to give my dc's some school work over the summer holidays

[justalittlelemondrizzle]

My dc's 7 & 8 break up for the summer this week and I've bought them some English and maths work books to do over the holidays.
I usually do print outs of things that have come up on their reports that they have struggled with and set them a fun project.
Most of the summer is going to be about them having fun and enjoying some downtime. They have lots of friends round our area who they enjoy playing with all the time. Is it wrong for me to get them to do some work a few days a week for maybe 45 minutes at a time so they don't slip behind.
They're pretty average. My eldest tries hard and is doing well ut got a working towards in maths on her report and my youngest is very lazy and that did show on her report this year with a few working towards when I know she is capable. Do other people do this or am I being a mean mummy?

I'm a teacher. My dd will be doing no school work at all in the holidays. I don't even push her to do homework. I don't think primary school or even KS3 should have homework. They are all under ridiculous amounts of academic stress.

Safeguarding is so so important these days, but no one seems to care about safeguarding the mental health of all the academic pressure put on students these days. It's terrible the amount of pressure they are under😡

And all the research on homework shows it has no benefit in primary school

It's this assumption that learning = work =not fun that really bothers me. My two are 4 and 7 and they haven't picked up this at all. Learning is fun, even if they're not learning academics they want to be learning and practising other things - swimming, gymnastics, bike riding, music.

The ire at people who do 'make' their dcs do holiday work is because if you are actually 'forcing' them then that is as wrong as making them eat, it's called Coercive Control and it's against the law for adults now .

Notice that the parents who don't think it's a good idea are teachers!!!

Miscellaneous Your child will only be at a disadvantage if you don't care for him. Mountains of work in the holidays esp. if the child is forced as I said, is ridiculous IMO.

red indeed it's always the same.

You never see parents telling other parents that they must or even should ask their DC to do formal or informal academic work during the holidays.

Personally, I couldn't give a shit what others do ( other than in a nosey - that's interesting) capacity.

Yet parents who don't ask their DC to do it get rather aggressive about it. They start insisting that childhoods are being ruined and that only their DC are having fun.

They will get more and more critical and angry and judgemental.

They will make assertions about what our DC must be like ( stressed, unhappy). And what we are like as parents ( very very bad).

Makes you wonder why they care...

Oh please peat , you sound ridiculous.

Turning a half hour of reading with a DC or whatever into an abuse issue.

As for teachers being against it. Not all by a long chalk. Just a couple ( who interestingly also overstate/misinterpret the relatively old and limited data on homework).

The aggression from the 'it's mean/ruins childhoods' it's camp is just weird! None of us that do some small amount a day have said anything to indicate that their kids aren't having barrels of fun with their days.

Many of us have now asked why those in that camp thing learning=boring. If that's the message you are sending to your kids then that's the damaging.

Also lets be honest, kids in schools have lots of fun. The majority love it! They hardly sit enslaved at desks writing lines. They don't need a 'break' - they enjoy what they do. Why start telling them that they need a break?! That 'academic' stuff is so hard their poor brains can't cope without 8 weeks off. It's just a bonkers attitude but I wonder if it relates back to the parents attitude towards education. I would take a punt that these same parents didn't enjoy their education. Thought maths was boring etc. They are now projecting their own issues onto their children.

I am not sure I can be bothered to engage with the 'coercion/abuse' crap. Kids at schools are expected to sit down and get on with tasks - is this abuse. We are all bound by rules and regulations and none of us is free to act exactly according to their will. Sorry if this is news to you. But it's not abuse. I wonder if you let your kids eat sweets all day just because they want to, terrified that if you exercise 'control' over their eating you'll be abusive?! I really hope this was just a daft off the cuff argument rather than demonstrative of your approach to parenting.

The ire at people who do 'make' their dcs do holiday work is because if you are actually 'forcing' them then that is as wrong as making them eat, it's called Coercive Control and it's against the law for adults now .

This is probably the most absurd thing I've ever read on MN.

As my DC draw close to finishing their school careers ( how did that happen?) they often talk about all the fun they had.

And I can hand on heart say it was stress free. Homework was just part and parcel of it. No biggie.

Even the horrible public exam years caused little anxiety. Certainly no sleepless nights or tears here.

Miscellaneous firstly I'm sorry you seem to be having a hard time right now.

I think 'massive' is the right word to describe the gap that is already widening between the children that are hot housed in and out of school throughout the year.

I don't think there's a lot of evidence to suggest that 'hothousing' actually works. What I was referring to is around 1.5 hours of work per day for my own kids who are 10 and 13 (almost 14). They can work independently so they're not enormously advantaged over children whose parents work full-time (I work part-time).

