Nursery isn't pushing my son enough

[poco2015]

I am not sure what to do. My son is in full time nursery, he is 2 and a bit. He has begun blending and is reading cvc words and sounding out to help him. He is fantastic at numbers can count to 20 (and beyond when he feels like it) can understand the concept of taking away and adding (with objects). We have been doing doubling and halving at home which he can do but sometimes doubles when you say halve and halves when you say double, but we have been doing this for only a week so he is still bound to make mistakes. At the moment when the preschoolers do phonics and maths time DS goes in with them, I keep asking for them to help him with his fine motor but they say they are, but we are not seeing much improvement and what they are doing seems to be very basic. wwyd as i don't want to come across as too much of a controlling mum. I already pushed to get him into the preschoolers room for the phonics and maths

floggingmolly they do phonics assessments each half term, and are then put into groups based on their level. Majority of year 2's are no longer on phonics and do more literacy and guided writing during this time. Phonics groups are taught around the school and taught by trained ta's and teachers in order that phonics is taught to the child's ability rather than their age and done so in smaller groups. It's actually quite common in many larger primary schools. Ultimately it means that children are not moved on before they are ready and they are not in a class bored. SDD is at the school which is part of the federation and they do the same thing there.

Jesus christ.

M'y son is nearly two and I'm amazed that he can now count to four! I'm just relieved that nursery manage to feed, clothe and stop him climbing trees, never mind halving!

Have a kit kat, OP.

My ds was obsessed with numbers and letters from early age, and things he done at home was, lots of maze drawing, cutting shapes, playing with magnetic letters and numbers, lego and puzzles mostly.(He never puts things in his mouth so we weren't worried about small parts.)

You know all this about the school already and your child is still only 2 and a half?

Whoah.

Erm, get a grip.

He's 2.

Let him play.

He'll get fed up and put the brakes on and won't do it in reception. Then you'll be forcing him to do it.

Let him be a kid. There's plenty of time for maths and phonics when he's older.

Look, my PFB DC loves numbers and letters too. I get it. You are excited and proud of him. But if it is something he is genuinely interested in then he doesn't need formal "pushing" to get him further and further ahead. He already has intrinsic motivation and curiosity to learn. Trying to formalise this and push him could backfire badly, really make it not fun for him.

Let him play and find where numbers take him by himself, let him discover interests that are tangentially related. My DC is fascinated by learning to tell the time, he wants to know what temperature is, look at bus timetables, wants to measure things e.g. for cooking and know about what percentage batteries are charged etc. He's using his love numbers as a key to find out about how the real world works rather than just an abstraction.

Although I am amazed by what my son does and is interested in. I have a realistic idea that he may explore this for a while, drop it and concentrate on something else like how to catch a ball or climb a tree and I am really relaxed about that and open-minded (and realistic) about whether he ends up being a maths genius, or just someone with a regular maths capability whose curiosity meant he learnt it a bit earlier whilst leaving other things a bit later and it all evens out. (He only learnt to jump in the last couple of months after turning 3, and I know other children who have been doing this since 18-24 months)

I don't think Motor skills are something you can force, they come from experience, of having the opportunity to manipulate objects and their body, some things take time, time spent playing and doing fun things.

Don't suck the fun out of learning by formalising it too quickly. Learning to love stories is more important than doing phonics a few years early. It's cool that he's doing both, but keep it light and don't be pushy.

This sounds like s a reverse thread from the nursery

You are going to be the nutcase demanding to know why your reception aged child isn't doing advanced phonics, aren't you op? God love his teachers...

He is 2, he is 2, he is 2.
Back down, give the poor kid a break.

Does he have fun? Can he make friends? Can he wipe his own bum? Can he play?
These things are just as important.

i was going to type a long post but is all I have to say.

And I do say this as a wrangler of a fully fledged 18 year old with offers at RG universities and A* targets. Who only PLAYED until she was four, we built houses out of boxes, snow camps in the winter, baked, dressed up. Was probably totally illiterate I honestly can't remember but she is a fabulous young women without all the pushy education bullshit.

He is still tiny, you have years and years ahead to worry about phonics and maths. Spend your time at the park, going swimming or just playing.

Cross-posted with the more info. Yeah I don't think he needs pushed. You want him to be intrinsically motivated, which he's going to get from discovering this stuff for himself and delighting in the mastery of it. If it is schooled at him, then he could well get bored of it and see it as a chore.

I'm not saying 'don't facillitate his interest' in numeracy and literacy, but I would be happy that he has free play time at the nursery and is coming along with physical, social and self care skills there through play, rather than trying to get them to push him further to the academic book work which he's already doing more of for his age.

He's not behind with something just because it isn't advanced as his other areas. It's okay!

facilitate*

I teach reception, some children come to us not knowing their own name (this is not an exaggeration), some can count and know letters, some can play and ask questions.

It's the third group that do the best.

How sad. Poor little boy. Leave him be Fgs. I hope this is a load of bollocks tbh. It's as bad as neglect and just as harmful in many ways. You're quite strange In your outlook puts it as politely as possible

"give him more opportunity for fine motor at home"

You really are over-thinking this. Calm down dear

Stop with the coaching.

Seriously he's still just a baby.

It worries me that you know so much about how the school he won't be attending for another 3 years, operates. Either you work there, have another child there or are one of those mums. If it's the latter then stop it immediately. He will end up burnt out before he's 10.

Op - you're not doing your child any good here. My three are all bright. Dd1 has plenty of A*s etc and is applying for medicine. Do you want to know how much I pushed her nursery?

The answer is NOT AT ALL. Nothing, never. The kid barely spoke till she was three. STOP what you are doing and get him out of the pre school classes. Concentrate on learning through play, nurturing his imagination and enjoying his toddler years.

