6-8 year old parenting club birthday partys, homework and extracurricular decisions

[2in2022twoyearson]

Hi,
Anyone want to join me navigating this age of parenting? Children could be outside this age bracket.

There's lots of baby toddler advice groups and some teen groups but this age I feel a bit in the dark.

I have a soon to be 7 year old girl. She's amazing, loves school, but I often feel like I'm doing or saying the wrong thing to and with her. She's going through a stroppy stage, finds school tiring.

Me and her dad work a lot and we haven't signed her up to many extra curriculum clubs, some of her peers have done loads since reception.

We're planning her birthday party and she has lots of opinions about it, I'm feeling the pressure!

Thank you @Heyyoupleasekeepgoing. It does seem like lots of activities directed at their age are very grown up. I know I'm lucky she plays so well with her brother. Lots of people i know have a 2ish year age between 2 children, and mine is 4.5, so I imagined they would want to play different things. I do love that little brother is getting into Lego, though he does often break things.

Joining for solidarity . Sometimes my 5 year old is such a sweet little angel and sometimes I think she's 13...

How is everyone doing? In England we've had 3.5 weeks of school holidays, have 2.5 left. Dd has a slight cold this morning and has been a bit emotional. She's enjoying doing some origami too. She's more patient with her grandpa than me, and he's been encouraging her to make neat, sharp folds.

Ah that's lovely that she's learning origami, DS was very into it for a while.
We've been visiting the in-laws for the weekend, seeing their horses and went to Prison Island which is a series of mini escape room type things, DS enjoyed that a lot as many of them were physical and involved climbing and crawling. And we went to sauna both nights, tried to persuade DS to come for a dip in the rock pool in the river next to the sauna but he was scared there would be leeches. I've been sharing a room with him and his snoring is so bad I'm wondering if its worth a doctor appointment, he might have enlarged adenoids or something.

DS has finished his first week and a half of school and it's going well, he really likes it there and has been doing fine walking to school so I thought he might be ready to leave on his own so I left for work before him on Friday but when I checked his watch app when I arrived he was still at home! He couldn't find his shoes and was looking for them and ended up running to school in his crocs and was late. So clearly not ready yet but I need him to be ready soon as we're under a lot of pressure at work at the moment so I need to get in earlier and maybe do overtime.

Bless him, how old is your son again natsuku? It does sound very grown up to leave home alone. We were also at the in-laws yesterday, but today I'm not feeling well, DD also complained of a headache this morning and little brother is teething. So we're hiding indoors, because I don't do heat. I was meant to do a shift at work this evening but called in sick.

He's 7. His big sister was home but she didn't need to go into school until later so was still in bed, but she saw him still home at 7:50 when she got up and told him to get a move on!

How hot is it there? We've had very weird weather this weekend, alternating heavy rains with strong sunshine.

I think it's like 28 degrees today and the sun is intense. It's been over 30 more than usual this summer. Evenings are drawing in which is nice. The heatwave in June was tough as the sun was shining into the bedroom well past bedtime, but now the sun has set by 9pm

Hot bedrooms are the worst. We have our curtains closed upstairs all summer otherwise the bedrooms get even more unbearably hot but even with curtains closed, and windows open at night, DS's bedroom was 28 degrees for weeks. But now Autumn is already starting here so soon enough its going to be cold upstairs instead of hot and I'll have something new to moan about!

I have so far not seen any of DD friends over the holidays. I'm trying, but life is busy, we have a group play arranged on 30th.

Life is always so busy but that's nice you've managed to arrange something.

The special ed teacher at DS's school sent me a message the other day, turns out he really struggles with the sound of pencil on paper which probably explains why he's so reluctant to practice writing. She got him a special erasable pen to use in school instead of a pencil and recommended I buy one for at home. I like how they figured out there was an issue rather than just telling him off for not doing his work, as I'm sure would have happened when I was in school, and then found a solution rather than telling him to just get over it.

I've left for work at half 6 the last two days and DS has left on time both times, calling me when he leaves to let me know. And remembered his school bag too.