A six-year old should only be encouraged to read over the summer, and maybe some 5-minute number bond drills over dinner. Anyone who is doing more than that is wasting their time and putting their child off learning.

15 minutes of learning is long enough at this age for it still to be a fun thing to do and not become a chore.

Our dcs are all adults with degrees they certainly didn't eat sweets all day (they had to buy them with their £1.50 pocket money so soon found better things to spend their money on).I believe in boundaries for dcs I just don't believe in forcing them as I said before. Of course we did reading together.

What I find dislike is the lionising of unpleasant 'tiger parents" Which as AppleSetsSail CAN put some children of learning for life.

Honestly, I am going to struggle over the Summer, I am not some sort of über-mama, hothousing my dcs in linguistics and violin so that they can get ahead. Dh has no time off, it will be non driving me and 3 dcs (one of whom is disabled) in a small rural town. Having a bit if structure to the day is the only way I will stay sane (and dcs won't spend all day on screens!)

Ds has to do stuff on his talker, and some speech therapy and stretches, dd2 is starting her dyslexia support stuff and to make it have some structure and to make it seem more like fun than torture, I thought if we had some wordsearches and Sudoku etc, then it might just work. Please don't make me feel like I am trying to abuse or hothouse my kids.

There has been no lionising on this thread.

Only crass demonising by certain parents of others.

Fine in moderation IMO.

No learning isn't boring. Worksheets are boring and very little in depth, long term learning will result from worksheets. It is no longer good practice to rely on them heavily in schools and in some they are banned altogether. I don't think parents who do them with their kids are mean or the children are deprived. I'm sure intentions are good. But they are a waste of time that children could spend doing actual, hands on, interesting learning that will stick. Making things, improving their social skills mixing with friends, getting physical exercise. All far more beneficial than doing worksheets. Obviously most kids will do these things as well. It's just the idea that worksheets will give their children some advantage I disagree with as they are likely to have the opposite effect or, at best, no positive effect at all.

Who are you to declare what other people's children find fun? Surely whether "worksheets" are boring or not and useful learning or not depends on what's on them. We incline more towards online learning cos I'm lazy like that, and diaries for writing. It's not substituting for normal summer holiday activities, it's filling in corners. We are going places and meeting friends 4 out of 5 days this week. There will be the odd hour to fill before we leave, while tea's cooking, before bedtime. Some of that time I'll offer or they'll ask for learning. Some of it they read or do Lego or watch DVDs or play interminable games of snap.

It's not normally the in depth bits, it's the keeping basic arithmetic and writing in practice so that when they go back to school these don't pose an obstacle to them accessing in depth learning.

Worksheets are boring and very little in depth, long term learning will result from worksheets.

Am I reading this too literally? Rather a broad statement to make about an infinite pool of academic exercises having only the fact that it's written on a piece of paper in common.

It is no longer good practice to rely on them heavily in schools and in some they are banned altogether

Thankfully we are moving away from prescription about how to teach like this, and worksheets (textbooks even) are certainly making a comeback.

If the children found it fun then parents would have to be insisting on 30/15 minutes a day doing them the children would be asking for them like some children aren't on here or more than likely making their own.

I do ten minutes reading a day, 5 minutes handwriting & 10 minutes maths -Monday to Friday. Not as a punishment just built into our day. If it works for your family do it, but not if a battle or a chore.

If the children found it fun then parents would have to be insisting on 30/15 minutes a day doing them the children would be asking for them like some children aren't on here or more than likely making their own.

bums I don't think anyone is suggesting that worksheets are fun in the same way that say, video games are.

My 10, 8 and 4 yr olds do 30 minutes 'homework' after breakfast every day of the summer holiday. It's just a fact of life and they treat it much like brushing their teeth or making their bed; they cheerfully get on with it most days, and ocasionally need a bit of encouragement. It's good for them and far from feeling 'mean' i think I'm doing them a favour. The rest of the day is theirs to do as they please (no screens though - now in that respect i am a mean mummy).

There's tons of evidence showing that completing school homework has no effect on pupil attainment so I doubt there's any benefit to fannying about with it in the summer.

I think we've read the same reports. I don't believe them, mostly because they don't stand up to any kind of scrutiny.

Everyone would probably agree that learning algebra (for example) at school is a good thing. Which factor suddenly makes it useless when you're doing the same exact work at home, perhaps even under the guidance of someone having superior math skills to the classroom teacher?

These studies are obviously flawed.