to insist on doing 1/2 hr homework during summer hols...?

[RichTeas]

Is it really unreasonable to expect an 8 y.o. to do about 30 mins worth of study (daily) during the summer weeks away from school? The problem of course is not the 30 mins, it's the fact that the "study" which might include reading a chapter from a reader and/or a few pages from a workbook can take 1-2 hours to get done, as DS does his utmost to avoid it. I would be the first to say spending hours fighting over homework is not the ideal way to start the day, but it should only take half an hour (when he co-operates it can take 20 mins). So it's a battle of wills, but should I give in and save our summer?

I think that you need to find a way to get the tension out of the situation.

Are you worried about the level of his reading skills slipping behind his age group or are you hoping that with a bit of pressure reading is something he will take to? If it is his skill and confidence that are lacking then absolutely I think you need to be creative and find a way to support him (and a six week break won?t help him) ? and with any luck you may ultimately find that you have a happy reader on your hands.

But if his skills are fine (even if not world beating) you may be pushing him away from the very outcome you want as the activity gets more and more associated with battling and struggling with you.

Summer seems to be a great time for the more imaginative options of reading and writing ? the ones that get crowded out with the formal academic curricula ? it would probably be a lot harder for you to arrange but the less the daily ?input? was in a formal sit down and take your medicine kind of way then the more the dividends will pay off. 8 year olds are endlessly curious aren?t they? Isn?t this the time of year to discover astronomy (NASA are a goldmine right now), Olympic facts, natural science (anything from bugs to clouds to building your own stink bomb), how the Egyptians built the pyramids, how to design your own Crusader castle, how to command your own Armada etc etc (I?m guessing wildly as am a bit out of touch with 8 year old boys but you get the picture).

If you can get him excited you may win the battle hands down, but I really would do your utmost to work with whatever ?grain? you can find in him rather than against him.

YANBU to worry about summer regression and lack of enthusiasm for reading, but your current approach is clearly not working.

Do you read him a bedtime story? Getting him into an Alex Rider/Percy Jackson thriller is a good way to motivate him to read on (DS steals the "bedtime" copy of Series of Unfortunate Events to read ahead). Board games (especially ones with quite challenging rules) or recipes are good for encouraging functional literacy.

YANBU, my son is expected to do 1/2 hour per day, 5 days a week during the holidays. He has 9 weeks of summer holidays and otherwise he would go back to school having forgotten lots of stuff. I always did this as a child and I think it is beneficial

In my experience, both my children need about two weeks of doing absolutely nothing that resembles school work, to get school "out of their system". They both love school, enjoy their schoolwork and read a lot for pleasure. But they still take that long to unwind.

On that basis, I think YABU because you are denying your son the chance to unwind and get ready for a new school year. And I think he is telling you that by making an almighty fuss about doing anything.

There are plenty of ways of keeping a child's brain busy without doing anything that feels like "work".

I think everyone has said what needs to be said, chiefly: YANBU to worry about summer regression, but you can't (and won't) make him like it if you continue as you are.

Do you want him to improve at some key skill (reading, writing, maths) or do you want to foster curiosity and a love of learning?

I teach undergraduates and the 'best' students aren't necessarily the most well-read, as all students here are heavily coached and tutored and extra-homeworked to exhaustion by the time they get to an ivy league university. My very strongest students are the most curious and the best critical thinkers.

I think (since we're talking education!) you need to decide on your pedagogical goals. "30 minutes of homework a day" is as pointless a goal (certainly to me, and I'd imagine to an 8 year old) as "30 minutes of music practice" or "30 minutes of aerobic exercise". Yes, all of these 'practices' can lead to great things, but "get ready to play in the concert" or "run x distance in x time" is a better motivator than "practice for the sake of it, I'm your mother, it's good for you."

If you want him to be a stronger reader, a more curious person, or a better critical thinker then you're going to have to do more than an exercise book, I'm afraid. Yes, let him pick stuff out from the library, and then see if you can find something to do locally that fits into those interests (tour of town football ground, National Trust site, Bus depot, whatever) and talk to him about planning a trip there, give him a 'project' type interest in it. Make it something finite and concrete.

I'm not an early-childhood educator so these are just some random thoughts, not professional. But work out what you want him to gain from this work, and then decide what it should look like. It sounds like he thinks it's boring and pointless, and I think you are going to have to prove that ain't so.

P.S. Well done you for being so involved, btw.

Personally think you need to change your approach. If you want him to do learning that's up to you but starting ever day with a row about sitting at a table doing a workbook will be forming a negative relationship for him about learning.

