To ask for an honest thread about how much homeschooling you've been doing? Primary age

[ElephantsAlltheWayDown]

Just read another thread about homeschooling and now feeling anxious.

DS is in year 2. We started out strong at the beginning of lockdown, I bought some maths and English workbooks from Amazon and signed him up to Prodigy Maths online. We were doing all that daily plus some writing and fun science experiments... that lasted two weeks, tops. After that we did the White Rose maths sheets four days a week plus a bit of English. That lasted until a few weeks ago.

The last two weeks we've done nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Work really picked up for me (WFH) and I just haven't had the time or energy to do more.

He reads daily on his own. If I remember I'll have him do Prodigy for an hour (but I usually don't remember).

What have you been doing with your primary kids? Honestly. Whether that's five hours of intensive homeschooling or absolutely nothing every day for all of lockdown, I just want to know. I thought we were about average but now I'm wondering if I've completely dropped the ball.

Reception aged child 1 page each from phonics , maths and handwriting books plus a reading book. Sometimes one of the google classroom activities if they look interesting. Around 1 hour per day maximum.

2dc YR and Y2. DH works 6am-10am then does homeschooling until lunchtime - realistically an hour for each child. I work 10am until 2pm and then end up working downstairs in the afternoon while the kids entertain themselves. If I'm not crazy busy I'll try and do something vaguely educational in the afternoon but tbh we have all completely run out of steam so very little was done the last few weeks.

YR has gone well. She's happy to do her learning, I think she's where she should be for maths and potentially ahead with her phonics although we haven't done anywhere near enough reading so her proficiency is limited to flashcards!

Y2 has always been a struggle, she's not prepared to engage with us and everything is a bloody battle. She's played quite a bit of Sumdog and read a lot but I do feel she could be 100x further ahead than she is.

Year 6. 3-4 hours a day, set by school.

My kids school has been fantastic and have done weekly timetables since Easter. We've been doing that every weekday, except for half term and one week when we were all just fed up of it and needed a break. I'm WFH but don't have much to do (about 10 hours a week, and that's all I can do as it's not a WFH job but I'm shielding) and my husband was furloughed for 3 months, so we've had all the time we need to get everything done. I really feel for those parents who still have to go to work or WFH and simply don't have the time or the energy to get anything done. My husband went back to work last week and it was a lot harder doing 2 separate loads of schoolwork with ds8 and ds5, so I can't imagine how hard it is.
We can't wait to finish on the 17th though!

About an hour a day. Year 5. We are both working from home.

Y1 about 2 hours of reading, writing, maths in the am. Science, gardening, nature walk or similar in the afternoon.
Y5 3 hours per day in the am including maths, comprehension, science, reading, music practice. Coding or reading in the afternoon for a couple of hours.

We have done this since the start of lockdown. Stopping from tomorrow as the kids have had enough and so have we!

Quite a lot but a) we are all bored and b)he's quite happy to do a lot c) I taught before I had them so it's pretty easy.

Eldest is 14, middle is 5 and youngest 3. We have read, visited museums virtually and baked. We've done times tables, counting, danced, canoed (we live in Lakes) and swum.

Eldest goes to a Grammar school so we have ploughed through an awful lot of GCSE work. Mainly English, Science, Drama and history. Oh and Art. I've tried to make it manageable and fun.

Barely anything because 17 months old DS is an absolute menace and destroys anything he can, tantrums if he is moved away from anything he deems exciting or interesting and just generally causes major distractions.

DD is 6 so when DS sometimes manages a 1 hour nap time we try and do reading eggs/mathletics/oak academy/bitesize or various other resources to prompt written work. This doesn't always work as suddenly shifting from free play to school work can be difficult and she's sometimes resistant to actually get on with anything but I try something else as it's no time at all until the monster wakes up.

I often feel guilty and like I've not done enough but in a small 2 bed with no dining table and an unusable garden we are very on top of each other and at times it's just a struggle to get through the day.

Y2 and basically the same as you. DD is in school half the week, but even then bare minimum seems to be taught. No criticism at all - school has been fantastic - but the willingness and capacity on any side has been limited. Don't doubt yourself; when children go back to school they will get back into the swing as they'll be together.

Year 5 - does work set by school started off about 3 hours daily now seems to be about 2 hours. Also 1 hour with maths tutor per week started recently. She does it herself and we don't do anything extra with her. She reads books mainly.at bedtime too.

Reception child - less than 1 hour per day attempting to do the work set by school but mainly achieved phonics and maths and a few other bits, refused to complete all work. Luckily back at school now.

Year 1 - 1.5 - 2 hours a day. He spends some time doing Reading Eggs and then some maths games on a laptop and then a few worksheets on different things.

Year 4 - work is set by school but varies hugely in how interesting it is, how easy it is for him to do and how long it takes. Probably 1.5 hours a day. He does spend hours every day watching history videos though - he has watched every history video on the BBC bitesize website and a huge amount from Youtube.

We carried on over half term and we will carry on through about 4 weeks of the summer. I was a teacher (secondary not primary) so I have printed the end of year expectations for Year 1 child and thats easy to plan. The older one possibly has SEN and has emotional/behavioural problems so in the holidays we are going full homeschool and I am planning little projects I know will interest him rather than going by standard curriculum or age related expectations.

