To expect my reception age child to be doing at least a bit of 'work'?

[Hmmmmminteresting]

I may have this wrong as he is my first born. But dc is in reception, prior to this he was at nursery post lockdown till end of Aug.
I wouldnt say he is particularly clever, but he enjoyed learning. He was very good at phonics, numbers and rhyming. He could do basic adding and subtraction up to 30 eg. He could do 27 take away 4 etc. Since he has started school he does nothing, they just play.
Don't get me wrong I am all for them doing this and would much rather they play than sat all day 'working'. But they are literally doing nothing. He keeps telling me its boring. I feel like he has taken 5 steps back.
I asked his teacher briefly if he was correct and she said yes, it's a transition from nursery to year 1 so its focused on play and not school work. I didnt push further but I've come away feeling really deflated.

Aibu to expect them to teach them something?!

Your child has a life time of formal learning ahead of them. Enjoy the play. You’ll miss it when it’s gone. They are learning as they play... it’s so important. If you want formal put him in a prep school where they do worksheets everyday.

@Hmmmmminteresting it's really hard when your child has done full time nursery and you're used to a very detailed report of what they've done at the end of the day, and then they go to school and you get what feels like no feedback.

I can remember when DD was in reception, she couldn't get her head around how short the day was. She was used to 7.30am - 6pm in nursery - to her school was short and boring too! She couldn't understand why other children were falling asleep on the carpet and definitely wasn't tired at the end of the day. She went to wrap around school care and couldn't tell me anything she'd done by the time I collected her.

It's very early days - I'm sure things will settle down for him, but if you are concerned just give the school a call and have a chat about what is actually happening in reception, not what you DS is telling you - because he won't be telling you what actually happened.

Your child is advanced compared to where most kids in reception are. Once they settle in and start work school might be better placed to make sure he's stretched.
In the meanwhile, a 4 yo shouldn't be bored playing with new toys and new friends so I don't think it's a bad thing that they're getting the kids to settle in and play and focus on being back in and having fun.

Ours has lots of do time where the kids could choose their own thing so there should be books and puzzles at least alongside the toys

@ZarkingBell you're right to bring up the intersection of all kinds of SEN and G&T - I apologise, didn't mean to flippantly create an equivalence and of course life is very very hard for those with all disabilities especially right now in our terrible unsupportive system. I do think that G&T can present significant challenges in itself, as well as when it comes along with other needs, and was reacting against the poster who seemed to think the very idea of G&T was all humblebragging. Agree with you that all should get a better tailored education.

but that is just the academic side, since starting reception I can see her becoming more confident and she enjoys going so I am happy at that aspect

Every activity in EYFS has a learning intention.

Picking up beads with tweezers = developing fine motor skills, essential for handwriting.

Talking about a story and acting it out with puppets = developing vocabulary.

Working out how many children in the class are having packed lunch = early numeracy.

Learning to take turns, listen to the teacher and other children and show respecfullness = development of social skills.

Listening for sounds outside and identifying them = preparing for phonics.

Play is purposeful. It's essential. Sometimes it is carefully planned by practioners, sometimes it is child initiated and incidental, but it's always valuable.

There is no rush to get onto 'proper learning', sitting at tables. That's why the OP needs to educate themselves in the early years foundation stage. I'm. Not being difficult or bitchy. It's an actual Thing. It's why teachers teach and why they know how.

Hi OP. Your child does sound like he's bright but I am surprised he is bored at school as there's so much to do! Had you told him it would be lots of hard work and he's had his expectations dashed?

I have a little boy who is bright(he's 9 now) he's my eldest and I can remember being very concerned about making sure he made the right progress and was on the right stage books etc. I have three children and as they've grown I've learnt to relax a bit and go with the flow. How you feel is normal, and must be harder than most because of the issues with transition during covid, but the school are taking it slow because they start so young in this country. In other countries they don't start formal learning with children until they are 7.

If your son is bright then my personal advice would be to get him lots of fun reading and activity books for home. If he can already subtract he doesn't need much more maths yet (i say this as a secondary maths teacher) but he can have fun developing his reading at home and you can do things with him to develop his general knowledge.

I think people are being really unfair. This is OP's first child. She doesn't know what's normal or expected. Mine aren't at this stage yet so I wouldn't know either. This is why she is asking. She hasn't said that her child is more intelligent than the other children. She hasn't said that the teacher isn't doing their job properly. People are being too defensive. And I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but no, not all teachers are fantastic angels. Althogh most of them are great, there are sadly a few teachers out there that are shit and don't care - just like you get in any profession. So it's OK for OP to simply ask what is normal. That's a big part of what this forum is for.

