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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

School bloody projects

62 replies

ovaryhill · 31/08/2015 12:46

I'm wondering what guff the school will come up with this year
I think they should be banned, last year it was build a castle a moat and different rooms that reflect your personality
No nine year old is capable of this without considerable input of time and money and I'm quite sure it's not fair on those families with a really tight budget
Some kids took ones in that had working electrics!!!
Aibu to say they they are an absolute pest and I have neither the time, money or inclination to spend my weekends helping to paint bloody cereal boxes and shopping for tat to go in them?

OP posts:
coffeeisnectar · 31/08/2015 13:33

I hate these with a passion. Over the years we've done a castle, Viking boat, Viking shield, a booklet about Paris and without fail they've all needed huge help from me. I would rather spend a day out with my kids than spend a day at home making this crap.

I wouldn't mind so much except dd 2 teacher was off for a full term last year and she seemed to spend a lot of time watching dvds or out playing.

ihateminecraft · 31/08/2015 13:42

Our school is terrible for this. It becomes a competition of what parents can make the best stuff! We have complained but to no avail.

TheSecondOfHerName · 31/08/2015 14:02

I have started saving the models and recycling them when the next child is given exactly the same task two years later.

TheSilveryPussycat · 31/08/2015 14:04

When DS was 12 the project was to make a trebuchet - a fucking trebuchet. H did it with him - I wouldn't have had the first idea where to begin.

Yonks ago back in the mists of time, I had a geography project to make a 3d plaster of paris landscape model, and paint on contour lines as appropriate. For some reason - perhaps I didn't ask - I had no help and little idea of what was wanted and how to go about it. I ended up taking in a cast of a mixing bowl, while others had elaborate islands and mountains and things, presumably held up by chicken wire, and the product of parents who knew how to do this stuff. I was Blush

Then there were the decorated eggs for the kids' primary school Easter competition...

Geraniumred · 31/08/2015 14:18

Ours isn't too bad for that, but they have recently started those events where parents are expected to attend a workshop,with their child in school time. Drives me nuts. I already work in a different school so my hours fit in with school hours and I can't get time off.

Original poster
ovaryhill · 31/08/2015 14:19

I'm crying with laughter at the cast ofa mixing bowl! Sorry!

OP posts:
Spartans · 31/08/2015 14:27

A trebuchet??? Wtf?

Ds starts primary this year and me and dh are dreading projects....we didn't save dds Shock

TheSilveryPussycat · 31/08/2015 14:30

ovary I can see it now, in my mind's eye, even though it was over 40 years ago. We had to paint each contour section a different colour, so it was - a stripey upside-down mixing bowl Blush Blush

DarthVadersTailor · 31/08/2015 14:33

I would just not do it tbh. It seems as though everything with DS is a 'project' of some kind and very little HW of any substance, or use to their education. While of course I love to encourage his creative side with HW, every project he does seems to involve making a poster and/or doing research via Google to then make a PowerPoint presentation. And yet he gets literally nothing sent home in terms of mathematics or English language - surely some mathematical exercises and getting him to practice his English skills at home (which I feel is definitely what DS needs as English is his 2nd language) is more useful than building a fucking worm farm?! We always get him to read for a minimum of 30 mins a night on school nights anyway but there's always more to do and frankly I've not got that much time to do the things I feel he should be learning on top of all these silly projects they get him to do.....virtually all of which take up a good few hours of my time!!

Sometimes I just don't get the curriculum or what it hopes to achieve. When I asked his maths teacher about why he wasn't getting any maths homework (thinking he may have hoodwinked me into believing there was none when there was) and his teacher said she didn't feel it was that beneficial. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?! How can any maths HW NOT be beneficial?! She certainly couldn't explain it to me.

He's in Yr6 next year and I wonder what sort of stuff they'll be getting him to do. I worry because I know that secondary school will involve much more in terms of HW and time management and atm I just don't think his primary school do much that'll actually prepare him for this environment.......

Gileswithachainsaw · 31/08/2015 14:52

I never had homework at school. no one at my school did. had no problem learning to do it at secondary. difference at secondary is its relevant to what you were doing so not would he a page of equations or a boom review of the book the class Just read. you had the books and the texts and the awareness of what was needed to complete it.

In primary homework is just a pointless extra thrown in because parents seem to want it.

TheSilveryPussycat · 31/08/2015 14:56

I agree about primary homework giles. Which made it difficult for me to chivvy DD into doing hers.

I had homework at secondary school, and a proper Homework Timetable, to go with my lesson timetable. Not like the DC, who had a homework notebook and seemed to be given homework in a much more random fashion.

Gileswithachainsaw · 31/08/2015 15:03

I think that between breakfast clubs, school, extra curricular activities and after school clubs children have a longer "working" day than adults.

Kids should come home and play and have dinner at a reasonable time then go to bed at a decent time.

They should not be stuck doing homework when they have been at stuff all day and need time.to unwind.

many will get limited time.with their parents due to work commitments. who wants to spend the hour a night they get with whatever parent worked late doing homework

just let them go play. they have their whole lives to be overworked and underpaid ffs.

