Bloody Easter Homework

[Easterchick25]

Year 5 holiday homework is…make a moving toy. AIBU to think FFS?!

The link doesn't work. What's the video titled? Very intrigued!

🤣🤣🤣🙌🏻🙌🏻👊🏻

Fortunately, homework in primary schools is NOT compulsory. So the 'no excuses' teacher can go fuck themselves.

Enjoy the HOLIDAYS, family time. No school work bullshit.

If questioned, "it did not fit in with our family plans for our family holiday time together". Worry no more about it.

Couple of pencils and a cereal box easily becomes a vehicle.

ETA just been informed we used milk carton lids too. Egg race (rolling hard boiled decorated eggs down a hill) last Easter.

It's hardly work, sounds like a bit of fun. At that age it's just the sort of thing you might enjoy doing together in the holidays. Lots of easy suggestions on this tread too.

I'm a firm believer in primary school aged homework being unnecessary and intrusive on what should be quality family time in the evenings/on weekends.

I'm a former teacher too, if that makes any difference.

Schools do vary on this, but the schools local to me give out A LOT of homework, every single evening, weekend, and school holiday. To the point it's very stressful for families and children who get no time to relax or enjoy quality family time. I do point out to my friends that it is not compulsory at primary level, but many are too scared to go against the grain and get swamped with the stress of it all instead. I decided to home educate my children, for many reasons but pressures on children at a young age was one of them.

This is the sort of thing that kids dread and hate doing. It casts a shadow over the holidays because they sit there wondering how on earth they’re supposed to accomplish it; it seems impossible at that age.

My entire class felt this way in Y5 when we were told to build a marble maze that took as long as possible for the marble to get through. It would be timed and there would be a competition to see whose maze took the longest. Three kids’ fathers built theirs for them, taking a piece of wood, metal brackets, and clear hose and screwing the hose onto the wood in a looping pattern. Then they filled the hoses with honey so that the marble would ever so slowly creep along. It really wasn’t a maze, though it did take forever.

Our teacher then proceeded to grade us on the project based on the time it took for our marble to get through our mazes, so most of us failed. Thankfully all the grades were revised to 100% for completion after nearly every single parent complained about this “fun project.” 🙄

As you can tell, I still bear a grudge against these assignments. 😂

To those who say homework isn’t compulsory: schools have autonomy and there is no DfE guidance or legislation on this, but parents who choose a school also enter into an agreement with the school. Schools will have policies on this, usually with clauses for SEND adaptations. I would suggest the OP looks at the school’s homework policy which will be on the website.

As to the nature of the homework, it sounds like a fun project picked by a well meaning teacher, but I’d question the educational value (and then I’d question what’s happening in the classroom tbh). homework should not be onerous for parents or require the purchase of materials. In my opinion, homework should be possible for all, and help pupils reinforce key skills such as handwriting, reading, arithmetic and topic knowledge.

Best course of action is to muddle through, so as not to disadvantage the child in question as he/she will likely be expected to bring the completed project in to class. Then, meet with the teacher or headteacher. Key things to bring up are financial and time implications for parents, and the most important thing - what concepts/skills is homework supposed to help with?

The number of parents here who can’t be arsed to spend a little bit of time doing a crafting project with their own child is astounding.

Sitting together to do crafts surely IS the ‘family time’ you are so keen to claim you are too busy doing. Do none of the ‘too busy for this shit’ gang spend a single second at home? Do you not do arts and crafts?

It is absolutely no wonder that we have a screen time endemic and huge numbers of children in schools that can’t even use a pair of scissors.

Oh come on. Crafting is my idea of hell, it's boring and messy.

Plus the child in question is 9/10... He can do this independently..

Paper plane. Done

I did enough crafting and messy play when they were toddlers. Mine are 9 and 12 now and no I don’t do arts and crafts at home. We do other stuff like board games and playing outside, going for walks, etc. it’s not a one size fits all.
I now work full time, I’m a single parent. Crafting is not my idea of fun…no. Never mind the fact that I would probably have buy supplies, unless the school have provided them? And to be honest, I’ll be working over Easter mostly and the days I take off we go away somewhere or do days out. The days I work I get home at 5, make dinner etc and chill out after that. So no I don’t give a shit…if they can do it mostly themselves then they can work away but we all know they’ll get confused, stressed, change their idea half way through and need help with something…etc etc.

When dc were that age @Easterchick25 they made balloon cars, something like this: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/stem-activities/balloon-car

Vaguely recall one of them at least being sent home with dowels/wheels and maybe even cardboard.

When they were in Y6 though they had to come up with a working fairground ride 😱

And fwiw my dc were amazing at using scissors at the age of 2-3 because I let them free play with kids scissors…and did crafts then…when they were at home all day and so was I!

Those GCSE revision lessons on offer for your 16 year old will undoubtedly be delivered by teachers whose headteachers have put pressure on them, and they probably won't receive any payment either.

ETA I see you've responded to someone else who made a similar point. Lighthearted indeed. 🙄

This used to annoy me when my child was in primary school. Teachers seemed to forget that the rest of us are working full time and juggling so much just to keep our heads above water during ‘the holidays’. As a single parent with no help my child was usually in clubs for the holidays. Which was absolute rubbish and no break for us! The last thing either of us needed was a whacky project. I remember spending a whole day building some ridiculous holiday project one year, which neither of us enjoyed and I vowed never again! My days off with my child are precious! I want to spend the day dong something we both enjoy. Anyway, I’m rambling… In this case… I’d get child to build something in Lego and put some wheels on it. Done.

That’s the link, thank you.

To me it sounds like the school gets pressure from parents when they don’t provide homework so the teacher has thought of a task that the children can take as far as they want to take it. It could take five minutes or five days.

Yesterday in my 50 minute lunch break I…
spent ten minutes in the hall as one of the middays was late.
ate my lunch in the classroom with a child who was disregulated so couldn’t go in the hall
found and photocopied a booklet of homework for a child who was going to his grandparents unexpectedly in the holidays so his parents wanted me to provide a daily activity for him.
marked 22 spelling tests and stuck in next weeks works
ate

Homework is optional in primary so why mess up the holiday time with something not necessary?
The point of a school holiday is not to be doing school work.

We didn’t do crafts in the school holidays as DH and I were at full time work and DT’s were in holiday clubs doing things they wanted to do - usually sports not indoors messing around with cardboard and glue!

For those saying five minutes, I’d be really grateful if you could please click on the link in my last post and explain it to me like I’m five (or nine).

Order this and sell the spare three to desperate parents the night before school starts at hyper inflated prices.
https://amzn.eu/d/b589mPk

We never ever gave homework over holidays. I think the parents would probably have refused to do it. What if you were away for the whole 2 weeks?

I hated these "make a ........" projects. They were usually done by the parents anyway.

To those who say the child can tackle the project himself, I bet said child will be saying Mum….after 10 minutes! I think the project should be optional, removing pressure on children. There will be fantastic moving toys on return to school- made by Dad!

There will be people away for the full 2 weeks; people with something planned every day - I wouldn't bother with an excuse, I'd just say "no".

DD is home educated now but back when she was in school, we had pretty much every day of the holiday mapped out with plans and activities, so homework would have had a simple "no" from me.