very,very,very bad mummy alert.......................

[frangipan]

Ok I'll keep this brief...
1-DS1 in Yr1 not making progress with spellings(according to school) not been changed for several weeks

2- mummy told needs to practise more.

3 mummy enraged that all of a sudden teaching to spell is exclusive of mainstream education it would seem

4 the word homework/spellings turns afore mentioned DS1 into vile/moody/unco-operative alien type thingy

5 ds1 not co-op with spellings tonight

6 mummy looses plot about the whole thing and tears sml red spellings book into no less then 60 pieces in front of DS!!!!!

oK LET ME HAVE IT................[SAD]

Well, obviously a bad thing to let red mist descend and tear up a book but spellings and homework can be a nightmare. Not that I have personal experience, ds not quite three, but from talking to friends. Agree with everyone who says move it to a different time when you are not so stressed.

oh dear hun, you obviously need a hug

to be honest (and you did say 'let me have it')
tearing up his book is awful, doesn't teach him much about coping with his anger and shows a disrespect for property

but you sound like you really need some help
Hope you find a way to take some of the pressure off

God, i hate the fact that infant school age child get homework!!

When I was in infant school and junior school now I think about it, there was one teacher per class. No teaching assistants, no parent helpers....Just that one teacher and we NEVER ever had homework!!

Why, when there are often 3 adults working in the class, and definatley 2 at a minimum do they have homework at 4, 5, 6, 7 yrs old??

I think it's outrageous.

Totally agree LTHatt, especially when a 6 year old comes home with a project for half term - who do they think is going to do it? The parents

Really feel for you Frangipan - I have thrown the homework book across the room in anger and felt terrible afterwards. If we have a busy weekend, the pressure is on to get the h/w completed before Saturday. All this homework doesn't do much for family life!

I have to say I agree - I don't understand it at all - the pressure for children to learn more faster is just insane IMHO. Just before dd's exams recently I told her that she should stop revising for the last week as they had spent the whole YEAR revising - at home EVERY night, at school EVERY day and I was sick of it on her behalf - She aceed them anyway - which I knew she would.

dd2 came home to say that she had been in tears during her exams that day - we were not even told they had exams - she is 8 for crying out loud, how dare they examine her at all - and certainly not without my knowledge, they didn't even tell me she was upset - and it turns out she was so upset she had to go to the medical room for half an hour to calm down and recover - they thought she was gong to be sick and dd2 is NOT emotional ever!

So - to sum up I know exactly how you feel about the homework thing it makes me really cross too - although am also intrigued by what you are going to say to the school

Alexsmum - what difference does it make what the spellings were?

Frangipan - I've never torn up a schoolbook but I have destroyed things in front of my DSs when my frustration gets the better of me - it's not big and it's not clever but it is understandable.

And I agree totally about the homework - it's too soon. My DS gets homework and spellings doled out on a Friday to hand back again on the Wednesday. It's OK if we can find half an hour over the weekend when his little brother is asleep/won't mind being ignored so DS1 can do the homework, but IMO, for children, weekends and evenings are for playing and enjoying themselves! DS1 also has reading books from school which we rarely find time to read because of the homework. I don't think formal homework should start till they're in yr 2 at least. FGS they ahve enough tests and exams later on!

My dd who is 8 hates her spelling homework and I could imagine losing the plot with it at times. But at least her teacher says that the homework is her responsibility, if she doesn't do it we should let her take the consequencies :- these aren't very great but she does want the merit marks that homework can earn.

It sounds as if your son is not having a positive learning experience, perhaps you could ask the teacher how the impass can be conquered and what sort of positive incentive the school offers for this Y1 pupil to learn. At 43 I can't really spell so I would be cross if they expected my 6 year old, who really has only just learnt to read, to master this skill well.

I feel your pain over the homework thing but agree that tearing the book up was BAAAAAD!! but you know that.

Draw a line under this incident though and work towards a plan to help your DS1 deal with his homework better. No one likes doing it but it has to be done so pick your time. I find DD responds better if she is bathed and in PJ's and we sit and do the spellings just before stories so everyone is relaxed and she knows that soon she will be snuggled up and it will be all done.

I work so I know how hard it is to be doing homework at 7.30pm. Make spellings a three night a week thing not five nights and remember it's not the end of the world in Yr 1. Pushing and pushing will make learning to read hell and he'll catch up in the end anyway.

I get my DD to write out her list of spellings a couple of times (I find it helps her learn them quicker rather than reciting them to me) and then test her the night before to see how she's doing.

Good luck.

Oh yes - do you have this? At our school parents had to sign a contract to say that they would help children to complete homework etc etc, I signed mine but amended the wording to say that I would assist my children with a reasonable amount of homework and that if they wished to issue any more than this could they please contact me with the reasons for this and the potential benefits to my daughters.

I am not sure they were too pleased, but they did call me about the exam homework being each night etc, so it has worked!
(before anyone gets angry - I do not wish teachers to have extra work because of me, but I do feel very stongly that you are a long time grown up - and therefore childhood is very very precious)

I can sympathise - how I am longing for the school holidays - every week it is spellings, homework and a numeracy quiz. It is summer, the children want to play out, they are at school for 6 hours - who wants to come home and do more work?

Plus she gives it all out on a Monday and it all needs to back in by Thursday so not even a weekend to do it in and I happen to work the beginning of the week so by the time I get in it is 5.30. Sometimes I feel like ripping the whole lot up.

