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?

YABU please let him enjoy the holidays

YABU.
Read to him. Buy him comics. Keep a diary (Literacy)
Draw pictures in it (art)
Keep a scrapbook (D&T and art)
Bake and cook with him. Shop. (Maths)
Go for walks/to the woods/to the park/to the beach (science)
Play on the computer (ICT)

Etc, etc.

And not at a set time, for a set time every day.

And you get involved with it too.

He's a boy. More likely to be a kinasthetic or visual learner. So no worksheets and no sitting down for twenty minutes a day.

Definitely drop the workbooks, they are grim and boring and...ugh..you will turn him right off education!

I'm with Nanny. WHy do people think it has to be done at a desk in a formal way to be learning? There are many ways to ensure your DCs progress (never mind not going backwards) in the holidays which don't involve sitting down with a worksheet. All the things she says, plus going to places of interest and going through the guide book together, watching Olympics and finding out about the sports/athletes/countries involved etc.
Other countries (all of them I think, certainly most) have longer summer hoildays than us and it doesn;t seem to do them any harm...

Nope not at all.

My 7 and 8 year olds are doing an hour a day.Kids differ as do schools.If you're fortunate to have swotty kids attending private schools who excel at everything then I guess you don't need to do anything.

If your kids go to mediocre schools and have areas they need to work on the long summer hols are waaaaay better than trying to do stuff during term time.And seriously I really don't think an hour out of a day is hardship by any stretch of the imagination.

My son is a leftie and needs all the writing practice he can get,dd has crap confidence in maths so we're working on core skills to boost her confidence-it's a no brainer as far as I'm concerned.

I've bribed mine with a footstep chart off Netmums,they colour in a foot every time they do an hour without moaning,distracting others.If they do a fab piece of work they get an extra foot.15 feet then it's a reward.We're doing Summer Journals,work books and they read loads anyway.

They're having a ball.So far they've camped in Cornwall for 10 days whilst spending the majority on gorgeous beaches(wrote postcards,journals on the odd night),gone wild camping on the moor this weekend,been to the library heaps,the park,constantly out on their bikes doing time trials,reading comics,woods,rivers,playdates.....

It's an hour a day folks with 1:1 attention not slave labour and it's a whole lot better than being on an XBox.

YADNBU- I think half an hour a day is fine tbh. As another poster pointed out, she knows her own child . I admit to working with my dc's during the holidays
I haven't done anything with my ds during the last few weeks and as a result he has forgotten many of the things that he has learned. I have therefore decided that he will do some type of educational activity for an hour daily
I couldn't give a hoot what other parents think of my decision tbh.

I've got an 8 year old son (and 3 teenagers). I work in a school, as does DP. Our son does feck all in the holidays. There is time enough when they are at secondary school for holiday homework. As long as he 'reads', is interacted with, taken out to places etc then why impose formal study sessions at that age?

I applaud the sentiment, but think the delivery could be better.

sounds like ur ds is having miserable summer -1-2 hrs perday-mad imo. you can encourage reading in better ways like prev posters said

Wholeheartedly agree with teacherwith2kids. Try and incorporate a bit of maths and reading into his daily routine. Worksheets and forcing him to read is just teaching him that learning is a dull chore to be fought against. We've been doing lots of cooking here and I'm encouraging my 7 year old to read the recipe books. They're having pocket money for the first time which is helping with their maths as they count it and work out how much they have versus how much they need to buy whatever their favourite toy is. There's also so much they can learn that isn't necessarily being taught in school, how much have our kids learnt about sports and athletics over the last couple of weeks??!

I really wouldn't bother. We had family friends who used to force their kids into doing holiday homework whilst my parents let us do what we liked.

All that happened was that by secondary they hated learning whilst we enjoyed it.

YABU
You can do lots for fun.
Maths is cooking-practical tasks.
Visit the library-they probably have a holiday reading scheme.
Play lots of card games, board games, chess etc.

I don't understand all the people who think that children need a six week summer holiday. Yes, a holiday, but six weeks is a really long time - and isn't all based on when children used to help with the harvest? I don't think it is at all unreasonable to do a bit of formal learning every day. But if there is no particular area that the child needs to concentrate on, then maybe give them a bit more choice about what they are learning?

DS1 (7) loves the BBC Bitesize website (because he gets extra screen time owing to it being educational), and has also been learning to touch type using the BBC Dance Mat typing website. We also found a Horrible Science "Blood, Bones and Body Bits" kit in a charity shop, and we're getting him to keep notes on the experiments we do as he needs to practise his writing. (He particularly enjoyed the experiment making fart noises with vinegar, bicarb and a balloon!)

YABVU! He is 8! Let him have his holiday!
In your OP you say 30 mins H/W per day, but you then say it is actually a 1-2 hour battle of wits!
Surely you can see that a 1-2hour battle every day is the best way to make sure your dc ends up loathing learning!
It's not really the same thing, but I was made to do a weekly bible study, during my ontact visit with DF, when all I wanted to do was spend time with my absent father. I ended up loathing the bible, resenting my parent and I am still, to this day bitter that he made me do it.
There are many ways to educate your child. Take them out and show them the world!

YABU, sorry, he is 8 and it is the summer holidays! I think it would be great if you could get it to do it happily but I wouldn't want to be getting into a battle over this at his age. It is not going o make that much odds to him and just causes problems, although you can do some vaguely educational things with him, museums, chess, theatre or whatever.

If you really do want to do this have you considered a tutor? He might enjoy the attention and it would probably be more focused learning.

