What's your 4/5 year old learning via school during the lockdown

[Naz2009]

Hi mums, my DD us 4 years old and in reception class. She has 2 daily online lessons for half an hour each. Friday morning PE online.
Literacy in the morning and maths in the afternoon via Microsoft teams online with her teachers.
Teacher also sends daily homework to complete.
Literacy they learn to read 5 new words and practising to learn to spell them along with leading letter formation.
Homework is writing a sentence about a picture and also learning the daily words
Maths is learning adding. Teacher writes out a sum on the whiteboard. Kids copy and then work it out and give the answer.
Maths homework is hard, I find it hard to explain to my LO so that she can understand it
I'm adding a pic to show you an example. I just think it's a lot of work for her age.
Any mums with child in reception class. Can you tell me what you're having to do.

Our topic this term is space on reception so this is what my daughter has been doing.

So they are writing sentences in handwriting practice such as “the sun is a star”, “planets orbit the sun”.

In phonics they are learning the sound “th” and “ng”. They are reading focus words (there’s around 20 of them now that they recite by heart). And have a book to read with simple sentences.

In maths they have an alien which is splitting 5 into a sum, “the alien ate 2 cubes so how many is left”. They are also doing patterns, they follow Numberblocks so they’ve looked at the episode this week where they have the fruit machine that splits numbers.

In music they are doing songs about the solar system.

In science they have learned about gravity and orbiting, the fact the sun is a star and which planets are closest to the earth, which ones have rings etc.

In art they’ve been drawing aliens and making masks for their songs. Probably adding English and maths into this one as their aliens are based on shapes and they needed to write their alien saying something out of a speech bubble.

In e they’ve been doing cosmic kids yoga, the episode based on space

All in I’ve been really impressed with what they are sending and although it’s difficult for her at first we have been slowly getting there

Last week we had phase 3 tricky words, sounds of the week and different daily tasks relating to learning those (eg writing the letter in flour and coming up with sentences (verbal)). Maths was adding 1 more. There is also a weekly project which spans different areas.

It is all watching videos and then working through it with them - no live teaching. To be honest, it's easier this way though we do have to come up with ways of extending everything as he is currently working some way ahead (the teachers have offered some helpful suggestions).

Second pp's suggestion to look at Numberblocks, they explain concepts very clearly.

The DFE very unhelpfully lumped reception into KS1 with this ‘3 hours per day’ requirement’, so schools are feeling under pressure to provide that.

In reality, learning in reception is broken up into tiny chunks and is very active and play based. Replicating that into 3 hours of online provision is exceptionally hard, and I really feel for EYFS teachers now (I teach year 3 and even they are struggling with all the screen time).

I honestly don’t think your child’s school will judge you if you don’t get everything done, or if you need to take lots of breaks. Try lots of phonic based games, reading practise (if you’re at the blending stage with your DC) and counting/shape/simple practical addition games.

5 zoom sessions a day.

9am Story Time
10am Phonics
11am Maths
1pm Topic (has also been PE, RE and Music)
2pm Show and Tell

Follow up tasks for everything. For story tone we’ve had to make a boat from sofa cushions, make an iglu for a penguin etc

For Phonics the follow up task has usually been write a caption for a picture shared during the session.

Maths, Friday was have a tea party and share the treats out equally. We’ve also had watch a particular numberblocks episode, draw a repeating pattern and find 5 of something.

Topic, this one usually needs the craft box we made paper snow flakes on Thursday, Friday is to make ice art. We went on a walk today to collect the nature stuff, just need to bing it in the freezer now. RE was draw a picture of your self (coz Jesus loves you, doncha know). Music was things that make sounds in your house, keys, pasta, pans and a wooden spoon etc. PE was Andy’s Wild Adventures work out on iplayer.

Show and tell has been, your favourite toy, something beginning with the same letter as your name, something you’re proud of this week.

Then there’s the expectation of a reading book to do each day (where they think we’re all getting a book a day from I don’t know!) reading eggs and numbots (both subscriptions provided by school).

It’s exhausting.

Also have a DD in reception and she's doing very similar to yours. With maths we use objects to count out so for your robot, we'd place 5 cubes in one group then count on until we get to 10 and then count that group.

