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.

bashcrashfall where do you find the end of year expectations? Thanks

And butferry how do you know what is covered in year 2 and 3? Reception here too and happily doing year 1 maths and reading chapter books with no problem, but I know that is year one work because they are twinkl year 1 maths sheets. Finding those very easy though.

We had liads of support from school, and my year 2 has been back for the last 3 weeks.
we’ve done about 4 hours per weekday, about 1.5 during weekends. he’s doing very well, but its been tough (we both work fulltime and have a 3 year old as well).

Y4 gets set work each day which takes about an hour (Maths, English, PE, and one other thing like French or Music). I have to be in the room with her and keep an eye on the screen as it’s very YouTube and internet based, and she’s too young for unsupervised internet access but it’s almost totally inaccessible with the net nanny software switched on.

The rest of the time is a mix of reading, iPad games, music practice / lessons, outdoor play dates, TV and helping with the cooking / laundry / gardening.

Year 5 ds has been doing 3-4 hours per day. We don't really get involved. The work is set by the school we both have stressful full on jobs and spend most of the day on conference calls. The school haven't asked the parents to get involved and ds seems to be getting along fine.

Year 4 1-2 hours a day . We are only doing the guided reading, English , maths set as she drags her feet so much .
Reception child - about half a hour a day . She’s been back at school 2 days a week since 1st June so not so worried about her .

Folks please be careful about going up a year especially in maths. The curriculum is very strict and we as teachers are not allowed to go into the next year to stretch the more able. It actually says that. This means your child could end up repeating work which will not be good for them. Have a look at the nrich website which has lots of problem solving activities to stretch but still within the year's content.

My DD is in year 3. I was furloughed so have been able to do a fair amount and she has been very compliant. So we have done about 3-4 hours a day. 1-2hours in the morning break for lunch then the same again in the afternoon.

I am now back at work so she's doing less, she's doing a couple of hours each day.

Dc1, 5yrs , reception...,a few phoni and math pages every other day. Read nightly, we've always done this, Arts and crafts every few days.
Dc 2, 12, yr 7, school sending work, twice a week but only 2 tasks.
Read nightly

None. Also year 2.
As long as he’s not on the iPad or watching tv too much, I’m fine with him playing Lego or imaginary games or drawing. I try to read a variety of books to him and we’re outdoors lots but the battles over schoolwork weren’t worth it.

Our school is uploading loads into the class dojo (work pages) and website so we've had filled days. My DH is teaching our 8 year old (y3) daily around his work but his job has slacked off somewhat due to a cOvid so it's a bit easier for him. DS therefore does all the allotted school work and another few hours of books we've also bought him each day. He was a bit behind though and has really benefited from this intensive teaching albeit were not teachers
DD is year 6 and has a good days
Work given to her each day and gets through most of it, though she works in my office at home and slacks off when I'm on calls (most of the day) is she can often work 9-6pm but probably get 4-5 hours work done during that time
She sets her alarm for break start time ... but not finish time
It is hard though, if DH job wasn't so slackened our DS wouldn't get much done as he needs intensive help working - DD gets on with it but is just slooowwww 🥴

Y1: None. We tried for about the first 3 weeks but I WFH (2 jobs that have been busier than normal, so does DH). His school hasn't reopened for his year, so he's still at home.

DS1 does do some reading now and then and is v keen on maths so will pick up books we have available. But we don't make him.

DS2 is going into reception in Sept, he's done very little too.

They do painting, Lego and lots of telly (some of it educational but not much) and Wii.

Also: to the person who said not to "allow" children to skip ahead in maths. Genuinely how do you stop them?? It's not like there isn't maths in the wild!

Year 2. School send 3 pieces of daily work - maths, phonics/spelling, writing/reading. We do this each day plus some times table practice. School also send 6 extra pieces that can be done over the week - science, 're, pe, problem to solve and topic work. We sometimes manage one or two of them.
My daughter reads for herself everyday.

Reception age child, DH and I both work from home, with a toddler also at home. The school have not really set work, they send a list of 8 play/learning activities each week (scavenger hunt, clap a rhythm, draw a ladybird, act out a story) so we've been hit and miss with what we have/haven't done there.

DD reads phonics books to us 4-5 times a week, writes a few times a week (spelling test, card to grandparents, write out a recipe). Until two weeks ago no maths as I had no idea what to do, but bought a Collins maths book off Amazon and she's enjoying that so wish I'd thought to do that earlier. We also finally fixed our old printer and have printed off a few worksheets from Twinkl, but I find it hard and stressful to trawl through and work out which sheets to choose and there is no coordinated learning plan etc.

Tried Bite size and Oak Academy a few times but she isn't interested and gets upset if try to force it, think she finds it too alien to watch other teachers and the toddler gets restless so we can't focus time learning together.

We have done lots of the incidental play/educational stuff like jigsaw, board games, baking, reading stories together, nature walk, but I feel guilty we should have done more as those are the activities we would have done on top of normal schooling.

This thread has made me want to jump off a cliff!!! Not really but fuck me you lot are amazing!! We are both working, you know, to keep our jobs and pay the bills. DH out the house, me from home.
Have a toddler who rips up any work older one tries to do, it’s impossible to do any meaningful work without the whole house errupting in stress.
Am making sure DS reads 3 pages of his horrid Henry book before he gets any screen time, and I spent a fortune on key stage 1 workbooks of which he has done about 8 pages.
We are spending lots of time in the garden and are all staying sane and happy. I think DS will be ok.

