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.

DS in year 4. I’ve worked at home full time all through this so we have a loose timetable we follow Monday to Friday so that we both know what we’re doing. His school set work in 2 week blocks and we also do cool math games, TT rockstars and reading to mix it up a bit.

Year 1 DD I am still working full time but shift work and mostly nights so I can home school her in between.
Roughly 2/3 hours a day. What er has been set by school- maths and English every day and then 2 other things like science and geography etc.
If the work has been easy and she's willing I get her to do some Reading Eggs online. She read a book every night before bed as well.
Generally she has been very good with it.

Y6. School set almost nothing, and what they set was very wishy washy “go find out about xyz and present however you want” - no resources, and didn’t want to see it.

So everything is set by me, and I’d say she does 3-4 hours per day. First half of lockdown closer to 4, nowadays more of a struggle to keep her motivated for 3!

Y4. School have been setting assignments daily, which Dc has to get on with fairly independently because DH is working from home full time, and I am out at work.
There's usually 3 or 4 activities a day - one of them is always a maths worksheet. I reckon Dc does between 3 and 5 hours daily.

@Polkadotpjs

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

You're not alone, that's why I started this thread! I too am impressed by what other people have been able to accomplish and hats off to them but I'm 100% sure there are loads of us who's kids are mastering little more than Minecraft.

Oh you asked what, as well... in her 4 hours there would be 45 minutes of maths from CGP workbooks daily.
Daily Duolingo for French and German.
Daily reading, PE and Art which I didn’t have to plan.
Then I devised activities (usually finding a video and writing a worksheet to make sure she paid attention!) for at least once a week of: Science, History, Geography, English.
Finally, once a week Food Tech and iMedia - but that was things like baking a cake and learning use a new video app, so quite practical.

Year 2 child- we've consistently done 2-3 hours a day (mon-fri) since the start of lockdown. When we get to the summer holidays I will reduce this down to half an hour a day.

I’ve home educated for a few years now so slightly different. But I spend a few hours total each day doing sit down work with my three DC. They aren’t necessarily all working for all of that time, whilst I’m working with one the others may be doing independent work or may just be playing. Then things like history and science I teach family style.

I know a lot of people with kids at school who started out full steam once lockdown hit, made up time tables and stuck them on the fridge, printed a plethora of worksheets from twinkl in addition to the stuff the school sent home and within two weeks the time table had been ripped up 😂😂 and the printer chucked out.

If a kid can sit on Minecraft then they can sit on TT Rockstars or a educational site, coding, something like that - well that’s my take on it. No screens for “fun” between 9-3. That certainly encourages some online school stuff! They can research a topic and make presentations etc.

DD9 in year 5 has done a lot but she has her 11+ in September so it's the target that keeps us going.

Homeschool is between 10am-2pm and during that time we do the 3-5 bits of school work set on Google Classroom, once a week she has a 90 minute Zoom tutor group for the 11+, and we do some vocabulary practice.

I run a business that's been badly hit my the pandemic so I have very little work to do. Helping DD makes me feel a little less upset about the whole disaster.

OP what you're doing is great for their age. Sounds like you've been doing a great job.

@ElephantsAlltheWayDown it might reassure you to know, that although my Y6 has done loads (because I’m working full time from home and wanted her occupied!) she is definitely not suddenly miles ahead of her friends. She is in maths, for sure - she’s years ahead now. But - she was ahead anyway. But every other subject we’ve covered? Yeah, she’s done work her peers haven’t - but learning about how the lung works has really not made her any more likely to pass GCSE biology than her friend who has done nothing. It’s only a term - they’re all be fine.

Year 3 - 4 hours per day. We have a timetable but in all honesty didn’t really take up much time so I’ve used the time to try and enrich things a bit. We’ve mastered all the times tables and been looking at grammar.

We’ve been exploring Shakespeare, looking at classical myths and how they have been used throughout history (hello harrry Potter), looking at the bible and looking at the most commonly told stories.

Lots of yoga/mindfulness.

