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!

We just got an "normal" tablet rather than a kids one.

We still get books, spelling and times tables home but I think they use some sort of app for spelling and times table in class.

I'm not a huge fan but I can understand the attraction. Dd's teacher is trying to teach across 3 different year groups at once (dd is in the youngest). We do times tables in the car.

We haven't practiced them much as I know she is bright and could pick them up easily, I just have a personal Vendetta against them as I could not memorie them, DH sometimes does them with her. But parents at her school are generally involved and do things like proactive times tables. However, now she thinks she's not very good at maths because she's not got times tables at the tip of her tounge. Her best friend she tells me is very good at maths. So we will work on them more. In the car, I normally have a chatty toddler.

Yes, her teacher last year was happy with her doing non digital at home but towards the end of the year the headteacher put something on about it being compulsory.... however I can see it's value as I couldn't learn the traditional way and a game may have helped. I think memorising number facts is a completely different skills to a deeper maths understanding. I'm dyslexic and had a good understanding of deeper maths/ physics but not mental arithmetic. I remember in year 6, being in the second set out of 4, finding much of the maths too easy, but coming last in filling in the times tables square (I didn't ever finish in time so got a score instead). I did well in the SATs and was in top set in secondary when they stop testing times tables and didn't particularly struggle. But it would and will make life easier if I could do mental maths.

I might look at that book... but will also do ttrs.... unless she continues with the tantrums around it.

In comparison, DS's maths homework on Monday was practicing writing the greater than and less than signs and working out whether 3 is greater than or less than 1 times tables are a long way off here!

Trying to decide whether to sign DS up for cookery class or wrestling. They're both on the same day so can only choose one and he's more interested in wrestling but would be nice for him to do something non-sporty too.

Oh my gosh I'm glad we're over that. In reception I mentioned how DD is bored of maths and when they'll do something other than 0-10 numbers and she said we are all so bored of that. Greater than, number bonds, etc. Haha. There's a huge range of abilities in DDS class but a fair few are bright like her.

It must be so boring for those who are already used to doing sums but for many it'll be the first time doing maths. DS doesn't seem to be bothered yet thankfully.

DS will have an activity every week day this year! Football/ice hockey on Mondays and Wednesdays (will have to alternate until football season ends in autumn), wrestling on Tuesdays, scouts on Thursdays and circus school on Fridays. I would want to sign him up for swimming lessons but that's midafternoon on Tuesdays so I can't take him and can't guarantee that OH can every week because his work is unpredictable.

Wow, that's a lot. My DH is still not keen on brownies unfortunately. We are going to see what sports dds school offer. They have a company that does subsided after school sports. There's a range and it changes every term. One time there was archery and my DD had a go at that over the summer with the suckers on the end and enjoyed it so im hoping for that. She's also enjoying dodgeball and gymnastics. I've just realised she has no clubs lined up. In thinking the perforng arts as lots of parents have recommended it and her friends go.

Varying sports sounds really good, as does performing arts, especially if she has friends that do it.

How's everyone doing? We had a play date with 2 boys from DDS year and their older brothers yesterday. It was adventure bounce designed for school age children and adults but my 2 year old loved it so I went round with him. Other 2 mums were talking about the older boys upcoming 11+ and secondary I'm not ready to think about. DD had fun.

We've talked about school and she enjoyed trying on her school uniform and seeing how smart she looks. But otherwise she's said she's nervous and has had a couple of angry outbursts past few days. She is back on Thursday. I might get her to do a workbook or 2...

Sounds like a fun playdate! Good luck to your DD for Thursday, hopefully she settles back into school quickly.

DS had a playdate with a couple of school friends yesterday, watching ice hockey. I joined later on for the adult hockey game and the boys were running wild, but happy.

One of DS's friends has cancer so hasn't been able to come to school but now the school has got a robot for him, so he can join in remotely, and DS is so happy about that as he misses his friend a lot.

Hope your DSs friend with cancer recovers well.

My DD starts school tomorrow. Has had a couple of birthday party invites for September and October. She's quite nervous, don't know why really. She has her band before school on a Thursday and the first session is Tomorrow so she'll go there first then into class a bit late, with another child. She enjoyed it last term but it's an odd way to go into a new class on the first day. I am surprised it doesn't start next week.

