped him focus on practising saying the sounds. I'd focus on that and not worry about anything else.

Hopefully your school will help with phonics resources. But teach my monster to read is also excellent.

(Ps. In reception he was in the 'intervention' group where they didn't begin to start learning to read - just making sounds. Now in yr2 he is one of the best readers in the class.)