Where do i start?

[whymewhyme]

Reception age child, now doing remote learning. The school will send work for us to do but where on earth do i start?? There is no way he will sit and concentrate at home. He is already behind, can anyone reccomend any online resources?

How is he behind? What are your concerns?

The best thing you can do is encourage a love of learning - you don't need to teach him multiplication or spellings, but try to offer him opportunities to extend his learning based on what he enjoys.

Play, chat, draw, and then snuggle down and do some reading (you to him if he’s not ready to read to you yet). Have a look and see what the school sends and then think about how you can introduce it in a casual way to your day. He doesn’t have to sit down for long periods of time or anything.

Read with him and get him colouring, drawing and playing . In reception most learning is through playing

Nice fun quality activities that you both enjoy. No pressure. No shouting or stress. Lots of stories. Playdough that you can make together will help with fine motor.

Most of us do 'home learning' for younger children naturally without realising it:

Read LOTS to him and listen to him reading daily. If he's not reading yet, the app and website 'Teach your monster to read' is an excellent resource for learning phonics.

Use number skills at every opportunity. Count things out (crisps / grapes at lunchtime, red cars when out for a walk..). Bake cakes to help learn about weights and measurements. Share the cakes to learn about fractions...

Play with playdoh to strengthen fine motor skill muscles in the hands ready for writing. Draw lines on paper and cut along them to teach scissor skills.

It doesn't really matter of you don't follow everything that the school sets.

Thank you for all of they excellent suggestions. We had parents evening in nov and his teacher said he was behind with writing. I have just ordered a few wipe clean books for hand writing.

One of my children was 4 and in reception at the last lockdown.
It is hard because they are so little and can’t read independently so you need simple things to follow and keep things very fun.
I would introduce a reward system such as stickers for doing 10 or 15 minutes of learning at a time to get the school work done. Get a large egg timer if you can as that will help visualise the time passing. The very hardest thing is motivation at home so hopefully that will help.
Then to fill the rest of time we’ve done cosmic kids yoga, drawing tutorials on YouTube. Art lessons on Facebook (sometimes free ones), lots of other good Facebook or YouTube things like Tom Fletcher, Julia Donaldson did some live readings which are recorded. Storytime from space is good. Letters and sounds on YouTube are good quality phonics video lessons.
Daily walk and exercise, wellies and waterproofs.
Put on fun music and do ‘freestyle’ dance
We got a reading eggs subscription which was really good and my child can now read, only downside is it is not exactly the same teaching method used in schools but they can use it independently for say half an hour a day and is fun.
Used twinkl a lot for worksheets

As a reception teacher I'm not sure how a child can be behind at that age in writing. I certainly wouldn't have him sat doing handwriting but the boards are a good idea for him to play with as kids love them.
You could take it in turns to start drawing a picture and the other guess what it is.

Something that could help with future writing is big body movements so maybe get him doing Joe Wicks or whatever kids exercise stuff is out there.

Go on pinterest and look up mark making and link to whatever he likes. If it's cars can he drive his toy cars in the shape of the letter O or the letters in his name.
Chalk on a path, making patterns with a stick in mud, threading pasta on string. Anything that helps strengthen hands.

For writing
Make it into a shared task or game
Eg you both have to write down 3 things in the room then guess what each other wrote
Write down your lunch order
The wipe clean things are good for learning the letter formations but pencil and paper writing also important
Writing is the hardest thing - there are so many things going on when they learn to write. Most important is encouraging confidence to have a go so try to be really positive for any efforts.