Reluctant HE

[InspiredToBoot]

Hello everyone! I've been sent over by the primary education lot. My DD who should have started Y1 doesn't have a school to go to. She turned 5 in June. So whilst we wait for something suitable to come up I am going to try and teach her something. Her reading is good, I think she's about ORT Stage 8 and she reads corgi pups. Everything else, I'm not really sure to be honest. Writing not great, numeracy very very basic. I don't think she can count in 2's for example. How do I go about finding what she should be covering and get started with buying relevant resources? Thank you so much everyone.

Ooooh here we go

Writing - just chill. Have her help make shopping lists. Ask her to tell you stories and you write them down for her. If she wants to, she could do some of the writing (but don't push it).

numeracy - lots of cooking. Just count the things around you. Lots of counting money. Go past the houses on a street and count the even numbers. Don't worry about getting her to write things down. Do fun sorting of piles of stones or shells or whatever.

the main thing is just to enjoy her company and answer her questions. There'll be plenty of them!

Really ommmward? But but... doesn't she have to cover something specific? I mean, she will go into mainstream education as soon as a place at a suitable school comes up.

If you think she's not strong in numeracy make sure she can can count and understands how it works - I think it's called number concordance or something. So she can give you 1 smartie and no thats " 1 smartie" or 2 spoons and know that she has 2. Sounds daft but sometimes kids just don't get that and no amount of trying to get them to count in 2's or what ever will help until they can do that.

Lots of patterns- play with your food at home- 2 green pasta spiral then a white one, and repeat ad infinitum (cooked or dry!) . Count cherios, make bead strings that have patterns etc etc

She'll move as fast as in school (if not faster) just doing informal stuff with you. Have a think about what she would be doing in school - it's basic 3Rs isn't it, with the aim of lots of play-based learning (at least, that's what all the pro-school people are forever telling me).

So you can support the 3Rs by

1. reading to her. Letting her read to you when she feels like it. Answering her questions about how reading works [NB CBeebies alphablocks is great if you want to be a bit phonics-y with her, and there are lots of games on the CBeebies website. But schools only teach by phonics because that gets results quickly with the average child - my completely-fluently-reading child learned without a single lesson from anyone ever, just by people reading to her whenever she needed, and with unlimited internet access]

1. Writing lists, writing labels for things, writing little stories, putting captions on her paintings. Invite her to write; do it for her if she doesn't want to. She'll pick it up by osmosis at exactly the right speed for her.

1. lots of counting things and adding things and taking things away when it's relevant to the conversation. Again - no need for formal maths early (we covered about 3 years of primary maths in about 2 months when we had a treasure hunt craze earlier this year... entirely child led, and the concepts of adding, subtracting, multiplication and division took about 1 minute each to learn because the child was interested and ready).

And otherwise, like I said before, just answer her questions (HEers call it "purposive conversation" and it is a HIGHLY efficient way of learning)

There's a reassuring book you could read by Alan Thomas and Harriet Pattison called "How children learn at home".

But yeah, even if you want to look at the National curriculum online and try to follow it, bear in mind that even the most formally-minded bought-curriculum-and-workbook families wouldn't do much more than an hour of formal education a day with a 5 year old.

Hi op
If your dd is reading ORT stage 8 and is only just entering year 1 I think you have absolutely nothing to worry about!

She will learn loads just by being at home with you playing, singing, making, listening to stories and looking at books (reading if she wishes)

Listen to ommmward she is wise :)

Agree - lots of playing and 'real-life' activities, especially around the areas she's weaker at.

Seeing things used in real-life contexts is much more motivating - and a desire to learn and use these skills will be even more useful than teaching her the mechanics without developing that interest. (e.g. my DS is learning to write because of an enthusiasm with helping me write my daily to-do list of household jobs. He is otherwise completely uninterested in mark-making / writing / drawing / colouring.)

The fine motor skills you need for writing are hard to develop without enough large-scale motor practice. Outdoor activities, painting big random patterns on an easel, waving ribbons or throwing balls around are all (bizarrely) good for developing these kind of skills.

I've just been reading an interesting book (written for early years nursery/reception teachers) citing lots of research about how playing with things (even completely unstructured, non-adult directed playing) leads to loads more learning than does 'formal' teaching.

The research found it true even with exceptionally bright children up to Year 4, who no longer did much playing during lessons. The great advantage of HE is that it's much easier to use that kind of approach than it is at school.

Story sacks are a good way of encouraging storytelling skills - you should find plenty of suggestions if you google it. As ommward says, don't worry too much about getting her to do the writing if she's reluctant - you want to develop composition skills as well as the mechanical skills. Many children start to 'write' for purposeful play long before they are able to actually produce any recognisable letters.

Theas is talking about one-to-one correspondence, and you can't really master any meaningful maths without it - you have to know that you count each object only once. It usually emerges at around age 4-5. Good ways to encourage it are activities like laying the table (one fork for mummy, one for daddy, one for DD). Shopping is good - eg have you bought enough yoghurts to last for a whole week? Counting real objects will be much more beneficial than 'abstract' maths.

There's a nice idea for number-related activity mats for playdough on The Imagination Tree which would be good for developing one-to-one correspondence.

THANK YOU LADIES!!! You all sound SO creative! Is there an online maths package that you'd recommend?

I have been using carol vordmans maths factor but also read good things about ixl so tempted to try both.

but bbc has free maths, literacy and science games as eldest loves them shes 6. just google bbc bitesize keystage 1 and lots comes up.

good luck.

I've found a fabulous book called "What Your Year 1 Child Needs to Know" edited by E.D. Hirsch, JR. It's full of info for parents, teachers and home educators and has lots of activities and suggestions across a range of subjects.

There's a fascinating piece of research from Scotland in the late 1980s called "Foundations of Writing" which suggests that there's not much point in trying to teach children to write until they can draw very detailed pictures. The idea seemed to be (if I remember correctly) to stimulate the children's interest in drawing first (giving them pictures of blank faces to add detail to etc) and once they are at the stage of drawing people who are jumping or dancing, complete with eyebrows and hairstyles etc, then their hand control, attention span and attention to detail will be such that writing words will be easy rather than agonising! Of course InspiredToBoot, your daughter may well be at this stage already for all I know, but if not it might be beneficial just to do lots of drawing for fun.