6 year old boy doing 1 hour english/40 mins per day in holiday. Too much or just right?

[pepsi]

A friend of mine was telling me how she has been working with her ds6 every day in the holidays to try and improve his skills for Year 2. He doesnt have any learning difficulties or anything, is just an average child I would say. I was amazed when she said she is doing an hour of writing, letters, drawing, plus 40mins of sums every morning. Of course this amazement has now turned to paranoia and visions of my ds sitting at the bottom of the class with a dunces hat. I have tried to do some reading during the hols but mainly its been play, play and a bit more play, holiday, going out, etc. Whats a reasonable amount of work to do per day in the hols...if any do you think?

I have a 'going into year 1" boy, who was sent home with a note asking if we could help him learn to write his full name during the summer. We might just manage that! And I have a going into year 6 girl who is doing 45 minutes a day in preparation for 11+ in January in exchange for extra riding lessons. She also practices her clarinet for 15 minutes. That's an hour a day at 10. And I think that's a lot!

SecurMummy, I was very specific, I said "you can", not "it's the only way", and certainly not "you must".
At age 5 DS likes playing with Excel, and enjoys simple electronics, and various verbal reasoning puzzles.
He also enjoys hitting things with large sticks, and a game that consists mostly of running through the house and shouting.
My point is that helping your kids learn need not be a chore, and can be fun. We have to ration DS's time on the computers because he enjoys Excel too much. (that will change

As for RustyBear's "point". I cringe every time I see my kids climb something more than 50 mm off the ground, I cringe. But I let them do it, else you have fat kids who need to be ferried around in cars, because they are outwitted by street signs.

Fair enough DC, however I do feel that it is not possible to make 1hr40mins of learning per day fun for a 6yo! My dds love excel too - but they play on it, I don't use it to "educate" them, they make spreadsheets and graphs etc of various things including meals out etc!

Even my younger children love playing around with painting etc on the computer I suppose you could say that is education as they are learning stuff they will eventually use at school, however, it is done in their time on their terms etc so I don't feel it is "educational" at all!

I wasn't actually making a point - I simply posted two quotes - which is what I tend to do if I think opinions are getting a bit polarised.

As for Excel, I teach it to 7 year olds at school - we make pictures by colouring in cells - they love it and as far as they are concerned it is play - as far as I am concerned it's education (they learn what cell addresses are)In fact I would say that nearly all ICT lessons at our school are seen as fun by the kids - but the amount they know about computers by the end of year 6 is amazing.

is she mad? that poor child
holidays are not for school work, theyre for FUN!
ive done zilcho school work with my kids during the holidays & have no intention of starting now.

Have not read any of the thread at all except the OP but my immediate reaction is that the woman is a loon.

Might read the rest of the thread now...

some summmer hols I've made them do homework this summmer hol I am not. Lots of reasons for and against - and have good and bad experiences, but will come back later and tell them as am in a rush.

Read the rest of the thread now and yeah, still think she's a loon.

We've done nothing, exciting or otherwise. The only "heducashional" thing we've done is when we're reading Harry Potter, I occasionally stop and get him to read a sentence or a phrase every page. Not too taxing. Plus he's drawing pictures of it and when he says he's bored I ask him to draw me a picture of an event or character from the book and write a little bit about it/ them. Seems to work a treat. Plus when it's raining they occasionally draw and write stuff and a bit of guitar practice. Nothing structured though, very ad hoc.

BTW I find it a little strange to think that either you do structured learning or sit at a playstation/ TV all day We do neither.

I'm sure it will make absolutely no difference whatsoever to my DS' "mental readiness" for the next acedemic year if he does structured stuff in the holiday or not. And is it heretical to suggest that it doesn't actually matter that much whether he's mentally ready or not? If he's not mentally ready on the first monday he goes back, he will be by the wednesday, and hey, that will really be good enough, over the course of the year. And I suspect that the same will be true for most of his classmates.

Today LO was on her Dorling Kindersley Human Body and Science explorer CD roms which she got free in various cereal packets. She chose to do this & sees them primarily as fun games rather than educational, although of course they are both fun and educational.

I think a lot of the things that children do is educational without them realising it. I even think that playing Sims has some educational value for DD - for a start she has learnt that you can't just spend all your income on plants, furniture & decoration!

I read a story to dd (5) every night and she's always writing and colouring as she loves it. I haven't done any 'structured' work with her though!

She is getting on fine. To me holidays are holidays, she's learning every time she lifts a pen as she loves her writing anyway.

A litle bit of work during the holidays is fine. But this should be fun and definetly not every day. What your friend is doungPepsi is far to much. Her son should be enjoying the holidays.
My 14 year old has dyspraxia and needs to practice her writing during the holidays so that she does not get behind. She is also taking Art for GCSE but she only does about an hour a week.

MADNESS.

My DD and Ds are now 18 and 16 but when they were little we did not do structured work during holidays. DD always had her nose in a book (still does) and DS would go round house counting things and estimating how big, long and wide things were, all of there own accord. We would also visit museums, zoos, country walks (bug hunting and pond dipping etc), bit of canoeing, loads of craft stuff (house was always a mess), playing in park, swimmimng etc, etc, etc. Allthese things they loved doing and have not suffered from not having done homework all hols (well in Ds case lets hope not he gets GCSE results next week!)

well excessive, no way am I doing that with DS. We used to be encouraged to do 'projects' in the summer by my mom and dad, so we read, we went to museums, we did birdwatching or flower pressing etc. All fun stuff that we wanted to do but with sneaky education slipped in - I never felt pressured or overworked and I had alot of fun in the holidays.

If they play an instrument they really have to do regular practice - but otherwise I never did anything 'structured' with mine

Add my name to the utter slackers list. Mine have done NOTHING they have not wanted to do.
I haven't even forced music practice. I think your friend is very sad.

I don't see how you can think doing things which might benefit your child be sad?

blondilocks, I don't knwo about other people but I think its 'sad' because I interpirt any parent who spends this much time on academic stuff with their child (outside of school allocated homework) has their priorities wrong.

Summer holidays should be a time for fun and games and family time.

In addition if your only criteria for success and 'benefiting' your child is academic study then you have a very one-sided view of life.

u know i have every intention of putting aside some homework time at weekends..but does it ever happen in the holidays??..NEVER!...do u want to know why?..because we're having such a great time, some days doing absolutely nothing at all, just chilling and playing with their own toys with a bedtime story every night..which they love...and other days we plan daily outings..and by the time we're back, we so shattered that sometimes they miss out on bedtime stories, as we don't have the energy..i think it also shows kids, that we are humans and not machines..of course i want my children to do well at school, but every child needs time out..that's why they are called holidays!..

Maybe it's execssive doing several hours of structured work every day but I still wouldn't say it was sad. I don't do it with my LO but if I felt that she needed to spend extra time to improve on things then I would. They would still have plenty of time to do fun stuff as well.

We started off the holidays with some intentions of doing a bit of reading every day with DD1 (going into Y1), just to maintain her progress and confidence. But we haven't. She has been having such a great time doing whatever she wants to do - mostly mucking around with DD2 and their friends, cooking or 'make and do' - that it seems wrong to force her, and it would take some force, to read. We may do some reading with her in the last few days before she goes back.

I'm just assuming that her reading will have dropped back over the holidays but that she'll catch up again. Hell, I didn't do a stroke of homework, holidays or termtime, until I was 10.

Exactly Issymum neither did I. Not until we got to secondary school in fact. And it doesn't seem to have affected me adversely.