OP needs to ask the school for a curriculum overview for year R as a starting point.

Then trust the teachers.

Would it help to make an appointment to go and talk to your childs teacher? Ask about the curriculum, aims and learning outcomes? Ask how your child is coping and what you can do to support him at home? It might help your understanding (you say in your posts you don’t have any experience of what goes on in reception) and also help you and the teacher to assess and meet your sons individual learning needs in a coordinated and constructive way.

As well as what everyone has already said about reception being play based, bear in mind things might be a bit different as teachers ease kids back into school post lockdown. Teachers are aware that kids may have been out of school for 6 months, and for kids of reception age many will have been out of nursery, particularly those who were in school nurseries. Teachers may be mindful of the impact of this not just on their learning but on their mental health and still be assessing them.

If he likes to learn then maybe do tasks and activities with him at home to fuel that part of his personality. If his teacher believes that he is advanced for his age they would probably consider moving him to the next class,or give him work that is catered to his academic level.

Also the curriculum he is learning now will be different come spring, and closer to summer. Being in school for a few weeks isn’t very long and for some children this is their first experience of the education system.

YABU

[quote JamesTKirkcompatible]@ZarkingBell you're right to bring up the intersection of all kinds of SEN and G&T - I apologise, didn't mean to flippantly create an equivalence and of course life is very very hard for those with all disabilities especially right now in our terrible unsupportive system. I do think that G&T can present significant challenges in itself, as well as when it comes along with other needs, and was reacting against the poster who seemed to think the very idea of G&T was all humblebragging. Agree with you that all should get a better tailored education.[/quote]
Thanks James. It's just so upsetting when you have to struggle every day with a child with SEN and people think their clever child who didn't get their infant reading book changed often enough is in the same boat. They really aren't!
On the other hand if my G&T/SEN child doesn't get awesome grades I'll, erm, just have to remind him he's fucking bright and needs to get his act together or I'll send him to clean the bog until he does. BTW, that approach didn't work for me ...

Some of the best school systems in the world don't start formal education until 7.
He's 4 going on 5, just let him enjoy the experiences. He will be learning if he is playing.

The only thing I'd suggest you do is to ask his teacher to give him actual storybooks. Wordless reading books promote comprehension. However, kids who are already reading with some fluency and have a good understanding of context clues, etc, will be extremely bored if they only have access to wordless books. There is nothing wrong with a play-based curriculum. There is something wrong with depriving young readers of enjoyable storybooks. I realise that public library access is still limited and you may not want to buy a lot of books yourself. The school will have its own library so they can loan him some books. When public library access is a bit more normal, you can usually borrow a large number of children's books for extended time periods.

In terms of the alphabet, reading, writing and number work I do feel like my children learned more at nursery, especially the year before they started reception. At school however I think it's good to get all the children on an even footing as there are children who are not able to count to ten or write their own name yet. There is no harm in playing, it's a wonderful way for them to strengthen their grasp on learning letters, phonics and numbers. Reception year is all about phonics to give them building blocks to reading fluently and a firm idea on number bonds and how numbers work with addition/subtraction. My daughter learned her times tables very quickly before starting school, after all it's just memorising but didn't understand the concept of it fully until she understood how numbers work at school.

I am a TA in year 1. Settling in is taking longer than usual this year. You wouldn’t know it from the outside but we are having to pretty much completely start from scratch with skills like not shouting out, but taking turns to speak. The children have been at home for six months, able to share whatever comes into their heads whenever they feel like it. We have had to have lots of discussions about how you need to remember to ask to go to the toilet and why, because for six months, they haven’t needed to. We’ve got some children who are streets ahead of where they were when lockdown started, so although we were handed all the info by the reception teacher we’ve had to tear it up and start again with working out things like book levels for them. We’ve got other children who have come back unable to hold a pencil properly, or to count to five. The progress they had made in reception has been lost and we are effectively starting again with them. So we’re having to reassess them too.

And that’s before you add in all the Covid stuff (did you remember to wash your hands? eleventy billion times a day) that they needed to learn, the new routines etc.

We are doing a lot more play than we would normally do in Year 1 to help ease them back in as much as possible, as we have one or two children who are not coping that well with being back at school after such a long absence. At this stage, them feeling happy and confident to come to school is more valuable. However, although we tell them to go and play (at specific stations, in specific groups) each ‘game’ has a learning outcome behind it, so we can leave a group to play, knowing there will be learning happening, and keep an eye on them to steer in the right direction if needed, while we grab a child or two for some assessment or catch up work.
It will get more formal but most reception classes will be doing similar.

