How much home schooling is everyone doing?

[VEGAS2016]

Just that really.

Dont feel im doing a good job at it. Ive dd 6 (year one) & doing probably an hour a day, split between maths & English- she hates English so thats always interesting 😕

No live lessons, work provided by school which we are following a little but proved to difficult for her to understand (& me if im honest).

Is one hour a day acceptable?

Our school have massively improved provision this time round. Year 1, and around 3 hours a day. Nothing live, but a good daily plan, tasks, videos etc. I work full-time but work for big corporate so they allow a lot of flexibility.

Dd2 aged 8. Possibly a couple of hours top.

DS aged 12. None.

DD1 aged 14. 4-5 hours.

Yr 6 about 4 to 5 hours but he’s really doing a lot on each thing

Yr 11 whole school day

Much more than last time

DS9 4 hours a day
DS8 2 hours a day
DD5 half an hour here and there.

It's more the daily zoom call they hate. Not being taught anything just to check in and share their work.

Sorry should have added i am at home but 32 weeks pregnant & feel like shit & also have a DS 3 who is a handful!!

Yr4 and they (twins) are given about 3 hours work a day, which they can do mostly on their own with a bit of help from one of us every hour or so, plus they get 3 x 30 mins live calls too. I’m making them also do times table rock stars / purple mash games/reading to fill the rest of the day

My kids are being set around 3 hours each, but it's impossible for me to get through all that as I have 4 kids. Youngest 2 need 1:1 supervision, next one needs significant input to stay on task, eldest needs support as well. I reckon I'm averaging 1 hour with youngest, 1.5 with middle 2 and 2-3 with eldest. It's all I can manage, trying to juggle my own work and the usual chores and housework as well.

I also have a daughter in year 1. We have 3 hours of online learning from 9am-12pm then a hour lunch break and some independent learning until 3pm.

It is very intense but luckily DD doesn’t mind, I, however, am struggling to cope. I have a 2 year old and a 1 year old and it’s all just getting too much, and I’m only 4 days in.

Will she watch bbc bite size? Find out her topic and look on YouTube for related things. My DS2 is same age. I bought him a little whiteboard with lines on one side and he’s quite enjoying practicing his writing, or drawing on it. We probably did about 2 hours in total today, plus watched a YouTube thing on castles. My eldest is yr6 and he’s doing 4-5hours a day with live lessons on teams. It’s great as he doesn’t need much input from me!

Yr 8 5hr online lessons
Yr 3 3 hours. School is providing loads of work including a daily assembly struggling to fit round the working day & we will have to catch up at the weekend. Really hoping to stay on top of it, the teachers are working so hard I feel it's the least we can do.

Yr 7 Whole school day.
(Also had a welfare call from his school yesterday. It was tagged on to the end of a call back about a query I had regarding remote learning but I was really impressed they’d got back to me so quickly).

Yr1. About 3 hrs.
Phonics, English and Maths. All are live or pre recorded lessons lasting about half an hour and then about half an hour follow up work. She also has Wider Curriculum tasks to do so we’ll do that at the weekend (happy to do those at the weekend as there’s not much else going on).

Today they had
Maths- approx an hour
English- approx an hour
DD1 had Science... About 45 mins.
DD2 had pE (45mins) and French (15mins)
Then reading, spellings and handwriting on top.
Morning introduction from teacher (pre recorded) and story time at end of day.
Actually took up the whole school day, once we added in tech trouble, printing, morning break, lunch hour etc. Some can be done on their tablets, but other bits they needed the shared laptop. PE was YouTube, so I could use the TV for that.

Ds2 (13) has a full school timetable to follow.

He has to log on for 8.30 am for assembly and his lessons follow his usual day, ending at 3pm. The only difference is that there is no homework to do, unless you need to finish something up from the day's lessons.

I've been extremely impressed with his school tbh- their covid measures were fantastic, and they had planned ahead for online learning so were ready to go.

Considering it's a large-ish state school (c 1300 students), they've done very well.

DS7 between 2 and 4 hours a day, but also reading and playing educational games on top of that.

I’ve got two primary age kids and they’re doing an hours zoom lesson a day plus 1-2 hours extra with me; I work 20 hours a week for a very flexible company as well as having a 2 year old and a 10 month old - routine is key!!!!