Y1 here.

We too started out well with a full timetable and enthusiasm. Loads of Twinkl worksheets, workbooks from school, online stuff, creative time, Cosmic Yoga...

Now we do the bare minimum and that's a struggle. A couple of mathletics activities every morning, except Friday when it's a short maths test (Big Maths) which DD detests. After lunch she has to read 1 book on MyOn, she usually ends up reading more though. There's also one project per week on there set by school, which we do but it can be a bit of a battle.

Our biggest issue is DS(2) who is insanely jealous and needs a lot of attention. I'm a SAHM but still finding it hard to juggle everything. We'll keep going until the end of term but I'll be glad when it's over. I feel tremendously guilty as DD was thriving at school and now she hates doing any work, and doesn't want to go back to school because it'll be "too hard". Just hoping she'll be okay come September.

Everyday DD (year 3) does:
White rose maths
English set by school (reading comp or free writing)
Mathletics (at least 1 module)
Maths Factor (1 module)
Times tables rock stars (1 game)
Watches random videos on bbc bitesize (on year 7 now)
Spellings set by school (tested daily & work sheets set by school once a week)
Reading (online, sometimes 1 book, sometimes loads but all short)
School optional work (usually a poster or fact sheet)
Sometimes does an art activity from Tate Kids

Ive been on furlough for 2 months but back working tomorrow so this might not all happen a anymore

Year 1

Reading every day, minimum one Mr Men book atm as he got the set for Christmas so he's ploughing through that and we're seeing rapid improvement in fluency doing this.

Phonics games every day for as long as he wants, usually about an hour.

Writing every day, either he writes stuff on his easel (blackboard one side, white board on the other), or a shopping list, recipes, simple sentences. I have all but given up on handwriting. That will come with time in school, he is only year one and has years to get that down. It's readable but not always formed correctly (which I think is pretty standard for y1 anyway?)

Other subjects get done in a slightly more organic way - he'll see something in a cartoon (lots of magic school bus and messy goes to okido being watched) and then we'll read /watch a bit about it and he might do a bit of work related to that. Eg, did a bit about recycling last week, he built a Lego city with a recycling centre and dump truck.

Maths is a sheet a day, plus a bit of playing shops /measuring and weighing for baking etc.

We're doing a bit most days including weekends but not much overtly formal stuff. Will continue over the holidays.

School have sent home work packs and we've dipped in and out of them. Been useful for writing prompts and maths but cross curricular had been roundly ignored as I'm not going to make him research kings and Queens of England when he categorically does not care about that topic.

It's becoming more of a struggle as time goes on though and he is getting a bit cheeky lately and refusing to engage as much as he did at the start, but I'm not battling him over it (apart from the cheek) because it's really not worth the stress.

Some days he's keen to get a load of school work done, some days he's not. So I'm just playing it by ear now.

Yr R. None. We’ve struggled to juggle.

Year 2. Three days a week he does the daily tasks set by school. They include English and maths every day and usually involve videos from the teacher with instructions and worksheets to complete. Depending on DS's mood and the type of tasks they can take anything from 30 minutes to 3 hours.

Two days a week he goes to the keyworker class. From the limited amount of information I get from him he seems to spend the entire time drawing and no formal learning.

Year 4 DS has been doing 3 to 4 hours a day in hour chunks with DH. An hour of that is on-line with his teacher in a class zoom. They are doing MyMaths, English worksheets, history and geography worksheets and art and science practicals.

DS is profoundly dyslexic and was reading and writing at 2 - 21/2 years below his chronological age before lockdown. I don’t know what his reading age is currently. But he has massively improved. He turned 9 last week. He is a young 9. Not a self starter at all for education and has needed the constant attention of his dad to keep him engaged.

I have been working from home full time. More hours than normal actually as I had to get used to a very different way of working.

DH is self employed. His business was already struggling. And the lockdown essentially finished it off. So although the lockdown has been really quite good for DS’s education it has come at a cost to my DH’s livelihood. Just highlighting the complexities of it all really.

Nothing. The school has set very little. I am a single parent out at work all day and my 10 year old is left in the care of his 16 yr old sister. I have ordered him some reading books and he's kept up with reading but apart from that it hasn't been possible.

@Lemons1571 - sorry, it wasn’t a criticism- I was just saying how lucky I was, in a way, being unemployed during this time (made redundant just before pandemic - although this obviously has brought its own stresses). I really felt for people trying to juggle everything and have seen the toll it’s taken on friends mental health who have been trying to do this often working late into the night to prepare stuff for the next school day and trying to home school very reluctant kids at the weekend.

Nothing with my 15 and 14 yo, they have tons of work set by their school, so other than helping them when stuck and with organising and prioritising, none.

11 and 10 yo, they have work set by the school but it’s usually creative stuff like doing things in garden or drawing etc. So about 30 minutes a day.

Like you OP, I started off strong, joined twinkl, planned lessons etc etc. Lasted about two weeks. I have a non mobile 12 month old that is exceptionally clingy since 10 months old and 10 yo DS is autistic so the daily battle of trying to keep baby calm and quiet (!) talk round autistic DS to do the work, help older children with work that sometimes I haven’t known how to do etc just got too much. That’s without a job myself.

I do feel guilty but with such a large family, my default setting is guilt anyways so I’m used to it. As long as the work set by the school is done, then that’s enough.