How to make a 5yo work faster?

[WordsAreNoUseAtAll]

Parent's evening tonight. DD1 is dong really well in reception, apparently the most able child with reading/comprehension, and the teacher is having trouble thinking what to do with her (sorry, boasting a bit there, but it is relevant :) ) but she is really reluctant to write. We know she can - she just tries to avoid it and is really really slow.

She is also apparently really slow at other tasks too - the teacher says that she is concerned that DD1 will fall behind, despite being very able, because of her slow work. She is apparently one of the slowest in the class to complete simple tasks, because she daydreams too much, and faffs about, and it is causing trouble as she is generally with the higher ability groups and slowing them down, but the teacher doesn't want to move her down groups because she is just as slow at simpler tasks. Apparently a common thing would be that the teacher would set 5 children a task, and the other four would do it in half an hour and get about 50-75% right. DD1 would take an hour to get 100% right. Obviously taking half an hour to get a lesser score would be just as good.

When she actually does the work, she is apparently excellent, and her verbal skills are brilliant too, so she does know what she is meant to be doing. She is the same at home - getting her dressed is a nightmare and we usually end up doing it for her or else we would be late everywhere, but that isn't good long term.

She is generally a bit vague in a lot of ways, and very quirky :) but the school are lovely and have been really supportive (she tends to forget to go to the toilet too, although that is getting better) so when the teacher said that she really needs to speed up a bit before year one I know that the teacher isn't just ticking boxes, iyswim.

I speak/write as someone who was very able, but quirky, vague and slow at school, and I had an AWFUL time of it. DD1 seems pretty happy in her world, so I would like to keep her happy and not let this become an issue. So, suggestions?

She loves a chart (although she does get a bit obsessed with them, so I try and keep them short term) so maybe some form of challenge? How do I do it without pressuring her?

One idea would be to pick one thing which she is v slow at, maybe getting dressed, and get a stopwatch and set her a challenge to get dresssed in a set amount of time, or a decreasing amount of time, so start with 15min and decrease by 30 sec everyother day until down to about 5min. We find lego is a good motivator in our house, buy a small set and get one piece for each success. If you do it morning and night would be about a month.

I also set stopwatch sometimes when reading with dd, also in reception. I give her 10-15 min and say she needs to read to me in that time, it is then up to her how much of it she spends cobweb spotting, but I don't give her extra time/attention to do it. Time wasted is time she won't be able to finish her book in.

Personally, I wouldn't worry about it right now. My reception child spends all his time outside building increasingly complex structures out of rubbish shapes. I think too much presssure in reception is a bad thing. They get enough of that as they progress through the school.

Agree with llare.
There is too much pressure on young children. Of course the teacher is concerned .... They have to get children to a benchmark standard in the easiest way possible .

She is well past the benchmark, and has made amazing progress so it can't be that. I'm the first to be against homogenity in schools - I nearly home educated her - but she is missing out. She spends most of her time outside too - she is a loner so she spends a lot of time making dens by herself - but she spends so long doing everything that she misses out on the next thing. Like I say, I speak as someone who was like this and I was isolated at school through taking too long to get changed for PE, eat my lunch, get my coat on, finish the basic tasks before the fun bits, etc.

Also, writing is fun, and they don't have a computer each, so she will have to hand write stories etc.

Also, I can't get her dressed forever. My mum was still helping me in year six, and I want dd1 to have a bit more confidence.

What does your dd say about it? My dd2 is in Reception, and I think what I would do is discuss it with her in a totally neutral, un-pushy way, and see what her take on it is...

Is she just a bit day dreamy (in which case I wouldn't worry too much) or obsessive about getting everything right (in which case I wouldn't do a chart thing)?

It sounds as though she's just generally a bit slow. What usually happens if she takes ages? Do you go in and do it for her? I'm thinking getting dressed. Don't forget at her age she won't generally have an idea of time or what happens if she's late. :)

Are you really clear? ie it's time to get dressed - you have 10 minutes. Come back after 5 minutes when she's still sitting with on eleg halfway into a apiar of pants.... "5 minutes have gone now. That's half the time so you should be halfway dressed. Now you'll have to be quick. Let's see if you can put your pants on before I count to 10 / brush my hair.'

Maybe some consequences... If you can get dressed before me then you can choose what you have for breakfast. If we can do this writing in 20 mins ( and tell her halfway) then we will have time to play a game before tea.

