to be seriously tempted to tell dd she doesn't have to do her project?

[emkana]

She's not even eight yet.
She's in Yr 3.
The project is about climate zones (yawn).

Worthit's post does highlight one of the issues. An important lesson could have been learned -- that mum will do your homework if it's too hard. Perhaps worthit's ds hasn't absorbed that lesson, which is great, but what if your child will say next time: can you do it Mum? And the next? And the next? I'm not criticising worthit at all, as children are different and you know yours best.

The lessons about homework and home-school relationships are so much more important here, than anything that may or may not be learned about climate change.

Just one thought. In my experience children often don't get to finish classwork - the literacy hour ends and they have to put down that work and go onto numeracy, for example, and the next day has it's own literacy task - and so on. This belief is based on the amount of work I have seen unfinished in my dses primary school exercise books, and on what other mums have told me too.

Doing this project will allow your dd to feel the satisfaction of completing a project.

Maths GCSE revision will also eat into valuable family time when you/she could be doing something MUCH more productive. I assume you'll tell her she doesn't have to do that either when the time comes

In my defence (!), DS2's project was set for a half term week, when we were away on holiday for the whole week, so it really was a matter of time (as well as total lack of interest from DS2). Totally unreasonable, IMO, to set work during short holidays, when families might be away for the whole time.

And DS2 - now 14 - knows he will get short shrift from me if he wants help like this!

slightly more important in eight years time Titchy

however if she's taught age 7 to associate homework with deceit, boredom, unpleasantness, disappointment, frustration, lack of consequences and/or feedback...

all these are possible if not handled properly, according to the nature of the child

I'm not saying do it or don't do it, I'm just saying recognise that it's a big deal and a thousand times more significant than the project itself

Worthit, no defence needed, we all do what we think is best!

But I got it wrong on homework for one of mine: I was too pushy -- now I see that more balance is needed.

YABU.
The project will involve her using Literacy skills, Numeracy skills, ICT skills, Science.
It's a good way of getting the pupils to pull together their knowledge, it gives the teacher a fair assessment of how they are getting on and it teaches the child all sorts from pride in their work to time management skills.

My dsd has had lots of issues at school, they have described her as "borderline special needs" which i personally think is a shitty wy to say she is struggling but not enough for them to allocate proper resources to her....
Anyway, her teacher this year likes a project or two. She has come on in leaps and bounds, it has improved her confidence no end as she can work at her own pace and has something to shyow for her hard work at the end of it. Her teacher is really chuffed with her.
On the other hand, her friend hasn't bothered with her projects as her mum thinks it's a waste of time and she is not looked at in a favourable light to put it mildly.

Children need their parents to put in a lot of effort with their school life as well as the teachers, projects are a great way to get families involved and working together. The subject matter may nnot be to your taste but surely you would like your dd to learn how to use her skills well?

And when she goes to work and does not want to do something or it cuts in to other things she will be fired

I wish dd had had homework like that in Y3. She's just moved to a different school (Y5) and is now having to do homework of htis type and is all at sea. We don't really know what they are expecting, and she's not used to doing proper work at home. Until now, she had worksheets which took 5 minutes or less and were pretty much a waste of time.

This sounds really interesting. I think you should set an example to your child and encourage her to get into it. She'll probably find it more and more interesting as she finds out more about it.

YANBU - my heart sinks when I hear the word project. I put a lot of effort into my children's education, by the way. However agree wholeheartedly with stuffit- projects have just caused frustration, conflict, and boredom in my house - not a good way to inspire children about how exciting learning can be. I work and have 3 DCs, time is precious and we want to do things other than school work . What they will have to do later in their school life is irrelevant - they will be better equipped to do it when they are older.

yabu, lots of homework is going to be boring. just like parts of her job are likely to be.bwhat kind of message are you sending her? that she doesn't have to do it if she finds it boring? she's going to struggle a lot with life in that case! will she not fill in her tax returns then?

I don't think you are being particularly unreasonable but I would add that I'd swap homeworks with you!

My Year 3 and Year 4 DC keep getting Wordsearches and fill in the missing words sheets as homework and it is so flippin' tedious and, to me, somewhat pointless.

I'd kinda love a project we could get stuck into and have fun with.

There isn't much room for creativity with a wordsearch I can tell you!

Mostly my issue is with homework that stops you planting the veg patch together, or baking a cake on Sunday afternoon. We didn't do homework this weekend for the first time since January, but the DC dad was visiting, it was sunny, we had a family party which was a glorious day out in the end...

Stuffit - that's exactly my argument! Just becuase it's one piece of homework age 7 doesn't mean your and her approach to it isn't important - it's the message you give that now that lay the foundations for later.

Admittedly not in the same league, but imagine "AIBU to allow my dc to call another child 'paki'. They're only 7 and will be going to seperate schools soon so the issue won't arise again.....".

