I'm failing DS

[SleepingStandingUp]

So many people WFH / have lots of kids are smashing home schooling so why are we struggling so much?

I have ONE child in school, in year 1. That's allm. We get sat 20 phonics questions, 4-16 maths questions, a short literacy activity and then maybe something else a few times a week.

He hates it all.

Hates school. Hates home school.

He can do phonics on his own, I tend to do the typing for literacy so he just had to verbalise and o try and do the maths with him whilst his baby brothers are napping.

We could easily get it done in one focused hour but it takes 4, with arguing on both sides.

I've offered to send him to school. No, hysterical.

I've offered to send him work back to the teacher not done. No, hysterical.

Nothing I do works but I have one child to teach and no job. How can I be this useless?

And we're Def not getting any additional work done. No handwriting practice (he draws lots), no work books, no science projects or big art stuff as I spend the twins naps trying to get through maths and lunch, and whilst they're awake I can't sit seperately painting or doing crafts with DS.

How does everyone else cope and why am I so shit?

@SleepingStandingUp

Paying a sitter or tutor to come to your home is allowed, my dd is going to next door but one twice a week to teach them (she's meant to be at university but it's shut of course). Might give you a couple of hours to look after your babies and the house. Students are scattered everywhere! In our block of 5 houses in a small town there's 3 students stuck unwillingly with their parents!

Well I’m definitely not smashing it.

A little boy in reception (waiting assessment for ASD) and one baby, so one less than you!

He can’t write yet and gets hugely upset if we try. Refuses to do things like counting cars that I try to do in as ‘fun’ a way as possible.

I think go easy on yourself. None of us expected to be home schooling in a pandemic. There’s a reason classes at school don’t include a few babies thrown into the mix! You can only do your best and he will catch up when school returns. Though I think my son will be repeating a year.

Tbh I don't know anyone "smashing" homeschooling.....

Hope you can sort it out. I feel your pain.

I concur with make it fun and natural.

Check out online home science experiments: mentos and coke, make your own slime etc., and get him to read the instructions / watch video and follow them. Get him to measure things (maths) and write about experiment with drawings.

Maths hunt: stick the answers round the house and he has to go and find them and get the right answer. Can do a phonics hunt too. If you are struggling for time, set it up in the evening!

It's not you failing, I feel the same, our kids have been failed by goverment

I have a ds with asd, who needed a lot of extra services (ot, slt, physio) but attending appointments wasn’t working for us. So I would take a careful look at what the professionals wanted to do with him, and set up incidental opportunities at home. He was getting the therapy without realising.

Can you think about what the school are trying to teach and see what can just fit in to daily life? There’s lots of maths opportunities in setting the table - how many forks do we need? How many have you got? How many more do we need? Have we too many? - the trick is to keep it natural.

Categories can be learned with whatever he’s interested in- just by chatting about the toys and characters he likes. As he chats you just emphasise the concepts as he finds them.

There are lots of ideas in this thread. They may not be quite right for your circumstances, but they might help you brainstorm.

Ds didn’t get phonics for a long time - just didn’t make the connection but once he did he became a phenomenal reader. Your ds might not have quite clicked with the maths piece yet and that’s ok. It’s better to pull back a bit than make him hate it. I always think that as a parent if you can associate learning with cuddles and warmth and fun, that’s worth more than anything.

Snuggling up with a book every afternoon will set him on the road to loving reading. Cooking together and having fun can be a route to loving maths and science.

Teenager son , has never liked school and is just refusing to engage. The sooner schools open again the better.

Mine’s resistant to anything that feels like school.

He hates bite size/joe wicks!

Try other YouTube phonics videos.

Try basic card games like snap -there are a few box board games for this age range you can get in the supermarket.

But I think the expectations are too high- the vast majority of 5 year olds aren’t doing division!

Letter recognition, liking having a book read to them and being able to hold a pencil to draw is fine for that age.

Stop calling it home-schooling. Do fun activities and just try to fit a little bit of the schoolwork round the sides without hyping it up. Could you get some bath crayons and practice writing in the bath? You could do the maths in the bath too - there is something very calming for children about being in water.

Work a day behind the school (you can tell the teacher this). That will give you time to plan activities to cover the day's work without panicking at 8.30am.

Tbh I wouldn't be comfortable with a tutor coming in, were not shielding this time but D's is still CV, is why I won't send him in to school right now, no matter how hard it is at home. And he's useless on zoom etc, wanders off chattering about his characters or his news but wouldn't sit there and have a "lesson" as such.

We've actually just don't with very little fuss and only moderate bribery for gold sonic rings, I think most of the issues lie with me losing my patience

I understand what you mean about patience. I have shockingly low patience. Though it has improved over covid - I think it has finally reset a bit. I also feel the guilt when I do nothing.

In relation to guilt assuaging, I mentioned DK books in my post upthread - the ones I mean are the paper backs split off by subject matter, eg one about biology, one about physics, or religion or politics etc and their bigger books like about space or "timelines of everything". We read them beginning to end one double page at a time which sounds boring, but actually each page is aimed at kids with great photos, they wanted to talk about things and would look at the books in their own time too.

He loves books, the one thing we did right is he's a bookworm so I'll have a look at those books thanks. Apparently were doing the creation story in RE this half term so I'm sure o can find a fun YouTube for it.

@Sarahandduck18

Mine’s resistant to anything that feels like school.

He hates bite size/joe wicks!

Try other YouTube phonics videos.

Try basic card games like snap -there are a few box board games for this age range you can get in the supermarket.

But I think the expectations are too high- the vast majority of 5 year olds aren’t doing division!

Letter recognition, liking having a book read to them and being able to hold a pencil to draw is fine for that age.

He's one of the younger ones so he's in year 1 not reception.

Have you tried Cosmic Yoga? It's more like stories and there's everything from Sonic to cata

Oops. Everything from Sonic to Cats to Christmas. It's also better I think that his jumping around, he does that all day anyway.

He will happily sit and read / be read to and he gets books every night; although he struggles to SIT through them he likes being read to.

Used to love number and alpha blocks but he's largely gone off them, we also used to adore Story Bots but again it's like he senses an intention behind them.

I have considered working a day behind but it ses unfair on the teachers who are them having to mark a day behind

We were using a visual timeline like he doesn't school for a while but he just takes off the boys he doesn't like.

For various reasons he's also finally toilet trained (mostly) this month so he's got a lot going on in his head too about that