How about doing more active learning? If you want to practice spelling you could do word searches, cross words, ten mins in garden write down as many things as you can find, plan a meal and write the shopping list and calculate amounts if you wanted to make more/less, write a play based on favourite tv programme, see s film and write a review, do a research project on a theme of his choice.

Many invest sometime in finding books he'll like. My brother wasnt a big reader until he found Darren Shan and all those SAS type books.

My mum used to make us do work books and it just felt like we were being punished and she thought we were stupid so I always did mine but through a veil of tears and my brother wouldn't so would be sent to his room and I remember he shouting at him that he'd end up a bin man.

I don't think you want your son to have memories like that when you could get the same results without workbooks.

Have you explained to him why you want him to do them? He might not understand about slipping back and just think you think he's thick.

Really we are life long learners; and our learning sometimes is fast and
sometimes slow. So what if they forget a few things over summer they're only little and they'll pick it up quickly enough again. Everything they do is learning- cooking, playing with toys, running outside, going to the park, etc. I'd relax and let him do some informal learning. I'm sure when the time comes hel'l still graduate high school/ go to university or college or whatever he wants regardless of what he did when he was 8; but he'll only be 8 once.

Depends...is he behind/need extra help?
My ds1 has sen and needs work on his spelling and Maths so I am doing some work with him 4 days a week (had a week "off" for our hols).
It's not too taxing, the issue I have is at I have a 3 year old ds2 to try and keep happy whilst we are doing it...

What about games on the CBBC website? Phonics play? Education city? Mathletics?

I agree with black currants...ds1 does some time on a Maths game called big brainz but he chooses how much time he spends in that..so it could be 5 mins or 15 mins.
Then we do 1 level of apples and pears which is a spelling and punctuation workbook which takes about 10 mins.
He also chooses a book to read from each night but again, sometimes it's only a page if he is tired.

RichTeas,
I think you are quite reasonable to make your son do a bit of school work each day. Have you considered bribary.

I have made my son do small amounts of academic work in the holidays in the past or guitar practice. I suggest the book

www.amazon.co.uk/Talk-Kids-Will-Listen-Child/dp/1853407054

I am a pushy mother, but I don't care. I think having a childhood of nothing but continous play is a bit like the Emperor's new clothes. No one ever admits to pushing their children, but lots of families make their children do extra academic work at some point. Certainly Asian parents have no qualms about making their children work and that is why asian ecomonies are doing so well.

reallytired my DCs do extra academic work.
They work bloody hard during term time. They all play competitive sport as well. But the 8 year old does not have half hour worksheets to do in the summer holidays.

DD (6) reads about 15 mins a day, does a couple of Maths tests from the letts book, and an English exercise, also letts. She takes about 10mins each for Maths and english. Reads after brekkie, Maths after lunch, English after dinner. Breaking it up works for us, plus she chooses to do it. There's been research done on loss of progress during school hols, and they found that children continuing school work in hols is beneficial. My parents used to make me do homework on the hols, I think it's a good idea.

My mum's just been reading this over my shoulder and says to do 1hr a day every other day instead. She comes from a country where children do holiday homework as standard. Her reasoning is if he has to do it everyday it'll seem like a massive chore, but a 1/2hr isn't enough as it's not really enough time to do everything when you consider how much time can be spent fidgeting.

Personally, from comparing myself with my cousins back home I think it's a good idea to get into the routine of homework/independent study early so it's less of a shock to the system when you get older.

Children forget a lot over the holidays. At the age of eight it is very hard to concentrate as long as half an hour on a piece of work. Whether worksheets is the best way to keep the brain active I am not so sure.

Children need to be mentally challenged to develop their brain cells.

Reasonable to be doing it, unreasonable to be making it a misery.

Do a holiday diary, write a story, write cartoons, his own comic - anything to be writing a little each day. Send secret notes, or keep a spy blog - whatever is likely to interest him.
and
Find games and puzzles which improve mental maths. Being the Banker in Monopoly involveds LOADS of mental maths. Maths games on the DS.

Get him some magazines about things that interest him - space or nature or whatever.

Use your imagination and don't make it a chore. And it doesn't have to be a strict time limit each day.

Having said all that, DS is doing no homework, but he is playing his guitar, learning french from a DVD and some apps, and reading books like mad.

YANBU - I am making sure I am doing reading most days with ds who is 5, but that is because I don't want him to forget all the reading he has learned this year! with my 8yo dd, I am leaving her to do her own thing which naturally includes reading, drawing, writing etc every day.

Are you making it fun for ds? Coudl you do a task he loves but make it learning in a sneaky way??? Does your lcoal library have a reading scheme that he could do, and get a certificate/medal at the end? My two love that.

