Supporting child academically at home

[firemansammy]

How can you do this? Obviously in later years, a tutor would help.

My 4 year old ( starts school in September ), seems behind in some areas.

In numbers, writing for example. A recent report said.

I do try to do stuff at home with her. But I'm just not quite sure how to do it effectively.

We have a lot of preschool books for writing, we sometimes practice phonics. We read together etc. how else can I help ?

You can't help but think that the parents must do a lot at home with kids who are very smart at this age ? Maybe I'm not doing enough ?

I was just focusing on having fun with her and then occasionally we do some writing in her books or we practice phonic sounds, which she enjoys. We by no means do this every day. She doesn't get home until after 4 pm during the week, so I don't do much with her then. I usually do a bit of writing and phonics with her at the weekend, but loads.

But looking at the other kids, I now think it's my fault and other parents are doing this kind of stuff more with their kids.

Any reasonable early years educator would never say to a parent that their PRE-SCHOOL child was behind in any academic area. That's just not a thing, and incredibly bad practice.
The clue is in the word PRE-SCHOOL. They are "before school". They are not expected to be able to read or write, or write numbers. That's what actual school is for.

At her stage, she should be doing activities like colouring, painting, playdoh etc. Workbooks are really not important. Work on things that build up her fine motor control, like threading beads, picking things up with tweezers etc.

I'm a very experienced early years educator, and nurseries like this just give me the rage. Don't give their opinion the time of day.

also, all the other parents I've spoken to have said their child is fully meeting everything or maybe behind in one thing.

Yes, maybe they're making it up- but how can these ( some are still not 4 ) year olds already be meeting these milestones which are supposed to be met by 5 year olds ?

I don't get it.

So if there's nothing to mark them against officially at this age, they've made up their own criteria by which to mark the children. Not happy about this really.

Neither of my daughters flew in nursery when they started phonics and number work. Both now academically very able at the end of primary. The older one is at the younger end of the year and she specifically struggled with reading in reception and year one and then suddenly just picked it up. You don't need to worry yet.

Sorry - I replied to the wrong post here.

Is the ‘not at expected’ based on her current age or just based on end of EYFS? Different schools do it in different ways, but they should have some notes somewhere with the report to tell you what they’re being judged against.

If she’s being judged against the EYFS expectations for the end of the stage (age 5) then you’d expect her to be ‘not at expected’ for everything. If she’s being judged against her age (in months - not years) then you’d hope for more ‘meeting’ expected standard.

From your description of what she can do ‘academically’, I’d be assuming that either (a) they are judging by end of EYFS or (b) they are a very pushy school and you could potentially be in for a not very pleasant experience of primary, especially around the phonics check (y1), SATS (y2 and y6) and timestables checks (y4). If it’s the latter, I’d be making very sure to counterbalance that message at home rather than going along with it - kids need to learn to work hard sometimes to achieve a goal, but they also need to know that learning is not a sprint but a marathon. None of the tests at primary matter for the child’s future - they are about ensuring schools are doing their best (though whether that is what they show is a whole other argument).

Bear in mind that there are no official ‘end of nursery’ expectations - your daughter will be in the 40-60 months final stage of EYFS - and therefore the school are quite likely to be judging against the end of EYFS or they have made up their own adjusted expectations for end of nursery.

I think you should just keep doing what you’re doing - it sounds perfect - and if you’re concerned in Reception that she’s falling behind and might not meet the end of EYFS expectations, then you might want to target some areas more carefully at home. Even then, by end of KS1 (y2) things will often have changed significantly again as development in the first 5-10 years of life is often at very different paces in different children and even the same child will make big leaps at times and fall behind a bit at other times.

I didn't do anything with DS at home at that age.

They are 4. They should be playing and being kids. I'd never have considered a tutor until secondary school either. No wonder so many kids struggle with their mental health these days with all this academic pressure.

Schools do this because they are under ever increasing pressure from government to get as many children as possible to reach arbitrary targets with less and less resources. These arbitrary targets will be put into league tables and failing to meet these will trigger negative OFSTED reports. Many parents judge schools on their league table results and OFSTED reports - the best performing monkeys schools will attract the parents who are most likely to be interested in education and supporting their child’s school. They will also be more likely to attract and retain good teachers. This then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy for “outstanding“ schools, pushing ‘failing’ schools into a downwards spiral.