Maybe she's just too young to be bothered still!

dd1 (Year 3, aged 8) is a fast dresser. But her best friend, who is a bit of a daydreamer and not a morning person, still drives her mother to distraction with getting dressed in time for school....5 is young yet

Sounds like my DS (Yr 1) exactly. We have an egg timer at home for things that need to be completed in a certain time. But as for school... When you find out the trick, let me know?

my son year 1, just 6, is exactly the same.Just had his school report and he is top book band in reading and completedd all ks1 maths already but aparently takes an age to do his big write each week. his report said he needs alot of adult encouragement to actually get him started but when he does he works to a very high standard. Also said he can daydream through whole class lessons :-/. I have wondered wether it is because he is bright (hoping, maybe) and just knows what do to!! I still have to help him get dressed or he would get to school at lunch! also dinner times are very long!
I have given my son a diary to keep now though to try get him writing a bit quicker and to start enjoying it, you could try this?
Good luck. x

It sounds to me like she's worried about getting things wrong. This inhibits me too. You could maybe try telling her it's OK to just do and wright stuff and it doesn't matter if it's 'right', it's what she was thinking or feeling at the time and it was, therefore, worth doing.

write, obvs

I will watch this with interest as my ds (reception) is the same.
nicolakc I find it very interesting what you write as my ds is doing really well with reading and maths but shows very little interest in writing. All he wants to do is write reams and reams of numbers. He is so interested in numbers and maths, that is all he seems to want to do. The teacher says she knows he can do it but she struggles to get him to write a sentence. He is also very reticent apparantly.
On the one hand, I want to try and encourage him but on the other he is still only 5 and I find that so young.
OP do you think it is something that will develop in time? I just can't help but think we should be focusing on the positives rather than feeling pressured to make our kids perfect in all areas.
In continental Europe they start much later with all this, in Germany, 6 year olds are still just focusing on forming letters rather than writing, writing, writing

Is she slow because she daydreams excessively?

In which case it could be ADD- predominantly inattentive.

There is nothing abnormal about your DD. There is a lot wrong with the expectations of the teacher.

I sincerely hope your lovely DD will not get the impression that she is lacking in any way from this school environment. There is a great danger in putting a child in an environment where she is pressured to perform accurately and within time limits of turning her into an anxious perfectionist who goes off school entirely.

They focus on all of this (sentence writing, formal reading, formal maths) far later in the rest of the world, where the starting point for early child education is the developmental stages of the child and not the mad and unreasonable targets set by politicians eager to get re-elected by pandering to national neuroses and the anxieties of middle aged and elderly people who vote in droves. The UK education sausage factory is not one suitable for the use of small children.

The skills she needs to be working on as a 5 yo are the dressing and self care issues. You could try to give her a tangible reward for dressing herself, or behave like a manic cheerleader, with high fives flying for getting on a sock, etc. You should allow her autonomy in choosing clothes when she is not wearing a uniform, she should be taking care of wiping herself in the bathroom at this point, and things like tooth brushing and doing her hair. She should also be 'helping' you do chores around the house and helping with baking. If there are specific things that are hard, like buttoning, or putting on socks, then maybe help her a bit with them while allowing her the opportunity to practice, or roll up the socks so all she has to do is roll them over her feet and on.

Jumping in and taking over if she is slow is going to be confusing and counter productive. You need to teach small parts of the task at a time, alternate elements of the task with her, be consistent and get her to do more of it as time goes on, and there will need to be some consequences for not staying on task after a while and if she understands that time is not standing still, maybe rewards for doing what is expected. You will have to sit with her while she is dressing and offer encouragement all the way. Maybe you need to start earlier?

The rest, in school, should not be a problem; it would not be a problem anywhere else in the world, and it is just a shame that schools are setting up bright children to fail.

If you want to have her practice writing skills, a blackboard easel, a sand table that she can write letters in, an erasable slate and lots of pencils and crayons should be made available to her.

mathanxiety too true.
5 yr olds need to be allowed to be 5 yr olds.

IndigoBell, it seems that you are always suggesting ADD etc type diagnosis? Why?

Because an awful lot of kids have it. A lot of them undiagnosed.

I guess because all 3 of my kids have SEN, I know an awful lot more about it now then I used to.

And finding out what the name of what was causing them problems has been incredibly useful.

When my kids were 4, 5 and 6 (especially my boys) I didn't realise they had any problems.

Finding out when they were 8 meant I missed out on a couple of years when I could have been helping them but wasn't. Years I deeply regret.

I don't know if the OPs DD has any problems or not. But neither do you or MathAnxiety.

However, if the OP google's what I suggested, then in a few moments she'll have a pretty fair idea whether or not her DD does have these problems or not.

So, that's it really. If the OP googles ADD-PI. Then in 5 seconds she'll know if it's a possiblity or not. Something me and you can't possibly know.

IndigoBell - I must admit that I am starting to suspect that there is something going on with DD, but I was thinking more some kind of mild aspergers/dyspraxia. I've posted on here about her before (it might have been under another name - I namechange quite a bit) She still wets herself regulary, she has no close friends at all, she has an excellent line in staring at people and freaking them out (other children on our estate won't play with her because of this) and she, I dunno, just seem a bit out of kilter with the world - several people have mentioned it to me. But it could just be her personality, she is only 5 after all, and she takes after her Dad (who wins episodes of Mastermind yet doesn't realise that people don't actually want to know "truths" about themselves, but that is a whole other story, sigh) I have a diagnosis of dyspraxia as an adult as well, that was undiagnosed in school.

Like I say though, whatever it is isn't bothering her very much atm (she is just a bit baffled by the other kids, but puts it down to every other child being odd, not her, iyswim) so I am just trying to help her with the small things and keeping an eye out for her.

She is lovely :) A lovely little strange child - we call her Wednesday Adams :)