From what I've seen from the reception teacher, we basically need to repeat, repeat, repeat everything to hammer it in to their memory. But using real object def makes that easier I find. M

Also written out diagraphs and triagraphs on paper and played a musical statues type game where I stop the music and call out "no" "igh" etc and she has to jump on to it.

my reception child is mainly getting phonics and handwriting tasks to complete along with a few basic counting activities.

Wow some of these timetables sound overwhelming for reception aged children! I think my DS’s school has got it just right. They have two 20 minute long live sessions per day - phonics first thing in the morning and story time in the afternoon. For in between they set daily maths and literacy tasks and a weekly learning grid. We have mainly been focusing on the maths and literacy and reading/additional phonics and haven’t done many of the learning grid tasks. My DS wouldn’t be able to cope with more than 2 live sessions a day.

Sam that sounds very good.
Ours have been quite bad it has got 2 20 min live. But there is no actual work. We have drawing stuff. So no maths or phonics. We also have no reading books!!!
The problem with live is working others pace.
I dont think other parents are impressed with the lack of worksheets as they have asked about workbooks and about books.
Oh and videos to watch but they dont seem very well chosen.

This is in contrast to my older dc who has basically the same. But the content from oak is better. i feek that they are at least learning show something. And they have maths sheets (though no independent comprehension to do or handwriting).

And for both we are getting it on the day whereas before we got a week worth to print which worked well.

We are doing year 1 work instead

Full online learning 9-3:30, two assignments per day and morning and afternoon registration with a daily assembly for good measure! Absolute nightmare with an accompanying 2 year old.

We have no live or recorded teaching. Usually the day looks like this:
Phonics- YouTube video and a sheet
Maths: numberblocks video and a sheet or a game
English : a task eg reading a story the writing a few sentences with adjectives to describe the characters, for example. One day is cursive writing
Then in the afternoon topic which varies from making something for art to a forest school scavenger hunt. Also reading a book a day on an online platform and doing numbots for a short time.

A live phonics sessions for 20 minutes daily and 2 prerecorded videos (15 mins each) a day on literacy and numeracy. There is usually a manageable homework activity associated with both activities.

School has also given us access to reading eggs and a numeracy app.

Every couple of days the teacher also sends out a prerecorded story time.

In general, I think it’s an ok amount but as someone mentioned earlier, it’s difficult with a younger sibling also at home.

I have purchased the songbirds book series from Amazon as I wanted to keep up with the physical book reading.

@Tobebythesea

A live phonics sessions for 20 minutes daily and 2 prerecorded videos (15 mins each) a day on literacy and numeracy. There is usually a manageable homework activity associated with both activities.

School has also given us access to reading eggs and a numeracy app.

Every couple of days the teacher also sends out a prerecorded story time.

In general, I think it’s an ok amount but as someone mentioned earlier, it’s difficult with a younger sibling also at home.

I have purchased the songbirds book series from Amazon as I wanted to keep up with the physical book reading.

I agree about the challenges with having a younger sibling at home. Luckily our youngest is at nursery 3 days a week.

We also have the songbirds set, but I found (like another poster on a different thread) they ramp up quickly, so ended up paying a small fortune for a phase 2 and phase 3 book pack from Hope Education. It’s 70 books, but it was still eye watering!

Oh dear, really? I was hoping to order some books to pad out the online ones!

@Stupidusernamefaff

Oh dear, really? I was hoping to order some books to pad out the online ones!

Have a look on Hope or TES, there are some smaller packs. I just searched for ‘phase 2 phonics books’ and ‘phase 3 phonics books’. I’ve ordered from both before and happy with their service.

I was looking for lilac band for a friend last night (wordless books) and ‘junior learning’ came up, they were significantly cheaper, even with delivery, but I’ve never tried them so couldn’t recommend.

Thanks :)

Thanks for the heads up.

That is a bit advanced!! Are you sure you didn't get mixed up with a child in Year 1 (though even then it's more Summer term!). I do have lots of ideas of what you could do that's a bit easier and where to find the resources, PM if you want to.

