NoFun Quarantine School - bad mom?

[SleepingStandingUp]

I keep seeing how much fun all the other kids are having at home with their parents but feel like all I do is make mine work.

DH goes "to work" at 9, we go phonics. We both hate phonics, his handwriting is awful so I feel we really can't let it slide but it takes ages. Then there might be a phonics activity to do or some maths, spellings to practise or some art. We also have a morning break. Lunch time is obv free then there will be another activity in tbe afternoon - a leaflet in hand washing or a poster on Spring etc. Finishes with a song or book on YouTube. All set by the teacher half a day at a time and marked instantly.

But it leaves little time for cake baking or den building or painting or everything everyone else does.

I'm normally trying to feed the babies whilst he's doing his phonics, then again just before we have lunch which DH makes and then again at the end of the school day just before DH "comes home" aka downstairs. Babies are not in sync with his breaks really. He finishes about 4.
Then it's tidying up, dinner, more bottles, bed.

I just feel like he's missing out on all the other kids lovely experiences because I can't juggle enough. And I don't work so I know before I'm slated I have it easy.

He's coming 5 so only in reception. Has some speech delay and started Sept behind virtually every one. He's worked hard to get midstream and I'm scared of him regressing

Mine youngest is 5 in reception. I'm barely doing anything with him. It's much more intensive 1 on 1. Try and keep up with the reading like you would at home anyhow and otherwise be daring and do your own thing. I'm taking the view that half an hour of formal stuff plus reading is plenty. But we do lots of fun stuff that is learning without realising (and sometimes just watch tv!).

If he was at school he would be doing lots of free time - painting, building models, cake baking is maths if you get them to do the measuring, drawing for pencil control, DoodleMaths on the tablet, Alphablocks and you tube videos for some of the phonics stuff, shape bingo (and bingo generally for numbers). They need to be learning about stuff too - my son was learning about the rainforest in school so we try and talk about that and look for bugs in the garden.

Remember people only put the best bits on social media.

Try having a day off. Do the baking and fun stuff. Look out for learning in what he's doing, rather than make learning happen..

He'll be learning how to pour, weigh, measure, estimate, gross and fine motor skills. Print a simple recipe out big. Read it to him. Emphasise the words he probably knows. Don't ask him what it says, don't turn it into an activity he feels is a test.
Do any of the bits he needs help with, but let him have chance to feel competent.

Then read a book together and eat your cake, make squash in a teapot and make it feel special. You read, he listens. He'll be checking in his head whether he knows any of the words. Kids don't need to be heard reading to learn to read. It can be a very internal process.
Kids learn best when they're as relaxed as possible and having fun.

Are there apps you can download to help with his writing? he knows how to do the shapes albeit occasionally backwards. An app, fingers in the soil, paint etc, none of those are teaching him to hold a pencil. School food them all in the early days when he wouldn't hold a pen. Now he can, it feels like going backwards when it's pen skills rather than letter formation by and large. I do get the activities to improve fine motor skills

Try having a day off. Do the baking and fun stuff that's what weekends are, he's not working 7 days a week.

We tried cake baking last week, he's fine till its vaguely wet and then can't do it.

Did you say he makes music to dance to? And he's only 4. Let him work on that. What app is he using oh sorry that totally over sold it. It's a basic app on Purple Mash school app where thry have 8 sounds / notes and about 12 spaces. He clicks them and then it plays in a round and he raves along to it 😂😂

Link to fine motor skill fun stuff

www.firesara.com/blogs/handwriting/35-activities-to-improve-pencil-grasp-with-things-easily-found-at-home

I haven’t done any den building or cake baking or anything very creative, I don’t have the supplies baking or stuff like that! Mine has done school work and then just free play like Lego or playing with dolls or singing, YouTube kids yoga or dancing, colouring in books and reading.

They may not be back to school until sept, planning big “fun” activities every day is not going to be sustainable if that happens.