What is your reception child doing?

[pollylocketpickedapocket]

In terms of lessons. My 4yo seems to have an enormous amount of work. Spelling tests, writing stories, maths work and then some sort of science or artwork. It seems a lot of pressure for such small children,so what are yours doing?
Also be interested to hear it from a teachers point of view

That seems a hell of a lot!

My reception child has registration at 9.15 via zoom. Then three pieces of work a day, Topic which is something creative, phonics and maths. And I’m struggling to get her to concentrate for long enough to do those!

Typical day for my reception child.

9am - Cosmic Yoga. I also get him to do a page of his wipe clean maths book and practice his phonic of the week but that is not set by the school. About 5-10 mins on each.

10am - family task (choose from a selection of tasks set by school, for example making a bird feeder, making a card or designing a cupcake).

11am - online maths lesson for 25 min followed by a short task (usually about 10 mins).

1pm - activity such as top marks/caru canu (we are in Wales). About 10-15 mins again.

2pm - online literacy lesson followed by a short task (about 10 mins again).

I also do at least one story and watch a Welsh language TV story a day. Also go for a walk each day.

So lots of short 10-15 min activities punctuated with plenty of playing.

I’m a nursery teacher.
My reception child is working around me, my partner wfh and other child.
She’s doing phonics, sentence or two if not words, basic maths. Extra challenges there if needed.
My view is Early Years is about learning through play and formal learning, at a table with a worksheet has its place but ultimately children of this age will learn best by doing.
I’ve struggled with this as I haven’t been able to create enough fun learning opportunities for my child due to working myself. I just hope they go back on the 8th!

My DD was doing that in reception in lockdown 1 last year. It was enough work to take a full 9-3 day with no breaks most days and she's not slow by any means. We tended to drop PE and just go out for a walk instead

We have three Teams lessons a day with assignments that goes with each. I’d have no issues aside from I have another child three years older that also needs my help with assignments! So I cannot do it all. I prioritise the English and Maths. Daily reading and handwriting and we do freestyle crafting. I just don’t have the time to get heavily involved with projects x 2 although the parents who only have one child home schooling do tend to everything to an extremely high level (and make me feel very inferior into the bargain).

Our school sets the following for reception children:

• 15-20 mins phonics lesson on you tube
• a handwriting sheet
• English themed lesson in which it's either re-telling a story in a story map or picture with a sentence, something like that.
• Maths themed lesson, yesterday's was going on a mini beast hunt and drawing picture and counting and comparing numbers of legs
• something PSHE, this half term there have been a few videos on fire safety for example
• an exercise task eg go noodle or a dance
• online reading

The school mixes year R and year 1 so there's plenty of stretch with the year 1 tasks. However, they've been v clear that each task is to be adapted to each child.

My 4yo was only just 4 in September and has very little interest in school work, however it is dressed up, and is very much at the starting stage of writing and reading - for example write a sentence is wholly beyond him, he can maybe recognise and try and write three sounds he can hear in a word. He's only just cracked the concept of blending. So we get it all done comfortably within an hour, but do the reading tasks at least twice. Even if he was more interested I don't have time around work, and teachers know our circs and seem happy enough.

Writing stories seems quite overwhelming for 4yos. The writing tasks for mine are sentence writing and that is the top end ‘challenge’ there are easier tasks like writing words or using letters to form words etc. I’d be amazed if most reception classes are writing stories. My school tends to get brilliant results and has a engaged cohort. Are you at a private school?

@Dustyhedge

Writing stories seems quite overwhelming for 4yos. The writing tasks for mine are sentence writing and that is the top end ‘challenge’ there are easier tasks like writing words or using letters to form words etc. I’d be amazed if most reception classes are writing stories. My school tends to get brilliant results and has a engaged cohort. Are you at a private school?

No state primary, outstanding with a fantastic reputation. Story’s are maybe a very basic version of fairytales, red riding hood, Goldilocks etc. They usually do it over 3 days.

Teacher does encourage kids to just spell how they think rather than tell them correctly. Eg my dd writes wud rather than wood, shews rather than shoes.

I wondered about that method, I’m certainly not an expert!