But projects are time consuming by their nature - I think it is unreasonable to expect this sort of stuff to be done at home at this age when the children are not capable of doing it without a lot of parental support. What about children who don't have parental support? I am not saying don't do it and leave it at that, but I do think it would be a good idea to discuss it with teacher first, find out what is expected, and make clear your reservations. Many teachers in primary school are young and don't have children themselves - perhaps they don't realise the impact this can have on family life, especially when you have homework to do with more than one DC.

Over a 4 week period it's not THAT time consuming- two 15 - 20 minute sessions a week shoudl be OK. And the teacher has given quite clear guidelines i.e. said what each page should contain which is entirely appropriate for Yr 3.

Put it this way if one week homework was to do a page about the weather in South America no-one would make too much of a fuss about that, and if the next week they had to do a page on the animals of South America again that would be OK. At least you're getting notice of what needs doing in future weeks.

titchy I don't think you understand

there are all sorts of lessons you can learn from primary homework -- and basically, academically, primary homework is not that important except for spelling and maths

what is important are the lessons you learn/teach about self-management, the value of homework, the repercussions of not doing homework, study skills, research, self-motivation etc etc etc. This bit I do think you understand. But it goes deeper than that.

Homework is very, very important later in school, it's crucial. That is the point where we as parents have very little control over how much they do. It needs to be a positive choice. It is possible, by being too forceful, to give them entirely the wrong messages. It is possible to show them that homework is nasty and boring and something you hate, something the teacher doesn't really look at, something that's given just to keep you occupied, something actually rather pointless (and brighter children are highly likely to spot a pointless exercise).

And on top of all that, on top of Mum saying come on, you must do this, it's really important, leave your baking/swimming/lego/friends, it's important for school -- on top of all that, if the child still doesn't do it, the school has little come back except for "disappointment" or "not being seen in a favourable light". Children can become immune to that very very quickly indeed. So what does that message give? It gives the message that actually Mum was wrong, the school doesn't think it's that important, the teacher doesn't think much of me, and why bother.

I think your comment about the paki thing is rather ill thought out but I understand you are trying to make a point. It doesn't really work though.

Agree wholeheartedly stuffit - I wish I could say my experience of project homework was positive, but it just hasn't been. A lot of effort and conflict, and what is the point at the end of it? OK they have learned about the climate in South America (good chance they will forget it soon). Mine have never learned anything positive from it because they didn't want to do it in the first place, would rather be playing (and why shouldn't they?). This is very different from being given work sheets to do that back up whatever the child has been learning in class.

I don't think it's sending out a good message emkana to not do anything. As others have said, set a time limit per week, do one page and it will be finished before you know it.
Our school is very topic heavy.
my yr 3 has a rolling project of his choice (he chose archaeology) He has to research and write one page a week. It's not too bad but then at least he's interested in it.

My yr 4 had an enormous project for a month, including the Easter holidays. It was the 60's. He had to have contents, intro, sub headings, conclusion. That was a ridiculous mammoth task, so much happened that needed in depth explaining, communism and the cold war mainly. He managed 56 pages, but it was a struggle. He's 9!

56 pages!!!!!. That's incredible

I know!!!!! others did more
Discussing serious world events was really hard, but we both really enjoyed it. Ds1 is very proud of how much he learnt but we spent so much time on it.

I don't think that sounds too onerous TBH. Mind you that is because my DD just gets on with it. If you'd asked me a few years back when DS#1 was doing this I'd have probably have agreed with you!

I don't think you can really tell her it's OK not to btw.

Ingles, do you or your DCs feel resentful about having to do so much so young? I would feel sad if my child had spent so much time, including holiday time, on project work. I know they will have to work so much harder once they are at senior school- I want them to enjoy the time they have now. And of course they are also learning through their outside activities and play.

sorry you have answered already, crossed posts

And I have to say that I think this sort of thing is much better than bloody worksheets! I hate them. Sterile boring exercises in killing the desire to learn.

A project teaches the ability to think round a subject, investigate, research, use language, even basic stuff such as hand-writing and spelling (or typing). And when they get it done and get a good mark (IME they always do at this age ) a huge sense of pride and achievment.

A few people have said there are no consequences if they don't do it. In our school (Y3) they make them do it in playtime if they haven't done it at home.
Also, DS missed three whole playtimes last week as the teacher made him re-do all his homework because it was untidy.
I agree that the last 10% was Extremely Messy, 'cause he rushed it at the last minute. But the rest was IMHO fine (and all correct).
However, I restrained myself from murdering the teacher and eventually convinced DS that he should feel flattered that the teacher sets him such high standards because she knows he can do good work when he puts his mind to it.
This week, he did a good job of his work, and got a sticker.