Also, don’t fall into the trap of thinking reading words means ‘READING.’ Comprehension is critical. We’ve got one or two very talented readers who often can’t answer the comprehension questions because while they can sound words out they don’t understand the vocabulary, or lack the general knowledge to make sense of the story. One child in particular can read fluently and clearly, and can answer questions directly about the text. (For example: What did Jacks mum say when he brought home beans instead of money). But he cannot answer inference questions. (For example: Why was she cross that there were beans instead of money). He doesn’t seem to think beyond the words in the text. The others will catch him up in terms of book bands eventually, and he will then be the one who is behind if we haven’t taught him to think about this sort of question. If we steam ahead with his reading, putting him up and up and up, he will never get the chance to learn as the text will get more and more complicated and end up beyond his understanding.

I will probably get a rough time for going against the grain but one of my DC was very bored and became frankly disengaged by the end of prep. We were worried about her. An eventual school change helped.

We knew she was smart in that she taught herself to read before school, could count to 100 at 2, was good with puzzles etc. Socially she was fine and always has been, we didn’t hot house her at school. Fine motor skills were a problem with messy left-handed ness contributing.

The thing is, she loves maths, she still does at 12. Sticking numbers in order up to 100 on a worksheet wasn’t doing it for her, she taught herself to tell the time and could already do basic addition and subtraction. By the end of the year she was still going all the set work but begrudgingly and became a bit silly and had a baby voice more often. Her extra time at school was spent working on her hand writing and cutting - this was important but she wasn’t getting the thrill of achievement either.

Anyway, we moved schools a few years later to one which would best suit all 4 DC and the difference was huge. She tested into their pull-out maths enrichment programs and is is usually given differentiated class work as well. Lots of external maths competitions which she enjoys. She is fine socially and swims competitively. All of her grades are very high.

Her youngest sibling also seems good at maths and the same school have been quietly working with a few of the students in his class to make things harder and more interesting.

I agree that social connections are important, fine motor weaknesses need to be identified and that many early seeming academic strengths do even out. With 4 DC I have come across a lot of parents - including me, I’m sure I was cringy - who are worried that their DC are being understimulated at primary school and I’ve also seen most of those children find most of the work sufficiently challenging by years 3 and 4. But there are some kids who need a bit more.

OP, I think you are doing him a disservice if you teach him that learning is something narrow that has nothing to do with play and that anything that doesn't conform to these narrow expectations is "boring".

It is quite likely that he is already picking up on ideas that clever children should outgrow playfulness as quickly as they can and that being bored with play is the sign of a clever child. From a lifetime in academia and research I would say nothing is further from the truth.
Play is how we learn. Creativity is cleverness. Doing worksheets is something one outgrows, not playfulness.

Some schools may be taking slightly longer to let children get used to school before starting phonics etc in this term due to lockdown. Also many children have started YR with no settling in period eg some schools usually phase the start of YR over 2 -3 weeks before the children go full-time.

Some schools will have their curriculum plan on their website, so you might be able to see what their plans are for this term.

Schools will have to do assessments to see where all children are. Also COVID risk assessments may impact what resources they can use during the day, which teachers will be getting used to.

@Hmmmmminteresting

Thanks all for the helpful comments. The only comparison I have is my friend who's dd is getting 2 sounds a week to take home to practice (eg. Ch / th / etc) and a book a week along with a reading diary. We have had 1 book in almost a month with no diary and nothing else. As long as I know this is normal I will lay off.

@asofanearyou thats rubbish. I hope things improve soon for him

We get three books a week (just picture books), plus sounds to practise at home (but only simple ones so far, not ch/th etc). We did a letter a day over lockdown, so DS is familiar with them - but even so, it feels like they're doing a lot quite quickly. It sounds quite different from your son's school. Tbh I wonder how working parents manage to fit it all in!

But when he is at school, DS seems to think he plays all day long, so they seem to be stealth learning

nolongersurprised you can surely recognise that your child is gifted if she taught herself to read and tell the time and could count to 100 before school. I don't mean gifted as in top of the class but that's extremely gifted like 0.1% kind of territory.

It's unreasonable to expect a school to meet your child's needs straightaway, yes with time they should accommodate her as they get to know her and her needs but no reception curriculum is gonna meet the needs of children this bright in September.

If my 4 year old found playing boring I’d be a bit concerned.