The class seems to be divided into 2 ‘groups’
Example some children had to do number bonds up to 10, some up to 20.
I was surprised they were grouped at such a young age, that didn’t happen when I was at school till secondary.
I suppose I don’t really know what goes on behind the scenes so to speak , and obviously I want to o know all about how my child is being educated!

We set a phonics lesson, a maths lesson, some mark making, something reading based, something physical or singing based and then two challenges based on creative/science topics. We are a VERY long way from writing stories - cvc words and 4 word captions are our limit!

Wow this thread blows my mind. My son will start reception in Sept, so I was interested to see what he may be doing, and I can’t imagine him doing any of these things!!!!! Hand writing practice- he won’t even hold a pen.!!!

@Themostwonderfultimeoftheyear

Typical day for my reception child.

9am - Cosmic Yoga. I also get him to do a page of his wipe clean maths book and practice his phonic of the week but that is not set by the school. About 5-10 mins on each.

10am - family task (choose from a selection of tasks set by school, for example making a bird feeder, making a card or designing a cupcake).

11am - online maths lesson for 25 min followed by a short task (usually about 10 mins).

1pm - activity such as top marks/caru canu (we are in Wales). About 10-15 mins again.

2pm - online literacy lesson followed by a short task (about 10 mins again).

I also do at least one story and watch a Welsh language TV story a day. Also go for a walk each day.

So lots of short 10-15 min activities punctuated with plenty of playing.

Do you work?

This would be impossible for me to manage.

My Y1 does a teams calls, maths & English tasks between 9&10.30am.

Then free play / TV while I work. Walk/scoot/play ball at lunch time & after work.

Two Zooms a day. One literacy / phonics and one maths or PSHE or music etc.

One literacy or maths task to do with me. That’s it. Years ago I got a set it ORT books at a car boot so he’s reading a book or two a week. And he’s watching a lot of numberblocks. I’ve also got a 10 year old and an 8 year old, and they go to key workers provision 2 days a week, where they get very little done.

Does anyone else have the spelling tests?? Once a week they’re tested in words like have, said there, come etc.

I don't no challenged, it would be impossible if I did.

The phonics work we have daily set for us is: introduce new sound (watch YouTube video), practice naming objects with that sound, practice reading sentences with that sound, a practice sentence with words using that sound.

We occasionally get to the reading but have only ever once got to the sentence bit before she loses focus. I too am wondering if that is normal or if the sentence but is the stretch challenge for more advanced students.

@EugeniaGrace

The phonics work we have daily set for us is: introduce new sound (watch YouTube video), practice naming objects with that sound, practice reading sentences with that sound, a practice sentence with words using that sound.

We occasionally get to the reading but have only ever once got to the sentence bit before she loses focus. I too am wondering if that is normal or if the sentence but is the stretch challenge for more advanced students.

Well if you go by the work the mums post to our fb group we have a disproportionate number of geniuses in our class or they’re ignoring the teacher when she asks us not to spell for them!

DS' teacher introduces a new sound each day but I believe most of the kids already knew the sounds before starting. Mine didn't. He knows now, and finally knows how to try and decode words. Spelling words like 'there' would definitely be a higher level of set work. CVC is our territory.

My teacher friend says they don't introduce any of what any of us are discussing until year 1. She was surprised he was reading/being asked to read a level 1 book.

We get a weekly timetable with daily maths and phonics activities + options to write short sentences. They also provide lots of craft activities/ weekly theme/ project. There are also 3x weekly Zooms.
It isn't rigid, which DH and I appreciate as we both work.
However we (I) have to spend a lot of time trying to extend the work to ds' level, which is a bit of a double-edged sword.
It's all on Tapestry which means we parents don't see what the others are doing.

We use tapestry too. Really great app

We don’t get spelling homework until year 1 but there is a lot of practice of the tricky words during class time.

My 4yo loves writing so is probably doing more than average but you can definitely tell when she has written something with no help versus when I’ve sat down with her and slowed things down to word by word, sound by sound or had her sound mat near by. I’d take it with a pinch of salt if every child is producing correctly spelt sentences in stories independently.

From what I’ve seen words like there, have are phase 4 phonics tricky words. Our school haven’t started phase 4 but my daughter is probably at that point with her reading.