Anyone winding down the home schooling?

[Lemons1571]

DH has now gone back to work 5 days a week (key worker). He used to do pretty much all the home schooling (yr 4) while I worked ft from home (I have to be working online 9am-6pm).

The school send a weekly plan - daily maths exercise of 1 hour, English 30 minutes, and 1-2 other subjects every day, so maybe another 1-1.5 hours. The work has to be submitted each week (there is a deadline) then the teachers comment / mark and return it.

DS can do the odd little bit on his own, but mainly needs someone to explain and talk him through the work. Can’t see how this is possible now though. I really think at this stage in the pandemic, that I don’t want to be hauling him out of bed at 6.30am to get him working early, or starting homeschool after dinner at 7pm. Feel so guilty though! We need both our salaries to support the mortgage and food shopping, can’t do it on one pay check.

If no one is around to home school with him though, he’ll be on Minecraft etc 14 hours a day. But there isn’t any other options that I can see. No key worker place as school is full and I’m at home to look after him (in theory)

Where has everyone else got to with this?

Mine is Y11, just starting bridgework for A levels, I'm available for support as furloughed.
I think if our kids were small one of us would have to quit or go part time, it's the parents responsibility to make sure the children are educated by law.
I don't trust this government not to start prosecuting/fining tbh.

Can you not start him off and then pop back through at intervals to get him started on the next piece?

Even if you started him off in the morning and then did another piece that you quickly talk through at lunch it could work.

I wouldn't have him on the Xbox all that time. Can't he play outside or read?

Find a student who needs a part time job to sit with him for three hours while he does his school work then take him to the park to kick a football around for an hour. That way he gets educated and exercised each morning and can play minecraft for the rest of the day.

If I were you I'd contact the school and say that this isn't going to work anymore, sorry. You'll still have been doing loads more than lots of people, lots of the coverage will be repeated/revised anyway because of lack of tech/support for some kids at home.

Get a subscription to something like DoodleMaths and just let him work through it. Designate an hour a day for reading, part of the day for drawing/art/creative stuff, and let him get on with it. The English writing stuff won't matter so much, it gets revised and revised through year 5, even more so over the next 2 years. Sod the other subjects, find something he's interested in on Bitesize, buy him a scrap book off Amazon, do a project. An information book about 'how to play Minecraft for 46 year old teachers who have to try and teach their 5 year old to play it so she can stop being frustrated by it' - I'd buy it.

Get him to do what he can without help ( offer breaks, snacks drinks at intervals) and submit that to school. Explain the situation to the school. Then they know where he is up to!

We’ve been both wfh ft from the start and our school has provided a similar set up (which we are happy with). TBH we’ve just kind of muddled through, juggling home learning around both our jobs - logging on early and late, tag teaming if meetings etc, and taking annual leave (though I’ve done the bulk as my job is more flexible). Our Y3 has similar attention span to yours and needs constant prodding to get on with it. Now we know no school til Sep (and not even def FT), no childcare over summer, I’ve dropped two days to cope.

It’ll hurt, but it’s hopefully temporary and I’m bloody lucky it’s been agreed

Our school is back fully, but during homeschooling I did 7-8:30, and then several half hours during the day, summing up to about 4.5 hours. I did the rest of my work in the evening. Hard, but doable if your work is even a little bit flexible.
I’ve also taken 1 day of leave in every week without a bank holiday, but used it to reduce working hours, so about 1.5 hours less per day.

Essentially some days he might do well and some work if you manage to prompt him other days he won't. That's reality.

I work outside the home. Dh is working from home.

My younger kids are doing oak national academy which seems to be a success and they are managing well independently but some days just don't really do much. My older kid has lots of online work set by school. Some days smashes it but others feels tired and overwhelmed and sits on his phone all day.

It's all ok. Really. We need to concentrate on our children feeling happy and secure rather than how much school work they manage.

Both my DCs (y4 & y2) need my full attention to do any school work. If I was trying to work too, it simply would not be happening.

It’s surely not work or Minecraft? There’s a whole world of reading and drawing and Lego and junk modelling and even educational tv shows between those things.

Yep I did after half term just couldn't do it along with working 12 hours days. Will just have to catch up when I'm on leave over the summer.