Government are constantly pushing schools into a defensive position as they strive to reach these targets come what may, even when they often know what they are doing is detrimental to the children. They are then foisting their own anxieties about being deemed ‘failing’ onto parents in an effort to shift the blame. It is the reason I left school teaching!

@theresapossuminthekitchen I can't find what she's being judged against.

It has three categories ' emerging ' ' expected ' ' exceeding '

I guess I can ask them.

@Nenen it's actually a private school- but I'm sure they're under their own pressures. I'm starting to think maybe the state school system may be better and not like this. But judging by your post that's also not the case.

We were in lockdown when my first child was 4 so I was very involved in her learning and as a result I’m much more involved now my second child is 4.

You need to know exactly what it is she needs support with. So for writing, is it she isn’t interested, her finger muscles aren’t strong enough, she doesn’t know how to form the letters.

If she isn’t interested then increase how much you read to her, go to the library and get her interested in different books and keep working on pre writing skills like colouring, finger muscles - things like playdoh and fine manipulation toys - look for funky finger activities, if it’s letter formation there are all sorts of resources you can try.

In general visit lots of different places from art galleries to the post office, talk to her lots, try not to dumb how your vocabulary when talking to her, arts and crafts, counting at home, cooking, orcahrd games. I’m a big fan of some ceebies programmes, kit and pup, numberblock and alphablock. Ceebies magazines are really good too.

For reading/phonics I would get into the habit of getting her to do a few minutes in bed every night. Which scheme are they using at nursery (is nursery attached to the school)?

???? She’s 4. She’s categorically not behind. Let her be a kid and encourage good learning habits when she starts school.

Private schools are definitely under their own pressures - I’ve worked in both state and independent schools so know this first hand. In order to survive, independent schools have to be highly competitive. Even if they don’t do SATs (which they can choose not to do) they will be judged on other results (either GCSE and A Level if the school goes up to 16/18 or, if the school goes up to 11 or 13, they will be judged by the number of children getting into prestigious senior schools. Furthermore, Independent school often sell themselves to parents on the basis that children will be working at least one academic year above state school ‘expectations’ - hence it could be that your child is being judged on next year’s expectations already!

I’m sharing from the perspective of a parent with neurodivergent dc because uneven development patterns can feature. At nursery school my ds just didn’t get phonics. He just politely played along with the lessons. Same with the early reading stuff, and then boom, it just clicked and he was reading chapter books with walls of unbroken text. It wasn’t a linear progression.

I’m a hugely supportive parent but drilling him with extra school work would be the wrong approach. He needs deep quality downtime to recover from his school day. I would even say that his learning is happening somewhere deeper in his brain when he’s not thinking about it directly. When he was learning to swim the teacher would show him what to do, and he’d be very polite and attentive but not be able to copy it. But a week later it would have sunk in.

I’m not saying that your dc is neurodivergent. My point is more that there are different ways of being supportive, different measures of success. It’s really important to separate your sense of your parenting from your dc’s achievements.

And if your dc is neurodivergent, seeking out a diagnosis and appropriate support will do much more for them than trying to patch up the gaps in their performance versus a neurotypical model.

Read and share books. Do lots of colouring and drawing. Talk a lot. Make things. I think there is too much emphasis of phonics etc when children don't have a very good vocabulary. Did I already say to talk talk and talk some more.
And as others have said...switch off screens.

She's 4, give the poor kid a break. Just do normal things like reading, go to museums, talk about the world.

When my DD was little, I was advised not to try to get her ahead in reading or writing before she went to school in order to keep it exciting and interesting when she did it there. I always read to her, right from when she was a tiny baby, and did lots of arts and crafts with her. But not the getting her to read or write so it could have been argued that she was 'behind' when she first went to school. Fast forward 10 years, she's now about to take GCSEs and is predicted to get As across the board. So don't worry, OP. I'm sure your little one will be absolutely fine.

You are getting lots of good advice here. Above all don't be anxious about it, enjoy playing with your child.