To wish that for two weeks school was just school

[Flatoutnautilus]

Sorry, have to post this as perhaps I'm just being lazy...
Remember when school was just plodding along for a bit and making friends and working on in-school (!) projects, doing a bit of reading and the highlight was a school play?

When did schooling turn into the action packed and exhausting venture that it has now become with such a mind boggling array of themed days and events all of which seem to need parental involvement ?

In the last two weeks my kids (DS5 and DS6) have had spell-a-thon, raising £ for charity with chores, dress up Friday, gym presentation (two separate costumes needed), two school plays, two away matches, two out of school projects needing completion, a grandparents celebration breakfast, homework every night including 'grammar', spelling, maths and a bake sale. It's really the extracurriculars that drive me round the bend.

Perhaps some kids really need this high octane level approach to keep them engaged but I tend to think it must be an adult's view of what is interesting because neither of my two (& they are usually very enthusiastic about most things) can get keyed up about any of it so I spend my time trying to motivate them to participate while slightly sharing their view that it's all a bit unnecessary. Am I being a stick in the mud? Or is this rammed packed school diary of 'extras' just symptomatic of the hyper stimulated environment that we all live in now?

For two weeks a year I would really like to school to clear the decks on the diary front and just teach the kids without all the extras. Maybe even let them play around with the concept of boredom and see what happens...

I agree. We've had 'build a Scottish animal out of recyclable materials' in the last week or so and for world book day this Thurs have 'make your favourite book character out of a potato'. This is on top of homework, after school activities, our full time work and general family time where we do stuff we like as opposed to going to the craft shop in a retail park.

I would like to see far less 'stuff' and more focus on the basics.

This is already terrifying me and DD hasn't even been born yet! My parents were on low incomes so I was always the child in school who didn't have the right materials for a craft project or fancy dress costume or pocket money for snacks on a school trip. Despite my mother being very resourceful and doing her absolute best, I never fit in and the other kids always used to ask why I didn't have whatever costume/project/etc I was supposed to have. the teachers used to ask too, insensitive bastards

Now I'm disabled (adult-onset chronic illness) and a single mother, so I know that I won't be able to provide all the extras for my own child. She'll have a home and clothes and three meals a day but I am so scared of her being the odd-one-out at school like I was, for little to no educational benefit. Please complain to your kids' schools if you think they're asking too much, so by September 2020 things might have changed!

To be fair Mombino, you get extra points these days for home made. In fact, I can think of certain middle class schools where spending money on a costume is frowned upon because it doesn't show creativity.

The real problem is when the parent has no spare money or creativity.

Schools love these dressing up days because it plays to the learning style of the 10% who are Kinesthetic Learners - they get it best when they've seen in touched it. Hearing about it and reading about it are not enough.

seen and touched it.

typos gah!

This is a very interesting and timely thread.

Even though my lot are finished with Primary, I feel your pain.

Things were bad enough when mine were younger, but it seems as if the whole crazy merry go round has ramped up a notch.

It must be hell for the parents, the teachers and I wouldn't mind betting the children get fed up with every little thing being turned into an 'event'

Both mine are in juniors and it is relentless, still. There seems to be nobody in charge of any sort of "master timetable" because events are timetabled straight on top of each other. One day, my ds had 5 extras /special events timetabled in one day, he was only 6!! I had to wrap him up in a blanket and lay him on the sofa after all that!

I agree entirely. If you teach in a secondary school you find that for much of the year you get little chance to teach your actual subject as most of the pupils are missing from your class most of the time due to the latest charity event, counselling session, field trip, special assembly, concert rehearsal, themed day, whatever. Add to that the testing and exam season and the actual teacher:pupil time in an average term is tiny.

Parents and teachers seem to agree: we are all exhausted! Who is driving this? Why don't we all agree to calm down?

Secondary is basically Primary, minus all the dressing-up days.

Have you read Simplicity Parenting? It basically agrees with your OP (ie less is more). Maybe someone should distribute copies to the schools.

This week dd has a school choir trip which she gets home from at 10.30pm! followed by World book day and another dress up day on Friday! And she went to another school yesterday for a SATs workshop but she only managed 4 questions the whole morning? Every week is like this. I'm all for the odd inspirational day but when do they get to ordinary lessons and learn some English and Maths. It's no wonder now SATs are looming the teacher is panicking and has sent home about 6 hours of homework this week which dd will be too exhausted to do well and she was expected to be at school at 8am this morning for a booster class.

I don't recognise this at all. DD is 6 and her school doesn't do any of this! She goes to one after school club and so far since she's been at school she's had 1 dress up day. There have been some non uniform days and the occasional non-compulsory make something project but nothing like what you're all describing!! State school.

I love it and so do my children.