I hope the pen helps. Your DS school does sound amazing

Today was our first day back. Dd walked there and back with friends (with her big brother hovering in the background...he's 10 and sweetly protective when they aren't fighting in a heap).

She had a great day. The summer seems to have gone far too fast though.

Hope the pen helps. So glad things have improved since we were kids on that front. My dh couldn't stand the feel of the jotter paper under his hand as a child and was labeled as naughty when he tried to push back.

Aww that's lovely that your DD's big brother is so protective - so nice when siblings care about each other. Mine don't really get on but DD does care about her little brother, and has even offering to bring him home from after school club on Thursdays for this section of her timetable (hers changes every 6 weeks) as right now she has her last lesson of the day in his school on Thursdays. And she babysat him for a couple of hours yesterday as I had to work late and OH had to go to band practice.

Glad your DD had a great day on her first day back - first day is always exciting.

Your poor DH, things are definitely better these days. I really struggled with handwriting and would get told off all the time for it in primary school but telling me off didn't help, still couldn't write neatly.

DS is generally a reluctant reader when I ask him to practice reading with me, but it seems I've been asking him to read the wrong books - got a book about climate from the library and he happily read to me about tornadoes.

I still want to get him into reading fiction though, because there's so much joy to be had reading fiction and it develops empathy and whatnot so I've ordered a set of Hey Jack books, which I keep hearing about on Facebook in a books for children group I'm in, and the Superfudge series which I'll read to him (just finished reading Sheila the Great and he asked if there's anymore books like it). Its a bit difficult to find books at this reading stage over here, as the libraries have very few books in English for children who are starting to read by themselves - have picture books for young children, and lots of books for older children and teenagers, but almost nothing for this in-between stage so we mostly have to get Finnish books from the library for him but he's just not interested in the fiction ones.

@SkeletonBatsflyatnight I struggled with handwriting but it was all internal criticism. I never got told off. I am dyslexic and went to school in a very dyslexic friendly time. In England, it seems to be things have gone backwards. Or maybe it's because I moved to a grammar school area so junior schools are more academicly focused here. Not sure.

@Natsku I have heard that quite often boys prefer non fiction for reading. And enjoyment of reading is great. Does he enjoy listening to fiction audiobooks or you reading?

He says he likes listening to me read, though he doesn't seem to pay much attention. He loves listening to his Mog audiobooks though when he's falling asleep - he still loves Mog so much!

Can anyone recommend a good tablet? We're quite a low screen family but homework is all digital and our current tablet doesn't run Tines tables rock stars, so she used by phone. I have looked at the Kindle fire kids before, and it's on sale now, but maybe a non kids tablet could be better?....

Edit current tablet slow and glitchy

That's a shame that homework is all digital - a bit digital is fine but its far better for their learning to be using pen and paper (unless they're like DS, who even with his special pencil had to put on headphones while doing his homework last night!).

I wouldn't go for a kids tablet now, I'd get a normal android one and just only let her use it for homework and supervised play.

I agree about the digital. The headteacher at the end of last term clarified the homework optional/compulsory. And this year will be more compulsory. To begin with it was reading is paper books and reading record. But they test for times tables in a couple of years, England makes a big deal about it and her school are pushing for good results so they get them on times tables rock stars from age 6. We didn't sign up until recently.

They don't seem to make such a big deal out of times tables here but knowing them makes mental maths so much easier so I tried to help DD memorise them with the good old chanting method. DS knows the 4 times table well due to me going through it every time I cut up grapes.

I explained to the teacher in yr 2 that I would be teaching DD times tables and spelling at home without ttrs or this dreadful programme they use called spelling frame, and they were fine with it - am hoping dd’s yr 3 teacher will be the same. To me it’s just quick dopamine rewards rather than really understanding the value of knowing tts and spelling, and the logic and use of them.

I really liked this book last year. It uses real life examples and they for eg colour in times tables patterns on grid squares of 100, it gives them a wider understanding of it

Sorry I should have said - it’s the Galt times tables age 6+ book in case my images don’t get approved.

That book looks good, might look for it for DS.