OP, this whole exercise has to be sustainable for you and your family in the medium term. Please don't compare what you do with how much other people are doing. Stay tuned into what your DD enjoys and has energy for. She will not fall behind (as a primary teacher I can virtually guarantee this) and any missed objectives and gaps in learning can be consolidated later.

Y5 dd has about an hour and a half of work set by her school (done via zoom and screen sharing with the techy grandparent), PE for at least 20 minutes outside with me in my lunch break (but there’s sod all to do...) plus some extra maths and English workbooks to keep her busy while I work (about 45 minutes). School is definitely setting more than lockdown 1, which is good - covering reading, writing, maths, and two of PE/science/topic/French each day.

My dd 7 is doing about an hour a day absolute max. The amount of work expected from primary aged children is unsustainable I think. Parents have work/housework/more than one child etc and young primary children need a parent to sit with them/supervise learning. Trying to imitate school at home is a rubbish idea.

@Countdowntonothing

Government have instructed teachers to provide 3 hrs a day.

Some people will want more, most people, I imagine, will struggle to keep up with 3 hrs if they're juggling wfh too.

If you have to pick and choose, for Y1 try and focus on Phonics and reading.

3 hours a day averaged out across the school, so less for the lower years.

Reception, 1 hour max spread throughout the day but that’s not all formal sitting down at at desk and writing.

I feel your pain OP! Today DC managed around 3 hours then after lunch, that was it! DC KS1 age and with work, etc, it is definitely a juggling act at the moment! Just try and follow the bits that you can and don't feel terrible if you don't get it all done. There are also other resources out there if what your school have provided you are not working out - try Oak Academy for pre recorded lessons if you think that may help your DC. Good luck 😊

Our school haven’t even told us the home learning plan yet - it seems they are still getting it organised.

So for this week we’ve just been given a few maths & English worksheets to complete:

DS10 (Y6) has had a daily white rose maths worksheet, One SpaG worksheet & spellings

DD 6 (Y1) has had a daily Twinkl maths worksheet and phonics worksheet.

Unfortunately it’s much less than we got in the first lockdown & they both whizzed through these very quickly so I’ve had to find them extra work on bite size & oak academy to supplement it, together with a bit of reading. We’ve been finished by 12 every day.

Everyone is trying to do their best,.re circumstances.
l would suggest looking on Youtube at families who homeschool full time. Some very interesting videos on there, throws a different perspective on it. You cannot simply bring the classroom into the home. l home school one of my sons and found them to be life savers.

Doing 5 hours a day- submitting work at the end of the day at 3:30. Child is in reception!!

Don’t think for a second I’m bragging- I’m not- that’s a cry for the worlds most sympathy please. We’ve done 3 days so far and I’m broken- it will be me swinging from the chandelier in joy when the weekend gets here!!

We just did the online lesson which was 45 minutes (for Y3).

We’ve done lots of other things that were fun and educational. I cannot put my child through home schooling again, they hate (I mean almost irrationally hate) zoom and hate me helping with the work. For context said child is greater depth everything and a voracious reader, so I realise I am lucky enough approach this with a more relaxed attitude knowing they are not behind to start with. We are going to research Louisa May Alcott tomorrow, because it is not set by school I can help and no stress will occur. If the school set this it would be a different matter. It is something that will both enjoy too which again makes it easier. I am not interested in following a school day schedule at home, personally I think it’s a really bad idea probably because it really doesn’t work for us.

Every child is different and I think you have to use your judgement as to what is best for them. I will continue to sign in to online session to get that box ticked for the school. However I absolutely refuse to put any pressure on my child or myself to do the work set by school. If they are enjoying and want to do it then fine if not then we will move on to something else. For me personally our mental well being is far more important than curriculum box ticking. I think most children will catch up. I missed nearly all of secondary school due to illness, I still got GCSE and A-levels. It wasn’t easy and they weren’t they best but I also wasn’t the most focused student either!

Sorry for ramble but I feel strongly people need to put their family’s health and happiness before the governments notion of what we should and shouldn’t be doing as home learning. Just fuck off Boris and fuck off Gav!