But I’ve been really fortunate in not working during this time so I’ve had the luxury of being able to spend time together. God knows how how people have managed if working

Year 1 child - probably an hour max. Couple of pages each of maths & English workbooks, watch a phonics video from school, read a book, sometimes a bit of Purple Mash/TT Rockstars.

@Lifeisgenerallyfun well they haven’t really. It’s been a bodge of bits and pieces and sometimes nothing at all.

2 parents both working full time can’t teach as well. If your day job is 9-5.30, when do you do the home schooling? 6am? 7pm?

If it was a truly viable option then we wouldn’t need schools and teachers would we.

Ds is 5 and half and we've done a lot but I'm a sahm (student but term finished early). We've been doing a massive geography project where we virtually go around the world learning stuff, tying in maths, history, languages etc. However I've absolutely hated lock down, needed a focus and had nothing better to do.

I tried to focus on stuff the school wouldn't necessarily cover though, like ordering pancakes in multiple languages (ds's choice), trying recipes from different countries, learning about where in the world they've discovered various dinosaurs and how our understanding of dinosaurs has evolved as we've found more bones etc.

Yr4 & yr 5. Been approx 3 - 4 hrs a day set by school. Combination English, spag, maths, science, geography, RE (catholic school). I’ve been wfh throughout.

Yr 7 child has done loads. Does his work diligently every day. Doesn't really ask for help but is aware we are here if he needs it. He has two grandads who were teachers and asks them things occasionally.

Reception age child is a different kettle of fish. We are also both working from home and don't have the time it would take to devote to getting him involved in anything other than apps like teach your monster.

My mam is a TA for reception and even she cannot engage him. She says it's because we are in different roles and he's not used to seeing us like this.

Year 2 and 3 lessons of Oak Academy a day. Sometimes additional bits if I can push him to, (like TT Rock stars or something on bbc Bitesize if it relates to one of his modules) his reading has slacked a bit though, but he's a strong reader so I'm not pushing him.
We're so ready for the summer break though and plan on doing absolutely no work throughout as he needs a break!

My Y4 has about 2 hours a day. DH and I have wfh throughout so we juggle it. We found the BBC Bitesize works well for us. We also do 30 mins of reading and he also reads in bed.
Fortunately the Y8 is pretty self sufficient and is keeping up with set work.

Mine are in YR2 and reception. It's been about an hour a day. They do some reading as well. DH and I are both still working. We've done what we can.

My youngest only turned five in May. I keep telling myself that I didn't actually start school until the September after I turned 5 (also May) and I turned out ok to make myself feel better. Looking at the work my eldest has been doing, I don't think he has specifically learned anything new, but rather just topped up existing skills.

Year 1 about an hour in the morning (half maths half English) some craft, arty stuff or baking in the afternoon and reading before bed.

Y4 - not very much, it was a total battle to get him to do anything, the school set stuff was a few uninspiring bits on white rose, some writing we'd have a huge fight to do and a spelling test. Almost everyone who posts on our class WhatsApp group is struggling.

yr4 - she sits in front of her laptop from 9am - 2pm most days (with a lunchbreak) and the school is providing some online lessons & plenty of worksheets on Google Classroom / TTrockstars etc.

I'm doing full-on work so I mostly leave her to it. I suspect she spends most of the lessons chatting to schoolfriends online on Google Classroom and that she often doesn't finish the work. But she seems reasonably happy and I'm able to get on with my job, so we are managing.

Fuck all really. Maybe about 30 mins a week. For both my yr 1 and yr2 child. I started off trying but it was going very badly here and we were all suffering. It was never going to work for us and I decided not doing the work was preferable to the alternative.

We started off well because I was on furlough, since I've been back we squash as much as we can into my day off in the week. I've found the amount of work set has decreased too, or they'll link to a list of worksheets with no indication of how many DC are expected to do. My DS is Y4 and will do as little as he can get away with so it's been an uphill struggle, I'll be glad when he goes back. I do worry he's falling behind, but I'm not sure what else I can do.