Stroppy 6 year old DD refusing to do school project

[spambolina]

6 year DD can be the most adorable individual when she is alone with one parent but get the whole family together and she is vile. Mean to her sister, mocking, back chat, tantrums, hitting, biting, frequent melt downs and kicking off like a toddler, her toddler sister is better behaved than her!
We have some home work which consists of a project in whatever form you like, mini book, poster, model making etc etc, and the topic is a different country. I have been trying to get her to think about it for the last 3 weeks, and tomorrow is the hand in day.

We tried this morning to do something with her, in a fun way. She moaned, she screamed, she cried ' I'm useless cos I can't do it', then we had the sitting and ignoring what everyone is saying and she started to make a shark out of paper saying 'i'm going to make my own picture'- as opposed to making something that might be relevant to the topic. She then proceeded to sit and pull faces, to mock Mummy, laughing at us as we tried to help and get her interested.
This is not the first time its been hellish trying to get her to do homework. We decided to tell her that if she doesnt want to do the project then she needs to be prepared to explain to her teacher in the morning why she has done nothing when her friends would have completed theirs. At the moment there is absolutely no remorse, she doesnt give a monkeys. I really am at my wits end with her behaviour, what have we done wrong?

What is the consequence for not doing the homework? I'd be tempted to let her not do it, email teacher telling him/her why it wasnt done and let the chips fall.

Its all a bit wishy washy soft and fluffy at school these days. When I was a kid we were terrified of consequences of not doing our work.

Have similar with mine and the trouble is that there are no consequences for not doing homework, just rewards for those who do which my dd is not bothered about.
No real answers-I've managed to cajole mine into doing hers today by helping her make a PowerPoint presentation about it which was a bit of a novelty.
Otherwise I tend to leave everything she needs nearby and let her get on with it and hand in whatever (often very little) she produces.

Think sometimes it can be rondo with perfectionism-ie she Imagines what she'd like to produce but quickly realises she can't get anywhere near that so gives up altogether.

Something to consider

Certain children do struggle to bring school into the home environment, especially if it's a place where they work very hard to be good. If this is the case for your DD, you need to ask yourself and her teacher whether it's worth pursuing an activity that distresses her so much that she won't be learning a thing from it.

Its soooooo exhausting, and yes totally agree Goldmandra, some children do struggle to bring school into home environment, she has struggled throughout Year 1 with reading and writing, and we had the same scenario every week when we were gently trying to enocourage and excite her to do her reading. In the end we told school that we were not pushing the reading and writing as it was counterproductive as was getting completely turned off learning! She now does a little and has improved massively in confidence that I thought we were over the getting blood from a stone stage!
The consequences were explained to her very clearly, that she can explain to teacher why she has not done her project, there will be no playing lego game on playstation with her father. guess what happened at 8pm that night 'what about my project, I want to do my project now!!!!!!'
She did do it with DH, with a short time restriction, she sat and wrote and did some pictures and was really really proud of what she had done and said she was going to keep it forever to show her children. SO WHY THE FUSS I muttered to myself! She then asked if she could play the lego game tomorrow- DH would of in the past said yes, but We agreed that actually she has to learn that she can not mess people around and behave in an unacceptable manner so no she cant play it.

I really struggle getting dd to do projects, she is good on simple homework like a worksheet and loves drawing and art, but projects are a nightmare.

'Projects' can be rather daunting for Yr1, and imaging another country can be almost impossible - unless they have been abroad on holidays, and even then they hardly know where they have been.

It isn't worth making a 'battle' of school work. As long as she CAN read a bit, and does some bits of acceptable writing, then don't 'push' it too much.

To encourage reading and writing, this might help:

An inexpensive and easy to use book, that can encourage children with reading, spelling and writing, and really help them to understand Phonics, is reviewed in the MN Book Reviews section. Just search ‘Phonics’.

(I also have Numeracy info, and other Yr1 - Yr2 activities to boost learning, if you would like them sometime.)

Yes please ferguson, she is in Yr 2 so anything pitched at this level would be awesome. Thank you