Wholeheartedly agree.

yanbu at all. It is mind-boggling and actually quite stressful for children and parents.
When I was at junior school I remember having to dress up once and that was for a Victorian day where we then had lessons in some kind of Victorian style.
There was a handful of non-uniform days around children in need and that was it. That was enough, there is enough else to do as a child.

YANBU at all. It's a nightmare, sometimes it causes me stress-attacks, because I'm told the night before that they have to have Silly Socks on the next day and bring in £1 for charity, or they need to choose a poem, and learn it by heart over the weekend, or they need "brown clothes" to play a horse in a play - 'but please don't feel you have to buy anything new' - sure, all 8yr old girls have brown clothes ready in their wardrobe etc etc. French Day, Roman Day, Victorian Day, Egyptian Day. Plus there is a lot of homework in primary now, reading every night, spellings, maths, English, times tables, build a fucking Tudor House.

Phew. Got that off my chest.

Mombino this is me now (child is 8 though) and one way I have gotten around it is to start saving things for the crafty stuff you have to do. I have a box full of silver foil wrappers from sweets at xmas, a few cereal boxes, shoe boxes, loo roll tubes, weird and wonderful odds and ends, ribbons from gifts, gift bags with shiny bits on, even cards from xmas and birthdays are saved because they are so useful.

I keep some old clothes of mine and DS usually ones in bold colours to cut up and fashion into costumes.My t-shirts make great tunics for Roman and Greek themed days, my scarves can become part of a toga.

Old tights and leggings are so so handy.One year for book day I stuffed 2 pairs of some black kids leggings and pinned them to a sweat shirt so DS could go as a spider for book day. Last year for greek day I cut holes in a while pillowcase to make a tunic, added one of my woven belts and got DS to stick laurel leaves from the garden onto a card headband. It cost pennies and the pillowcase tunic will come out again at some point.

Its also amazing what you can do with duct tape and cardboard!

I do find it all relentless though but preparing is the only thing I can do. I don't donate to every charity and the sponsor for we had through this week I wont donate to because I don't agree with the charity. Just like I never EVER do the xmas shoe box gift for that Christian charity because I don't agree with their practices.

My DS misses out on a few things because I can't and wont do everything.

and dont get me started on the relentless class assemblies and the time wasted for the kids to sit through them every couple of weeks. not to mention the time out each class has to prepare for them!

I think it depends on the school.

My children were at a rapidly expanding school and there was something going on most days, it's like they were always trying to be better, raise more money, be more community engaged etc. It was exhausting!

We moved to a small local school and it's a few things here and there that are far more manageable, so for Roman Day there was the choice of wearing a costume or just a cardboard head dress or changing your name to something Roman for the day. There's something to fit with everyone's time availability and budget.

The OP's school sounds nothing like our school either.

Homework is once a week and not particularly difficult. The only fundraising involved sending in 20p if your child wanted to buy a cake in the cake sale (held during school hours).

The only dressing up event involved wearing an item of clothing that was a particular (easy to find) colour. Sports events all take place during school time.

I think all the 'extras' are contributing to children leaving school without the required or even basic 3R attainment.
At DS school there has been a month of the children trying to turn £1 into as much as possible to raise funds for the developing world. (They might as well have demanded £20 from every family but that is another matter).
From today we are into Fairtrade Fortnight where the 'Fairtrade Committee' have decreed each child should have as many fairtrade items as possible in their snack and lunch. Interspersed with this is World Book Day. DS at 12 doesn't want to dress up - hurrah! There is a book stall however which will be manned by DS and his class and requires donations of books.
I feel sorry for the teachers too. It must be very frustrating.

OP, completely agree! My DD goes to a state primary school which prides itself on its "creativity". I wish they prided themselves more on turning out literate and numerate pupils ready for secondary.

The amount of "filling the gaps" in English and Maths I've had to do boggles the mind. Meanwhile, at school, another bloody WOW day.

It is all too much. I did write to the school when ds was younger, as he was 5 years old, and the spellings and homework were ridiculous. I went for a meeting, where the ht dismissed everything I said. That's just the way things are these days.

He's in the juniors now, so I don't mind the spellings, reading and times tables homework. But it is the making things and dressing up that really gets us down. My dc are just not into dressing up, and we could all just do without it. When I was in primary school, we dressed up for the nativity, and that was it. They seem to be asked to dress up, bring in a working scale model of big Ben, and bring in a pound every week now.

Well no offense but that sounds bloody awful.

2 weeks of just school sounds great to me.

Couldn't agree more. I literally can't keep up with the amount of 'special' days/themed events/sales/fundraisers/dressing up/trips/parent assemblies etc etc. Just handed over £90 to school for two places on a trip plus sponsorship money plus swimming plus SATS books. Will be more money to hand over next month, plus I have two costumes to sort out for Thursday, extra SATS revision to sort for the oldest, book event after school....
Two weeks of my era school sounds amazing.