I have just bought a set of books from www.phonicsbooks.co.uk where it was £28 for 14 books. It is the same ones as they send home from school. I bought a set focusing on vowel digraphs, as that seems to be what they are moving on to in phonics and I'd prefer them to be slightly hard, as we have lots of easier books.

DD has 6 prerecorded videos a day: phonics, literacy, maths, subject (music, ICT, PE etc), story, challenge. Each one has some follow on work. Then they recommend daily Reading Eggs and 2 active slots (GoNoodle, Cosmic Yoga). We tend to focus on phonics, literacy and maths. With the others, we watch the videos but don't necessarily do the follow on work. As it is pre-recorded you can do it to suit you. The school have sent a suggested timetable with lots of 'busy time' (play time) too.

Our biggest challenge is stopping tantrums in the 2 year old due to all the screens. Usually he wouldn't see any screens switched on until early evening.

We get maybe 1 or two videos a day with a challenge/ question and a new tricky word to learn. Once a week we get a crib sheet with suggestions of work ranging from cooking to watching videos. We have no live lessons.

I also work in the school and I'm really sad and disappointed. We have so many children in everyone is working full time instead of being able to rota to set proper work or do live calls. My daughter only comes in a few days a week when I have no childcare for an hour and the quality of work that is being taught in comparison to what we are getting I feel my daughter is at a huge disadvantage same with other kids who's parents are working.

From Tuesday everything got changed. School
Informed us we now need to be doing 4.5 hours of school work. That includes online lessons thank god.
When I first posted and asked my question I felt it was a lot of work for my 4 year old.
This week has been so exhausted and come 5pm I am feeling overwhelmed by my day.
Monday
9.30-10am watching story of the day talk about what happened and write a sentence. On the homework pack sheet.
11-11.30 online lesson. Kids are taught a new digraph each week. They get given 5 new digraph words of the day. Learn to blend and read them. Then discuss the story they watched in the morning and teacher asks kids what their sentence was. Then she shares her sentence.
12.30-1.00 online lesson. Learn to write letter of the day and write words associated with that letter.
1.30-2 maths. This weeks it’s number bonds to 10.
Teacher writes the sum kids have to work out and give answer.
Maths Homework sheet to do and submit after lesson.
Homework to complete and send to teacher to mark.
Literacy homework. Blending and reading the digraph words and using key words writing sentences and practising the key words.
Then there is a daily arts and craft type activity

This week was. Decorate a stick, pebble painting, have a tea party with teddies,

@rogerthatoverout oooh I love the idea of your musical game. I shall copy you and do the same. I'll have her jump on the key words and diagraph words. It will be make it more fun for her to learn. Thank you so much for sharing your idea.
The amount of work had been draining. After tea time when I've pulled out the homework. Poor DD has got teary and last night even asked how many online lessons she has.
She is only 4 and a half. School really needs to reconsider the amount of work they are giving reception class.

@Timeturnerplease I was sent a email from the head on Tuesday saying kids needs to do 4,5 hours of work.
They added extra 3 literacy lesson per week.
Maths is extremely hard.
1st week it was one more than.
2nd week part whole models
And this week number bonds to 10. DD has really struggled this week. I explained to her teacher and she told me to use the dot method. That confused her further. So I have stuck to the 100 square and number line.
I felt this maths work was too much for a reception child. Now that you mention they have put reception into KS1 it makes sense.

@rogerthatoverout yes with literacy it's very repetitive. Always going back to the key words and the previous weeks digraph words.
Maths is an issue.
1st week. One more than
2nd week part whole model
3rd week number bonds to 10.
There is no repetitiveness in maths. Every week it's changed and made harder and confuses my DD.

@lpchill that sounds similar to us.

We have one "live lesson" that is an arts and craft topic, unfortunately its slap bang in the middle of the day when both my husband and I are working so my DC misses out on it.

We are also given two videos, one on reading and writing which we do every morning before work, and one on Math which my DC really struggles with as it goes on for so long she gets distracted.

Amazed at the difference compared to some other schools on here, I feel horribly guilty for the limited learning DC is doing but with DH and I both working we don't really have the time for any more!

@Naz2009 that schedule is insane. I can't believe you then get homework on top of that?!

I would really not put so much pressure on yourself to commit to all that every day. She's not even 5. I feel for you, it looks exhausting.