BrandNewAndImproved · 31/08/2015 15:09

Our school has a good system where they have hw that has to be done, think spelling and times tables, another set of hw that they can do easily on their own or with little input and another set of hw that's a proper project. It's up to the parent how much extra hw they want their dc to do.

mmgirish · 31/08/2015 15:12

I'm a teacher and I hate things like that. I never set project homework as it ends up being done by interested/competitive parents or by the nannies.

mellowheart · 31/08/2015 15:19

Call me old fashioned but I don't even think Primary school kids should get homework, little children are tired out after school....and parents having to sit with them going through reading and writing? My DD has barely time to sit down and eat when she gets in. Working full time and looking after kids and doing all the housework, the last thing she needs is to start dong homework. But doing these projects, where she has to rush out and start buying stuff and then assembling it? Bloody ridiculous!

mellowheart · 31/08/2015 15:23

Another thing I've noticed....homework causes friction, kids can't be bothered/too tired, after doing it all day/ parent exhausted trying to help force tired school to do it.

Gileswithachainsaw · 31/08/2015 15:26

yy mellow

I've lost counts of how many arguments and late nights homework has caused.

I hate having to turn people away who come and call for dd to play.

fresh air, exercise, socialising, tree climbing or den making or tennis or riding bikes? oh no, let's just draw house hold objects in various stages of fractions.

not like sun is good for them.or anything

ValancyJane · 31/08/2015 15:31

The assistant head responsible for teaching and learning (he gets a bit carried away, and is a PE teacher and is very big on active learning type things) at my school has recently had a brainwave that all Year 7, 8 and 9 homework should be project based. He will not be dissuaded from this plan at all. I have managed to sneak some 'options' into our area so 'make a PowerPoint / make a Podcast / create an informative leaflet' in amongst the 'create a model / write and film a play' etc so hopefully it won't be TOO bad from a parent's perspective (I had these threads in mind).

I wish we didn't have to bloody set any homework at all until GCSE level! Some kids don't do it, or do the bare minimum (so the value of doing it at all is questionable), the kids that are conscientious are squeezing it in around their extra curricular activities and can get themselves into a right state over it all sometimes.

EponasWildDaughter · 31/08/2015 15:40

Wombat - We always set a 'project' over the summer holidays... it could be a poster, some facts that they've researched or anything else they can think of. Some come in with elaborate models, others with a scrap of paper. It makes no difference to me as long as they've done something!

Argghh! Why set it then? If it makes no difference how much effort is put in? Lots of parents (like me) will have spend ill afforded time, money, stress and effort trying to produce something - and it never mattered! Let the school holidays simply be a holiday from school work. Pretty please?

WombatStewForTea · 31/08/2015 15:52

Eponas

  1. Because I have to set summer homework.
  2. It actually prepares them for the topic that they're going to be learning about.
  3. We make it very clear that it is for the children and up to them what they produce. There is always a note that says to the parents that they can write some notes/do a poster or whatever they want. They choose. If the parents want to make an all singing all dancing model then they can. If they don't then they don't! It is their choice! We make that very explicit. I've never had any complaints!
MyVisionsComeFromSoup · 31/08/2015 15:57

what winds me up most of all is that certain teachers insist that their project be marked on how well you can draw freehand and write neatly in felt tip pen (thinking of the "make a poster about x" type homeworks). None of my 3 DDs are particularly good at that kind of thing, and although they found out loads about x and could talk for hours about it, because they were left-handed/too perfectionist to even try as it would go wrong/much handier with a mouse than a felt tip, they got rubbish marks. And it was always in the less academic subjects that the biggest stressy projects came bloody FT and their sodding A3 or bigger posters. I have wasted hours colouring in secondary age projects, thank goodness DD3 has one more year before GCSEs [sigh].

MyVisionsComeFromSoup · 31/08/2015 15:59

although I loved the story DD1 came home with about one child who had thought hard about the science project to build a model of a cell. He made a bowl of jelly with a sweet in the middle for the nucleus, left it on the table to set overnight, then had to confess to the teacher the next day that he didn't have his homework as his little sister had eaten it Grin.

Original poster
ovaryhill · 31/08/2015 16:01

Ds homework last week: long list of every electrical household item you can imagine, he then had to work out how long they were used for each day and how many people used them and work out the energy used
He was crying trying to do it and I put in a note saying so and that I didn't have the time or inclination to work out how long I used the iron or hair straighteners for or the kilowatts used
There were about thirty items on the list!

OP posts:
Original poster
ovaryhill · 31/08/2015 16:08

Other homework I have refused to let them do on account of it being none of their business includes, write out you family tree, a drawing of your house with all the rooms it has and everyone who lives in it
The family tree one I felt could be particularly insensitive for some people

OP posts:
TheSilveryPussycat · 31/08/2015 16:08

A project over the summer would have just ruined the holidays for me. It would have hung over me till the last week, spoiling everything, before a last week of having to do the bloody thing.