I think you need to calm down.

What you are doing now will make absolutely no difference in the long run, unless you are short-sighted enough to take the joy out of learning for your son and eventually produce a stressed out miserable child who believes their worth is the sum of their academic results.

As a headmaster once said to us at a parents meeting 'your children can always resit an exam, but they cant resit their childhood'

Sorry, haven't read every post but isn't this just humble bragging?!!! PFB?

Ds1 started nursery on his third birthday and they decided to run him with the pre-school group as he somehow had a very bizarre grasp of numbers (could do addition, subtraction of any double figures in his head, as well as just seemed to 'know' basic multiplication - I would go in to tuck him up at night and he would say 'did you know that three lots of 7 is 21?' or some random question about evolution, dinosaurs, and a bible story. Even now he doesn't seem to have any identifiable process in his maths (which drives his teachers mad) but he 'knows' the answer. Ask him to explain why, and he gets frustrated and says 'it just is'. His maths teacher adores him as he clearly has some inherent understanding of numbers, but tbh we are all at a bit of a loss as to what to do with him. He's almost 14. He may well flunk any exams that require 'showing your work' as for him that stage is a waste of everyone's time. He just 'knows'

He's actually the least 'gifted' on paper of my three, by some 20 iq points. They coded him as gifted for literacy in yr r, which I thought was really funny. He was reading chapter books, but was far more advanced in his number work. No one really cared about numbers in school in the early years. Reading seems to be the big 'gifted' flag...

The most 'gifted' of mine on paper (dd2) taught herself to read. We still don't know how, nor ever will. We didn't know she could read at all until one day she sat and read the lion the witch and the wardrobe to mil. We laughed and thought it was some weird memory thing, but then she read a paragraph of Virginia Woolf over my shoulder. she was two-something. Not entirely sure. She was also brain damaged at birth, so we had been putting all our energy into teaching her to talk and walk (physio, ot, SLT, neuro appointments) and there was definitely no time left over for academics lol. Nursery weren't interested - in that LEA kids did pre-reading skills before school, but not until their pre-school year. She hadn't got that far. It was lovely she could read, but tbh we just gave her books - there was nothing else to be done as she had already done it herself. In yr r we had to get a full evaluation done for something else (we were thinking of moving o-seas and they required full clinical and Ed psych testing battery to determine if she would be a burden on the state and therefore inadmissible). The testing came back that she was between 2 and 7 years ahead in different subjects. At school she just accessed books from the appropriate year group shelves for reading and comprehension. Easy enough. (Later we were told she couldn't be g&t as her handwriting wasn't two years above grade. She uses a keyboard as her cerebral palsy means she finds it difficult to record at speed legibly with a pen lol).

Anyhoo - counting to 20 and doing some cvc stuff is lovely. Kids are sponges at this age and generally don't require 'teaching'. If you teach them, they will learn though, as you have discovered. I went away for the weekend when dd1 was 18 mos, and dh had taught her the alphabet. She would recognize sounds and pick up the correct letter and tell you what it was, or you could ask her to tell you what sound 'this' letter made (holding it up), or ask her to find a 'q' or whatever and she would. She would also tell you what words started with that letter. Dh was very proud of himself for imparting this 'knowledge' in a weekend. it was a fun party trick, if a little creepy for a toddler.

Do you think his fine motor skills are age appropriate? Or do they seem 'behind' to you because you have moved him into the pre-school class and are assuming he should be on par with them across the board? Is his frustration because he is unable to keep up with this older age group? Or with his own peer group? It's worth remembering that he will not be 'advanced' at the same level across the board. If you think he is behind, there are lots of fine motor activities on here, and billions of games you can play that will help. (mrz posts a lot on this subject). If you are more worried, your gp will be able to refer to OT for support. Dd2's OT would go into nursery and give her key workers ideas and targets for her IEP. (As would physio and SLT lol).

He sounds lovely, anyway. Enjoy.

This is ridiculous. You sound like you know your stuff so should therefore be able to understand that fine motor development in children is a exactly that- a developmental stage that they work through in their own time, in the same way that they learn to grasp, crawl and walk. Boys especially develop their gross motor first, before refining their fine motor skills later. If you are really that he'll-bent on 'pushing' him, get him outside and encourage him to climb trees and climber all over large apparatus to strengthen all those arm and shoulder muscles. Then, implement a focussed and sustained training marathon involving circuits of play dough, threading, tweezer work and mark making. Or, just leave the poor boy alone and let him play and allow nursery to extend and nourish his own fascinations and interests. For goodness sake.

the poor child - what are you going to be like once he starts school!?

calm down

All good parents should be giving their children gentle support with fine motor skills at home. It's just part of bringing up a child. There is really no need to turn it into something massive that needs targets and monitoring for crying out loud.

I agree with the majority, OP, he is tiny and will improve his fine motor skills through general, normal play. It's great that he's interested in phonics, numbers etc, but there really is no need to push anything at this age, he won't not reach his potential because he spends more time playing.

If it helps, my DS2 was fairly similar aged 2, given paper and crayons he would write out sums rather that than draw, the only thing he wanted for his 3rd birthday was a calculator, he was reading basic stories etc. I didn't discourage this, but I did try and steer him towards the more 'fun' activities more often than not. I just sat back and allowed him to go at his own pace, I've never asked a teacher to challenge him more because I trusted the school to do their job.

He's now 11, just started secondary and already sitting some GCSEs. I am sure your DS will fly academically, but for now, just being 2 is more than enough.

I also think you're pushing your ds too hard, dh works with maths all the time and is an academic and he wasn't doing maths at home pre-school. Why are you doing all of this, what's driving you?