help please

[Hther]

I have a couple of problems / questions

Firstly, do you ever think if your children were at school, you could sepnd lots of quality time with your younger ones? I feel quite sad after spending 2 hours the other day with just my youngest, that i can't spend several hours every day with him

my eldest is 5 (deregsitered her in june last year). She was in top group for english and maths and she and one other were top of class for maths. However, in terms of education, I have always been more concerned about her than her older sister who is 6.

DD1 didnt learn anything at school anyway (severe learning difficulty) but I worry that DD2 will go from being "top" to being average or worse still below average, because of home education. although if she is as intelligent as they said, maybe she will catch up if i do fail her.

Also I am confused, she was brilliant at maths but doesn't seem to find addition and subtraction taht easy. Although i am worried i wont do as well as the teachers at educating ehr and she will become average or lower, I don't think the home ed has caused this as i have been doing sums with her since the day i removed her and she has never found it that easy!

Hi,

Why are you worried that your your eldest will become average? Are you following the NC in Maths and English?

You don't mention why you derigestered and do you home ed DD1 as well?

deregistered, sorry

sorry, meant my DD2 who is intelligent may not do as well with me as in school, DD1 (would be year 2) struggles with reception age stuff (she never learnt anything at school). Am home edding both of them and have toddler and preschooler at home too, deregistered due to bullying

Bullying, poor DCs. We all worry about doing a good job. It feels like a huge responsibility some days. Are you worried that DD2 isn't as able as the school led you to believe? Did they give you any samples of work/levels to give you an idea what level she was working at and are you planning to put her back into school soon?

I tend to think ability and intelligence are not the same thing. Teaching and learning are two different things. I think bright children tend to learn what they need when they are ready. Most children learn more when they are self directed. We are fairly structured but DS has a lot of input and apart from maths and english, he chooses his topics. Today we did mental maths in the bakers, history over lunch and had a maths lesson. So learning can occur outside of lessons/teaching. Every new experience is a learning opportunity and your daughter will be learning a lot of skills and knowledge that she would'nt pick up in a classroom.

Most of the workbooks on the market give a fairly good idea of what they would be learning in school. I also found lots of lesson plans on the net, worksheets and we use some programmes on the computer.

If you enter a search for FREE sats papers some sats for yr 2 should come up, these will give you a good idea of the targets set for end of KS1 and levels.

are you using a structured timetable, or doing autonomous learning?

I would, if you can, just try to forget about school for now. have some time to properly 'deschool' - get it out of your (and their) systems and start afresh - let them learn at their pace :)

i did wonder if i should maybe do autonomous, i started doing mainly autonomous with a bit of a structured, they used to look through an encyclopaedia ask me "what's this picture?" and we would learn abut that subject

then for some reason i started doing structured (looked at schemes of work on the old department of education website)

Minimathsmouse, dd2 is very bright, i am just surprised that for someone who was top of class at maths she doesnt find adding/takeaway taht easy

but that has been the case since we started it i think maybe in that area of maths she wasn't so good

she can count in 2s to 10 and 10s to 100, knows pentagons, octagons, heptagons, paralellograms, rhombus, sphere, cuboid, cylinder etc, can continue picture
patterns but if you ask eg 3 + 2, she looks blank, rather than it occurring to her to use fingers, dots etc

But i'm worried about her going from intelligent, top of the class people to average or below. I know average is good but it would be a shame if her abilities fell because she is home edded, and it would be my fault too! its bad enough if she starts doing less well in school but as she is home edded it willl be my fault!

that's strange. I'd guess she's having trouble with the concepts but her memory is good.

does she learn physically? read first paragraph

it may help to go back to basics and get some pennies or jelly beans and literally add them up in front of her. (sorry if you've done that already!)

Hi Hther, It sounds like she is a very bright little girl but the school has not taught the underlying principles of addition and subtraction. Like Algebra says, you need to go back to the start with it.

I teach maths and although I and schools, use lots of different resources to teach the same thing (makes it more interesting)some kids find that confusing. With my own dcs I have always used an abacus or fingers as in reinforces base ten, place value and carrying. I taught DS1 with an abacus and at 2.5yrs he could add on paper in trebble digits, it works.

my DD is much younger (3.3) but I always get her to touch objects when she counts them. my reception teacher friend also suggests getting the child to actually move the objects as well.

I would second getting an abacus - it is very visual and really helped my DS who struggled with getting the concepts.

this may be even better as you actually have to place the beads on as well as move them along.

thanks, she may still need reminding how to add but now she has learnt some sums by heart, knows 1 + 1, 4 + 4, 5 + 5. I am wondering about ehr spelling now! One thing i used to worry about with my eldest last year was that in year 2 they do spelling tests and she couldn't even spell her name so I was worried how she would cope this year. So I know they dont ahve spelling tests in year 1 at that school.

However, should I be doing spelling with my year 1 child .She used to enjoy writing but suddenly went off it (I hadn't been asking her to do much) and hasnt done writing for ages. I would like her to return to school in the next year or two and dont want her to be struggling

thanks

Rather than spelling tests which put pressure on a child, what about children's word searches and crosswords. I have been using a website that you can make your own simple crosswords on. It would help with reading and spelling. You could help her read the clues. You can use a wordbank so that she finds the word and copies it in. I'm doing this with DS and it's working really well.

The good thing is it can be incorperated into topic work, DS is doing crosswords in his biology project as well as english.

Tutpup website is free, children can practice sums and do spelling. Its fab and its free.

Glad she is picking up with her maths again.

I wasn't thinking of giving her spelling tests! :) just wondering whether she should be learning how to spell at this age, obviously if they have tests in year 2 they are expected to learn how to spell then, i didn't know if i should be doing spelling with her this year.

She hates writing at the mo, but i think i saw some worksheets on enchanted learning where you circle the correct spelling

I'm not sure if this is correct, but a friend of mine who teaches English said that spelling age is approx 1 yr behind reading age. So I guess if you do lots of reading to her/her to you, that should help. The worksheets sound like a good idea, she will be reading them and it's a great way to get her to put pen to paper to start with.

I am having some difficulty getting DS 9 yrs to write more than half a side of A4. So I have been using worksheets and each wk or so, the questions are becoming more open ended to try and get him to write more