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.

Monday to Friday 9-11/1130 and 130-3

We are now back at school. But before half term both my kids did one hour each of maths and English a day, so two hours in total.
DD2 has some major learning difficulties and is operating around reception stage. She’s Year 2. I was strict about her learning as she is so behind. We did a lot of catch up, but not much work set from school. She can now read words that she couldn’t before (like you and here) and recognise numbers that she couldn’t before.
Year 6 DD is an academic high flyer and probably wouldn’t have suffered at all if she did nothing at all but I can’t make one work and not the other so she did the work too!

Not much but I have a year five child in a special school so we have done a bit of colours ,school.have been great though we have had zoom calls and a door step visit where they brought him some presents ,he's been very relaxed we have been working on independent toileting and playing in the Garden .

My son is also non verbal so we have also been getting him to communicate using his PECS book

Y1: just over two hours. Today was 30 minutes of maths factor, 30 minutes of writing, some drawing, 30 minutes of reading and then BBC bitesize daily.

I used to be furloughed but am now back at work so I did more before now we do

• 20 minutes white rose a day
• he has an hour tutor session with an English tutor
• he then has about an hour a week homework from that

So about 3 hours a week! Proper school work that is it would be a bit more if I include reading for pleasure and piano practice!

School don’t really set anything just put some ideas on their website and no work needs to be submitted so he isn’t not doing something he is supposed to do. I worry a bit but I don’t have time to plan and arrange lessons while working.

He is year four.

I'm really hoping this thread has attracted a disproportionate amount of people who are doing more than a couple of hours a day! Hats off to you, I'd probably want to share what a typical day looked like if it involved a detailed programme of learning. As it stands, we've done about 85 % of the work sent for Y1 DD, but as that's just 4 worksheets a day, it doesn't amount to loads of 'schooling'.

It's quite worrying the disparity in what remote learning looks like across schools. Covid is not a leveller, we're not all in it together. If you have the time, resources and patience for home schooling, amazing. If you don't, it's an uphill battle that's been going on for months.

Sorry for the downbeat tone, I thought we were doing OK, but this thread reminds me comparison is the worst bit of parenting. I now feel a bit shit and that I should have done more to make home school a more productive time.

But y'know. It's a global pandemic. Perspective.

The only reason I'm powering on is because I have three kids and there would be absolute mutiny if one was slogging away and the others were playing around them. Honestly, this is the path of least resistance.

What helped us (back to school now, thank god!) was a fairly strict timetable - but with an element of choice. We had a box with cards of “things to be done” (about 12 of them), and a timetable with “slots” for them. My son could select what he did when, but had to do all 12 tasks (mathsfactors, reading, spag, timetables, reading understanding, writing, etc, all broken down in 15 minutes blocks). After doing it, the card went into the “done” basket, so he could visually see How much he had done. (Year 2).

Year 4 and Reception. We probably do 3-4hrs a day, but only 3 days a week max as I go to work 2 or 3 days a week. They have been going to school as keyworker children but did no learning at all there until after May half-term, now they do some learning but it is mostly not the stuff they are set to do at home. Neither of them do any work unless they have my undivided attention, which is a problem with 2 of them. DC1 spends at least as long complaining about each task as she does doing it. The school sets quite a lot of work for year 4, I prioritise what I think is most important and try and get her to do that. Reception has some suggested activities on the website. I try to get her to read regularly, do a bit of maths and write. Neither of them will write more than a sentence without complaining. Friends and family ask why I am still trying to 'home school' them as, apparently, no one else is, but it gives us something structured to do. After term finishes I still have to entertain them quietly in a small room which is not the room where most toys/ craft stuff is while DH works in the other room. I don't drive which very much limits where we go and I don't know how many places near us will open again.

Polkadotpjs it's in a foreign language but tbh doodlemaths is my favourite and is really making a difference.