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Homework for 5 year olds
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ringo_24601 wrote: »Wimps - my 6 year old has a weekly maths homework, a weekly spelling test to prepare for, daily reading and weekly ancient Hebrew. They had a similar workload in year 1.
We never spend more than 30 minutes a night doing these. Might have to get him to learn an instrument on top of this lot soon.
He's not a big fan of the Hebrew, but loves reading and will often spent 30 minutes reading on his own before bed.
A very wise man gave me this advice when one of mine started to play an instrument, never tell them to practice tell them to play. It is a subtle difference but by telling them to play you are acknowledging they are doing something maybe not very well and maybe like Eric Morecambe they will be playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order. When you say they must do their practice they hear it as they aren't actually playing the instrument and you aren't respecting what they are doing. I don't know if it is true but it seemed to work for mine. My other tactic if I thought she hadn't done enough work, more of a practical mother's trick this, I would say, "Are you playing (insert instrument she played 3) because if not your room needs cleaning." She would normally reply that she really wanted to work on a piece so I would offer to put the vac and the duster round her room. I'm not sure which one was more significant;)
My other tip is choose an instrument he can carry, I got fed up carrying one of her instruments into school every week, made me late for work more than once, and was a pain to collect as she normally walked home alone. I always said if I had another child they could learn the penny whistle, fits in a pocket nicely.
Joking aside it is lovely to hear them playing and worth the money.Sell £1500
2831.00/£15000 -
missbiggles1 wrote: »I think MrsPB was talking about an 8 year old, by which age they should be getting used to the idea.
Still think that's optimistic - plenty of teenagers haven't picked it up!0 -
A very wise man gave me this advice when one of mine started to play an instrument, never tell them to practice tell them to play. It is a subtle difference but by telling them to play you are acknowledging they are doing something maybe not very well and maybe like Eric Morecambe they will be playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order. When you say they must do their practice they hear it as they aren't actually playing the instrument and you aren't respecting what they are doing. I don't know if it is true but it seemed to work for mine. My other tactic if I thought she hadn't done enough work, more of a practical mother's trick this, I would say, "Are you playing (insert instrument she played 3) because if not your room needs cleaning." She would normally reply that she really wanted to work on a piece so I would offer to put the vac and the duster round her room. I'm not sure which one was more significant;)
My other tip is choose an instrument he can carry, I got fed up carrying one of her instruments into school every week, made me late for work more than once, and was a pain to collect as she normally walked home alone. I always said if I had another child they could learn the penny whistle, fits in a pocket nicely.
Joking aside it is lovely to hear them playing and worth the money.
oh, I'd never force music practice on my kids (Had it done to me as a child).. I'd count learning an instrument as an 'optional extra' that they'd only do if they actually wanted to. My eldest loves creating digital music at the moment; but he's quite a geek and loves creating anything (be it music on his electronic organ, lego, minecraft, plasticine or just scribbling on paper)
He's not actually very musical so it might never happen0 -
Just to give the other side, my mother pushed me to practise every day and to take my music very seriously. I got to a really high level and learned to take responsibility for my own practice. It was a fantastic experience.0
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ringo_24601 wrote: »oh, I'd never force music practice on my kids (Had it done to me as a child).. I'd count learning an instrument as an 'optional extra' that they'd only do if they actually wanted to. My eldest loves creating digital music at the moment; but he's quite a geek and loves creating anything (be it music on his electronic organ, lego, minecraft, plasticine or just scribbling on paper)
He's not actually very musical so it might never happen
Do they do anything at school, at my grandchildren's school they all have ukelele lessons for a year. Apparently the ukelele is a popular school instrument now, my grandsons aren't very musical but they did enjoy the year and it does give them an insight to music even if they don't carry on.
I used to love listening to my daughter play, unfortunately when she went to university she pretty well stopped although she is a teacher and sometimes stands in for the music teacher if she is off and helps with school musicals so it is still used.Sell £1500
2831.00/£15000 -
Do tell me how you make a sheet with 120 maths questions fun for an 8 year old. I am dying to hear.
At 8 it's a bit different isnt it, by then the need of encourage via fun such as counting games taking one teddy away leaves 3 etc reduces. But a fun learning environment can still be maintained, it doesn't have to be misery.
Most children have by then grasped there are rewards within learning and have their own drive to learn or compete with themselves or others. Ours complete their work in the kitchen while we are preparing supper, yes it's noisy and distracting but while this slows them it takes the feeling of isolation for the task away and they find it far more enjoyable to complete work via a chatty interactive environment. Sitting a child down and telling them for the next hour you will be answering 120 questions is obviously uninspiring. Spellings we learn via flash cards all together so our 5 year old sees the same words as our 7 year old as our 3 year old and we compete to learn them, daddy gets some wrong sometimes that is hilarity for them.
If I thought their schools were presenting school work as a chore during the day I would be furious therefore we are very careful not to present homework as such either.0 -
I don't think the homework is compulsory is it at this age? My 6 year old nephew is summer born and has been having issues, with a referral for autistic spectrum issues. My sister has told the school that he wont be doing homework at the moment until he settles down at home as he is struggling so much with it all, they didn't argue How can the school make the child do it, its not like they will be able to do much alone at this age... Surely until they can be self motivated enough to do their own work this is just homework for parents and creating conflict at home?
I think we really focus far to much on reading and writing at the wrong ages in this country, in Denmark they don't start this till age 7, and by the age of 10-11 they have caught up with the English children who start so early. There are other things to learn in the world other than this, it must be such a miserable school experience for those that don't shine in this area, being forced to do it all day every day.0 -
Oh yes, the practice being miserable tactic. People used to tell me this when we home educated, "They might as well get used to getting up early and doing pointless stuff, they will have to do it eventually." Funnily enough when they were older they seemed to adapt to this quite quickly. I suppose it was what Victorians said when they put kids up chimneys.
The funny thing is home educated children don't need to learn this, they learn to love learning and do it because they love it. At our local FE college they welcomed home educated teenagers onto A level courses with no GCSEs as they had such a good reputation as keen and self motivated students. When I look back I regret giving in and sending mine to school at 9 and 8. My older two went to school did the conventional route and it is as different as different can be. When my two started school they found some things baffling; only playing with your peer group, at home ed groups the 14 year old would happily play with the 4 year old, some things being boy things and some girl things - that totally lost them, doing things for a star instead of for the satisfaction of doing it. Children who were taken out of school took a while to adjust, it was harder for them to become self motivated than for kids who had never been to school.
Look at the study someone posted earlier, repeated studies suggest there is no benefit in homework at primary school level. It is different when they are doing GCSEs but at primary school they don't benefit from it, most teachers I know say the same thing, schools do it because parents judge the school if they don't.
I think you have been extremely fortunate if neither you, your children or anyone you know has ever had to tackle something they did not absolutely love!
How many others do you think can be in an idyll for life?0 -
Henry is a few years away from school, but I guess it's never too early to start preparing for this.
It strikes me that instead of the amount of homework the bigger issue is the nature of the homework.
I am comfortable with school-time learning to be focused upon the national curriculum, but I feel that home-time learning should be different.
My concern is that a continuation of enforced conformity with a pre-determined set of standards at home could be overly restrictive if he shows a flair for one or two areas and not much aptitude in others.
For instance, if a qualified teacher is unable to help him 'get' maths, I can't envisage how I would be any more successful. In that scenario, in substitution for an hour of anguish for both parties, I'd rather he spent the time enjoying the further development of one of his other skills.
In general, I would prefer that the home-time learning would be child-led, with Henry given a choice of reading, maths, drawing etc so that he feels more empowered to learn.I came, I saw, I saved.
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