We saw her second cousin today at soft play, they had these rideon horses she enjoyed. The .zhhas new uniform with smart white shirts, just ironed them reminded me of ironing my secondary school shorts as I've ironed nothing much since. She says she's not ready to go back to school yet.

A couple of weeks ago I picked up a dick king smith book, Martin's mice. She likes other books by him. I decided to give it to her today, when toddler brother was sleeping and after we played a game and I was trying to get some housework done, she wasn't settling on an activity and getting silly. She hadn't taken up my suggestion of reading. I showed her the book told her I bought it for her and she flowered at me and said it's your book. I was annoyed so I put it down and left the room. She was quiet, I came downstairs and she was absorbed in it.

After typing that out I think she could have thought me giving her the book was manipulative as she'd allredy said no to reading. Either way, the end result is she got them down time she needed.

Good luck to your DD today! That is a bit weird to have band start on the very first day, not going in at the same time as everyone else.

That's nice that she did pick up the book after you left the room - sometimes they just want to be contrary so will refuse something just because you want them to do it, but when left alone will happily do it.

DS really enjoyed wrestling so I'm glad I opted for that instead of cookery.

After writing the message I found out they updated the schedule and will be starting next week. She's the same with writing, being contrary. Loves it at school but has resisted any suggestion at home. She's written her diary every day but nothing more.

That's good that they've changed it.
DS still doesn't like writing even with his special pen, he has to wear headphones to do his homework.

Aw, do the headphones help. Can he type? I never enjoyed handwriting myself, am diagnosed dyslexic and handwriting is particularly bad. I was aloud to type up my homework....I was a bit older when PCs were becoming mainstream. I found it so much easier to get my thoughts down.

He can type very slowly, but he can't do his schoolwork by typing - all work is done in books. Hopefully he'll adjust in time, he will need to get used to it as he'll have to write on paper for the next 9 years (after comprehensive they use laptops I think, at least they do in the vocational school so I assume they do in the high school too)

Does he like the pen control activities? Like tracing the path of a car or a jumping frog?

Not really. That's the kind of thing he gets for homework but he gets fed up with it quickly. I think he might like it a bit more when they get to do actual writing as he happily wrote his Christmas list last December!

In England they give that activity to 3-5 year olds, my DD loved it at 2. I imagine it's a bit boring older. Experts, say we have got it wrong as their hand is not developed yet, and they should be doing lots of gross moter skills, but my kids both have very good fine motor control, everyone is different and school can only do so much to support that. I didn't start school in England myself and I remember being 6 and coming here and feeling behind.

Yeah I think it's quite boring for him, but after half term they start the mixed age groups so he'll get to do work that's more on his level

DS had a reading test with the special ed teacher today (she tests everyone to identify any issues early on) testing letter recognition, beginning sounds of words, and reading words split into syllables (how they all learn to read here) and he got everything right and finally got a good lesson mark from his teacher (she hasn't given out any lesson marks yet at all, most teachers give them quite frequently so I was finding it weird that she doesn't)

I've not had much grading in my dds school. They opted out of year 2 sats, but she got an end of year assessment, which was perfect for effort and attainment.
My sister worked in a German school for a bit, and said, while they start later at 7 they test and rank from the get go. Is Norway similar?
Sometimes I wander if I should stretch her more academicly, for example by Christmas in year one she met all the goals for the end of the year.

Yeah they start testing from the beginning in Finland, though not that much in the 1st grade if I remember right. Lots of testing, lots of assessment, as they can't progress to the next grade if they haven't learnt enough to cope with the next grade.

I did some stretch work at home with DD, I think that really helped her do well in school so far - not too much, some extra maths work and reading and we got those kiwi crates for a while for hands on learning, they were good.

I thinknmost countries regularly test and rank children once they start school. I find the British system very confusing as I never known where my child is at when I comes to their grading.

Yeah the UK is a bit of an outlier, not much testing then come the SATs with lots of accompanying pressure which must really stress out children who aren't used to exams, then again not that much testing until really high stakes GCSEs then A Levels. A couple of bad days on exam days can ruin everything whereas in countries that have constant testing, the odd fail due to a bad day doesn't mean much as its only a small percentage of your overall grade so its easy to compensate for.