DS2 is in y2 and I have mentioned this before but his spellings are bonkers - displeasure and unavoidable - he is 7!

ds1's spelling are done today, he's just 7 and in yr2.
off the top of my head the ones I can remember are Author, rhythm and rhyme....FGS even I had trouble spelling the 2 starting with R!!

(won't type them again as I'm sure they are wrong)

It is madness IMO.

Ds loves his reading homework, but hated his spelling (Reception, BTW). I found a way round it by using a small blackboard and working on only 3 words at a time - I drew a 3x2 grid, wrote the 3 words myself down one side, gave him a chance to look at them and then covered them up. Then I dictated the words for ds to write on the other side of the grid. He then marked the words himself and made any corrections himself. Then we WIPED it all out. Sometimes we do spellings in chalk on the patio. Also more entertaining, and gives him space to run and jump and work off any irritation. He now looks forward to the spellings, and even writes words on the patio himself, independantly.

(I can completelyand utterly sympathise with the red mist! )

My DD is Yr2 and her words this week included

campaign
foreign
gnashed
gnarled
gnawed
sovereign

My DH was like this when he saw them! (He's not the best speller in the world and he and DD learn the spellings together every week and she always wins!)

Bad mummy, my arse.

Normal mummy, I'd say.

Madness to give small kids homework IMO.
I work full time too and find mornings much better time to do homework and spellings.

If he's not interested or is protesting, ignore and go back to it another time. Really try hard not to get too personally involved, completely counterproductive ( but you know that already...)

Hmmm. Just been discussing this thread with SIL, who teaches primary.

She says spelling book = boring. Apparently the thing to do is for the parents to get the child to copy out the spellings onto a big A3 sheet (can use letter stickers/stencil if fine motor skills not yet up to big legible printing), illustrate, & stick on kitchen wall.

I said, well, some parents might not have time to supervise all that, couldn't they make the poster in class, then take home & display?

SIL says oooh no, making the poster with the child 'helps the parent to feel involved'. So there you go - not sure if it's helpful advice or a red rag mind you...

I hate the homework too. I hate the tedious boring reading books that they send home. ds can read them but finds them really boring because thety read them in class anyway. Our school also sends home worksheets to do as well on a friday which we never find time to do, as we have dp dd over to stay then both mine go to thier dads on sat and sun all day whislt I go to work and he refuses to do with them saying its my job!

The house is never quite enough for ds to concentrate. His sister aged 3 does her best to play up when he does his homework and often we both end up shouting at each other in frustration. Now dd starts full time next term so got two lots of homework to contend with

Frangipan - that is so funny. (Although not something I would recommend, she hastens to add.)

Well obviously it's not acceptable to show such behaviour in front of your DS but you clearly know that and feel bad about it.
Do any of us really go through parenthood without at least one of these 'times'?

As a teacher I see how tired the little ones are at the end of the school day, especially in summer. I hate the idea that ofsted expect us to give them homework. I find it neither appropriate nor beneficial, certainly not before Y4! I'd much rather they went home, chilled out and came back refreshed the following day.

BTW, it is absolutely school's responsibility to teach spellings. I always go through them each day, look at the rule one day, write out the meanings another, put them in sentences another etc. Also can I just mention that unless a teacher goes through the hw with the child, commenting and correcting misconceptions etc then what benefit does anyone get from it? There is very rarely time for this in the primary day so what is the point?

Hope you're feeling better about things.

wordsmith i was just curious because i think the spellings that ds is coming with are hard and i wanted to know if they were typical of year one in other schools or whether his school are being a bit pushy.

thanks 4 all your posts.
I have taken a few days to reflect and confess to DS1 teacher.

Just told her that 10 mins of spelling = 1hour of rows in our house, and then told her what happened- she was ok about it and DS1 thought it was funny. I have obviously stressed that I was very wrong to him.....

I think I may have some mild depression thinking about things, tired irritable etc bad time of the month also.

The spellings he had were;
down
new
here
were
play
look
your
myself
crayon!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have come to the conclusion that the school probrably get fed up with having to give the infant children homework/spellings as it adv by the LEA not always their descision.

Olivia 35 I really like your SIL idea of writing them big and using pictures, I have devised a (flexible)timetable with DS1 which helps him to understand that if we can do the spells/homework without any fuss then he will be earning points towards swimming lessons/boys brigade and other things he wants to do.

I think that I feel very guilty for working but then I don't think I could be a SAHM either, I worked hard to get where I am with work and don't want to give it up and it gets the better of me sometimes. I am hoping that I can re-arrange my hours so that they are more school friendly in the near future. I have told quite a few people what happened, some have laughed/empathised/frowned....but I'm sure i'm not the first and might not be the last to loose it with homework....although I won't be doing it again(loosing it that is)

alexsmum-we were doing maths homework on friday with DS1 and he was struggling-got to bottom of page and was yr2 homework-DS is in Yr1!!!

oh yes Olivia 35 I concluded the whole thing with
and you can take the bag of bits to mrs and tell thats what I think of the b**y spelling book

I am soooooooooo ashamed!

ok ds1's spellings that he was grumbling about last week were
sphere
elephant
dolphin
nephew
niece
phone
and i can't remember the rest. tough i think for a just 6 y/o/