Assuming no SEND issues then he should be able to complete a task that you start him off on. One at 8.30 and another during your lunch break. Even part of the maths each day and a writing task will be much better than nothing. And then do more with him at weekends when you're off work. If this means missing the arbitrary deadline/not having a teacher mark it then that matters much less than him actually doing some work.

Either way he needs supervising and challenging. (Setting aside 14 hours a day on Minecraft which I assume is massive hyperbole and not a serious proposition.) Agree the screen goes on after a certain time, once he's ticked off his chart... include on it things like 2 pieces of school work, tidying his room, read a book, doing a chore, something in the garden or with crafts. All things he can do with minimal supervision.

(BTW at my local school he'd be allowed to return, with 1 keyworker and 1 FT from home parent - it's worth enquiring if you haven't.)

Do as much as you can during the week and catch up during the weekends. Ask school which boys he absolutely needs to do and things he can catch up with in the hols.

I’m charging in at full speed towards the end of term.

I suppose it started off pretty well 13 weeks ago. He was far more motivated to complete the maths worksheets and do some writing. It’s sort of slowly slipped, and he’s easily distracted by the lure of the pc.

I suppose its all gone a bit “Maslows hierarchy of needs” (anyone remember that?!). We are prioritising meeting the basic needs (food shelter warmth security) which of course a salary provides. Completing worksheets (without actually learning anything new) has increasingly moved to a “nice to have” if anyone’s got a bit of energy left.

Re getting a student in, how would I go about this? They’d need to be dbs checked as they would be alone in a room with him. I don’t think there would be time to organise this before end of term. It’s an option for September though.

@Mawbags what do you mean? Working harder than ever?

OP I agree. I think the comments about parent's duty etc are OTT. It is getting towards the summer now and I know yr 6 DS would mainly be doing sports day and end of term stuff now. He's in 2 days a week but not going that much at school except play outside. He's doing a bit from the planner and quite a bit of Minecraft the other days.

@Orangeblossom78 that’s true, residentials and end of term stuff all take up a lot of time within 9-3pm.

I used to teach primary and there is also lots of other stuff in the school day, playtimes, assembles and PE, group work, it is not usual for them to just sit for long periods and work alone.

i might try encouraging a bit of cooking and art perhaps. Mine has been doing come coding and web stuff as they are into that.

I'd get him to do a little bit every day and maybe break the minecraft up with some educational/creative stuff too, but don't kill yourself trying to get all the school stuff done.

Our primary has said just do what you can and pick and choose, and take care of yourself.

By this time in the school year they’d be doing bugger all
2 hours a day is enough!

We will be after this week if DS’s school still won’t have the extra children back. He’s in year 6 and should be doing transition stuff now but he’s still being set maths, English and another subject each day. School have tried their best but he’s at the end of his tether with it now and if he’s not going back I’ll be making up my own transition work and probably need to cover the sex education too ( he knows the mechanics of it but I don’t really know what they usually cover in year 6). Other than that he just really needs to socialise so that’s the priority, his social skills have taken a nose dive 😢.

OP, I appreciate that you and other WFH parents are in a difficult spot.

But I really think you need to grow a bit of a spine about the PC and any other devices.

Lock then away or put passwords on them that he doesn't know and can't guess. Have a couple of assigned slots a day where he gets to mess around on Minecraft, and warn him that these sessions will be reduced or rescinded if you start to hear whining and begging. Put out worksheets and workbooks and writing materials in the morning, and books and drawing materials in the afternoon. Tell him it is his job to find things to do and get on with it. Just writing and illustrating a story or a daily diary is fine. It doesn'T have to be perfect, but some form of engagement with some kind of reading and writing is essential. I don't know the exact summer holiday dates in the UK (I live overseas), but by my reckoning it's nearly a month before term would finish, so it's not "nearly the holidays" by any reckoning. And even if it were the holidays, Minecraft 14 hours a day really isn't OK.

I know of parents who have small toddlers and basically have little choice other than to let them have WAY too much screen time because there is literally no other way that the poor parent can work and they are trying desperately to keep their job. But a Year 4 without SEN absolutely can occupy themselves in other ways for most of the day.