YABU. It's the summer HOLIDAY. The clue is in the name - it is supposed to be a break from schoolwork.

On the basis of "it never did me any harm" I will mention that I didn't do any homework at all until secondary school, and I ended up with a postgrad level education and a professional career. I did read a lot as a child though. Probably because no one made me.

Im a teacher and I would say YABU.

The absolute best thing you can do to help a child academically is read to them.

I hated my primary school aged child being given vast amounts of homework. I think it is always given to appease pushy parents not for any appreciable benefit to the child.

If you think that he MUST read and write during the holiday, then think 'outside the box' of conventional books and worksheets.

Go to a museum / historic house / other place of interest. Print out the directions from Bing or Google Maps and get him to read them to you as you go (or teach him to map read, and get him to do it from a road atlas - adding up the distances to find out how far it is still to go would help his maths too). Get a children's trail or guidebook, and elect him as the gude, so he reads out relevant parts of the guidebook all the way round. many places have trails, so that would mean writing too. Buy a postcard in the gift shop, and ask him to write a postcard to someone - his best friend, granny or the cat, doesn't matter. make up oral stories as you go round 'just imagine if there was alittle boy who lived here, what would he do?' type of thing.

Think about online reading - is he interested in the Olympics? Could he find out some latest news, or something else about a sport he is interested in? make a poster showing the timings of the different stages in an event and write to fill in the winners?

Play lots of games with him. Many - Top Trumps, for example - involve reading and maths. Rummikub, Cluedo, Monopoly ... get him to read the rules, and the cards, etc etc.

Organise for him to do the shopping e.g. for a picnic - make a list, get him to choose everything and work out whether he has enough money for it - he can add a treat if he has enough left over but he has to know that before he reaches the till...

Or learn a new skill together. My son is currently on his second Lego animation - he plots them, takes the photos, edits them, adds dialogue (which he writes down for himself and others to read) and sound effects. Windows Moviemaker is free, there are ven better options on a Mac.

So much can be learned outside school, and it is so much more engaging, motivating, experiential than is possible in school. Why waste time doing 'school things' when you could be learning so much better and so much more??

And read him a bedtime story every night. Or read one page, and get him to suggest how the story might continue, or talk about the characters, or whatever.....

If you were to say "Aibu to make sure the school holidays contribute to my ds's education?" I would say a resounding no. By using the word insisting and calling it homework you make me say yabu. Our children continue to be educated in the holidays. We bake, go to the park, read books, talk about the Olympics. I correct their grammar (a bit about that but I can't help it). We write letters to imaginary creatures (a mouse and a rabbit at the moment) who write back. Dd likes doing workbooks so when she wants to she does. We have visited a castle and learnt about knights and a Victorian house where we learnt about Victorian times (and they spent a happy time comparing the willies on statues whilst looking very studious indeed . Dd is spending a day doing gym next week amd they're going fossil hunting tomorrow. We have really enjoyed not having to dance to school's tune regarding homework. They have also driven me nearly to distraction but no one's perfect (the reason for the fossil hunting trip with dh tomorrow ). So, homework, no. Education, yes. Seems a shame to spend the whole holiday on a ds or watching a DVD (although we've had a fair bit of telly too) and an equal shame to spend it getting them to do stuff with unproven value. If you're as concerned and commuted as you obviously are, you'll find it impossible to waste the holidays. Education will continue whether you like it or not! It's whether you all enjoy it that's the thing to achieve.

Committed not commuted

When DS was younger, for many holidays it was decided that he should do extra practice with spelling in particular, it usually went the same way that you have described, a half hour task takng a couple of hours and associated with shoutng cryng, refusal etc etc etc. when he got a little bit older it was decided that he should have a 'job' to do over the holidays to 'stop him getting bored' and 'teach him the benefit of work'.

I am now a single mum, DS is now 16, DD's are 6&3. DS has since told me that he used to hate the holidays, and couldn't wait to get back to school away from home .

Dd1 is very different from DS, she likes making up stories, enjoys playing school, writing instructions etc, but is finding her reading a bit tough. But, having learned from the last time, no way will I be making her read every day.

Try doing things with him for a couple of hours in the morning instead... There are some great suggestions above that can work maths, reading and writing into something fun he is dong WITH you. Then in years to come insead of hearing 'remember how you used to make me do homework during the holidays? I hated doing that' you will hear 'I remember when we made that castle, and you helped me find out all about king Arthur, and we made a sword and went to that castle.....it was great, I loved it' and you will know you have done a good job.

My instinctive feeling is that your approach will be accepted by children who don't need it, and will be resented and therefore counterproductive for those who are finding school work difficult for whatever reason.

^ that was to the OP, BTW