I never got my DC's to do extra work and, apart from when they were very little, never supervised their homework. I told them it was up to them. They are older teens now and all very responsible and hardworking with their school/Uni work. They all eventually learnt to manage their work themselves and are proud of it. I think if you are over controlling with schoolwork DC's can start to forget that they should, first and foremost, be working for themselves and not their parents. (We never gave them any rewards for good reports either....). I know this won't work for all DC's but it worked for our family.

We had a 3 week Winter break here recently and I got DS2 (13) and DD (9) to do half an hour Mathletics most days, basically because neither of them are great at maths and DDs teacher suggested that she would benefit from not having a total break over the holidays. It wasn't a big deal tbh, but I don't think asking them to do workbooks would have been so well received.

YABU

It's the school holidays, it should be a break from school.

There are loads of things you can do that imbed literacy and numeracy without making him study.

Bake a cake.
Build a model.
Got to a museum.
Go to a fun fair and tell him he has x pounds and what is he going to spend it on?
Go swimming - how fast is a legnth what is the average over 4 legnths etc etc

DoItOnce has it right- what you are doing is counter productive - people have given lots of examples of things to do that are imaginative and fun. They do involve getting involved yourself - it is much easier to sit down with a worksheet, except in this case it isn't because of the argument.

Coming back to this briefly.

As teracher (I teach Year 3, so about the same age), what would I prefer to have in my class in September?

• A child who was jumping up and down with enthusiasm to tell me all about all the exciting things he had done during the holiday, quite happy to get back to school work after a good rest but whose reading and writing was a little rusty

OR

• A child who had had a 1-2 hour battle with his parents each day over 'school type' work, so whose reading and writing was technically up to scratch but whose enthusiasm about learning had taken a severe knock.

If you can find a way to work some maths, reading and writing into a few days each week through exciting and motivating and involving activities (I agree with exotic - this does mean getting involved yourself, but then so does arguing for a couple of hours ach day over dull work not done ... much better for both of you if the 1:1 time is positive not negative ...) then that is obviously ideal.

If you can't do that, I would much rather teach a child with their love of learning intact but with a couple of weeks of hard teaching needed to bring academic skills back up to scratch (I plan for this anyway) than a child who had spent 1-2 hours each day over the holiday battling over worksheets!

Apologies for typos!

Encourage him to read instead - find out what really interests him and take it from there. Does he read Diary of a Wimpy kid? Norm series of books? Captain Underpants? Horrible Histories? They are all great books for getting the going.

Sorry I disagree.My kids read all the time.Ds still has writing issues and dd still has shocking confidence in maths.We simply don't have the time to do anything about it mid term as they're knackered.

In the holidays my dc do pretty much everything everybody has mentioned but none will help either in the areas they need to improve.

My dc are eager to learn,have never had any complaints from teachers before and we've always done a bit in the hols only re my leftie which improved massively after teacher and I worked together at home/school.Since his confidence has improved in writing he's doing better across the entire curriculum and is 100% more enthusiastic.

Have read a lot of complete nonsense on here by people who don't want to do work with their own dc.Fine if you don't want to/need to then don't.However don't berate,indulge in inaccurate scare mongering towards those that have dc with issues or who are attending lacklustre schools.

My dc are having a fab holiday as described above,are missing out on zero,doing simply an hour a day and are working towards rewards which they are starting to enjoy.They are also starting to learn that if you want to improve in anything you have to put a bit of effort in which is a good life lesson.We get it out of the way first thing(probably before most dc are even up) and they get to do whatever they like the rest of the day.

Hardly a hardship.

Have read a lot of complete nonsense on here by people who don't want to do work with their own dc.Fine if you don't want to/need to then don't.However don't berate,indulge in inaccurate scare mongering towards those that have dc with issues or who are attending lacklustre schools.

Really? Scare mongering? Complete nonsense? People who don't want to work with their own DCs?
Where did you read that?

Because from what I can see, the ops 8 year old is not having specific issues at school, does not need extra tuition to catch up and having half an hours work presented to him is causing 2 hours of refusing, getting upset, crying etc.

If your DCs are enthusiastic about learning and love sitting down to do work in the holidays that's great.
However I do not use reward charts etc to get my 8 year old to do work I have found for him in the holidays. He reads because he enjoys it. He also shock horror watches tv, plays on the computer, goes to swimming and football etc. that is what he enjoys. Same thing I did with my older DCs and they have done pretty well academically.

Everyone parents in a different way and to dismiss a view that you do not agree with as nonsense, is wrong, don't you think?

People are giving the op advice on how to make learning, reading etc more fun for her dc so he can learn rather than cry.

Don't forget that as well as practice in the technical skills of writing they also need experiences to draw on to give them something to write about and also when they tackle topics in history, geography and science at school it makes a world of difference if they have some context which they gain from visits and wider reading. It amazed me when I was teaching year six how many bright children lacked the real world experience of shadows, cookery and nature to name but three that helped so much when looking at light, basic chemistry and biology. And being fresh and keen to get back to formal learning is worth so much. Also, if you don't think you can accurately decide what best to work on to improve his technical skills, all the worksheets you've spent hours cajoling him into doing won't make any difference anyway.

Prarieflower I don't think people are saying it is wrong to give your kids works as long as it works for you and your kids. Some kids like to have things to do and if you make it interesting all the better.

Also, if my kids were struggling in any way then I would be looking for ways to help them in any way I could and that would probably consider holiday work.
What is important is to look long term and not just at the next report. You want your DC's to be self-motivated, to be able to manage and organise their own work and to work because they want to.