Year 5 DC. The school have frankly been a huge disappointment, there has been virtually no work set by them and no checking in either so we have been winging it with child led learning. He is learning piano and Italian, he does a two zoom lessons a day with a free online school and he has been learning to type. He is loving home school and really isn’t that bothered about going back to school. I have realised that his school is basically teaching him nothing and it’s time I found a better school.

DS is in yr3. Minimum 30 mins maths, 30 mins writing, 30 mins something else schoolwork. Every day or no screentime (he's not done this on about 3 weekdays. The tantrums about screentime were bad, but there was no giving in). We normally get through the week's schoolwork by Tuesday, then onto interesting projects, writing about computer games etc.

We also have lunchbreak maths which involves doing the maths outside with big chalks/counting balls etc, I read a child's French book to him, or do boardgames or something.

No screentime until 4pm. Until then if not doing the structured work ds has to do something else. Loads of reading, Lego, toy cars, making and throwing (all over the lounge) paper aeroplanes. He's allowed educational screentime earlier: some timetables Rockstar, loads of Duolingo, looked around museums, learnt to touch-type, built scratch programs...

It's not ideal, but we've kept up with school, I've stayed employed and DS had learnt some useful things.

Around 1 hour per day. I gave up with Oak Academy which is what the school set and just bought workbooks from Amazon. My D'S is Y2, super smart but will argue 1 hour for every 10 minutes of homework he is asked to do!

Y2 and 4 - about 2 hours a day. Maths, reading comprehension, spelling etc, handwriting. Some TT rockstars/ Education City but mostly workbooks (school provided them for y4 dc, I bought my own for the younger one). Got a Twinkl sub for ideas for project worksheets. We do art together some afternoons too. I think a routine is massively important as is being able to remember maths facts and have the muscle memory to be able to write legibly. I wouldn’t say I’ve taught anything new much.

between 45mins and 1.5hours daily for my behind y1. not enough imo as it takes a lot for concepts to stick and that time is with my 2yo trying to get in on the action. but we're both WFH so best I can do.

DC is in P1. We have done most of the work set by the school. It's about an hour per day.

We do all the phonics and reading. Not much writing (too much of a battle). A good bit of maths, and we asked for extra.

We didn't do endless dull worksheets about recycling and healthy eating. We have done a lot of geography and space reading and instead, but we would have done that anyway.

School is finished here now and I feel a bit aimless.

Our school has been setting work online for our DC to do. They use white rose and have been setting four math work sheets each week and then the teacher also sets four English tasks each week. We have complete all of the work set so far. I’m working from home but only part time and have found it a struggle but I really didn’t want my DC falling behind.

Enough to nearly damage my relationship with DD it was tough hats off to teachers - Not enough that she had any real benefit from it, it was forced all the way.

Honestly. And in a bit of detail:
DD Yr1.

• First 2 or 3 weeks - i tried to do a 'school morning'. So we would get up at the table at 9, work till 10, have a half hour break at 10 and then try to do another hour. (We were working through the pile of pre printed sheets which were given out as school ended plus some of our own reading books and kids science books.)

lots of stress

• Then i dropped the work/break/work to a time idea and for a couple of weeks we just worked up at the table for as long as it took to do a set of reading words, a maths sheet, and English sheet, science sheet and some spellings.

still lots of stress

Then for the last .... what ever it was ... 6 weeks? We would sit down together on the sofa at 9 or 9.30 ish with one writing book and a pencil and turn the lap top on. Go on the class dojo and follow the links and do:

• Phonics woman. (Fred talk) 10 mins of spoken work.
• Maths - whatever was set for the day and not take more than 20 mins with DD doing a bit of her own written work.
• English (as above)

So an hour or so.

Every couple of days we would try to remember to join in a teacher led zoom meeting with a few other class members to do a quiz or game.
less stress - but not good long term

Too much! I have a nursery aged child who will be starting reception in september. We do phonics.

Yr2 child.... well..... it takes him 3 hours to complete half an hours worth of work and he needs a lot of help. So we probably spend 5 hours a day homeschooling. That's before the phonics, spelling, reading etc that is meant to accompany it. I sincerely hope he has learned a thing or two when he goes back to school.

Y3, probably 2-3 hrs a day but much of that is spent faffing rather than getting on with the work set by school. I work PT so can fit teaching around working. Still, counting the days until the end of term!

Emeraldshamrock - Enough to nearly damage my relationship with DD it was tough ... Not enough that she had any real benefit from it, it was forced all the way.

This. Sums it up so well.
It's different for teachers at school. In the past i have worked for years as a TA. It's just totally different at school. Totally totally different than a parent trying to get their child to suddenly accept a switch to a completely different relationship dynamic for a set amount of time while in an environment which has never been geared towards being 'like school'.

It was bloody awful.

DD is in Y4. School have set a mixture of work each day with instructions to just do what you can. If you subtract the time spent generally dithering and daydreaming, DD probably spends 2 - 3 hours a day on hers and usually finishes it.

From what I've read in the school newsletter, about half of the children in school are doing any of the work that's been set.

High school child - maybe 1 hour a day and he's way behind on stuff
Year 3 barely anything.
I just can't do it and work full time in a role where I'm needed to be available all day and hawk-eyes colleagues check my Skype status. It's been a nightmare and I had to prioritise work over school whereas if I'd been furloughed or a SAHM I'd have theoretically enjoyed it more - as it is they're on the Xbox way too much and I now feel shit about how much you've all done. I was hoping for a group of people like me who e failed at it because it's not possible to work and teach in the same hours 😕😕😕