Homework for 5 year olds

[ourmaminhavana]

Thanks Yoyo, that's really interesting. I can understand the picking up easily reason, but don't believe that children of that age should be under any pressure. Can they not pick it up through reading, fun word games, rather than being prepped for a test? Of course, as I'm writing this I'm thinking of ways of introducing whatever words we need to learn snap, Lexicon, writing our own stories, doodles, charades etc rather than a look and cover method.
Night all.

[yoyo123]

most of them don;t think of it as pressure, it;s just fun..mind you I did freak out a bit with then asking " is this a digraph.."!!

[Belinda]

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[magwich2]

I don't think children in years 1 and 2 should have any homework at all (apart from reading for pleasure - in other words not the blasted Magic Key etc!).
They are at school for 6 hours a day or more and that should be more than enough time to learn far more than they actually do. The standards of the national curriculum are a disgrace and it is no wonder that the private sector so effortlessly out performs the state sector.
It might even be much better if primary schools junked the playing and just had the children for the morning when they could work hard on proper subjects. They could then spend the afternoons with their family.
I get really fed up with the idea that subjects like maths spelling etc can be learnt by way of a few silly games - the children need to learn to sit quietly and get their brain into gear and LEARN. That way they could cover the necessary work without homework.

[Daogroupie]

My dd's are in consecutive years but the learning through play in Reception came in for younger dd so I had the bizarre experience of elder dd having her own chair and table in reception and a writing book and quite structured lesssons to younger dd having nothing of her own in reception and spending a lot of time lolling about on cushions and generally not doing very much. Elder dd sailed effortlessly into Year 1, younger dd crashed and burned and had an absolutely horrible first term being bottom of everything. It was so bad I seriously considered moving her as she hated it. As there was no further place for her to fall to we embarked together at home on what was a very long climb from the very bottom to the very top. This week she sailed into a semi selective secondary school all guns blazing. I still wonder how different it would have been if she had had the chance to have the same experience in Reception that elder dd had. In the summer term of Year 1 she had to spend a day in Reception and came home saying "Mummy, they do absolutely nothing in reception, they just play all the time. They are all going to find Year 1 really hard" I would recommend any parent with a summer baby to make some level of preparation for Year 1 as I dont think that current reception is enough of a leader into Year 1. DG

[ourmaminhavana]

Felt rather stressed about it, but went and spoke to DD's teacher today. She got 11 out of 13 spellings correct yesterday which I was completely happy with, however she came home feeling that she'd failed as she didn't get a certificate unlike those who'd only had five to learn! She was given 12 to learn for next week so I asked if she could not be given more than 10 eg have 5 (like most of the others) plus the two wrong ones as I don't want her to feel she's failing each week and the teacher agreed (although I caught her on the hop so am waiting to see what will happen!)

[mystery]

Yep, I don't really mind the tests, but I do mind the way they mark and reward them. At our school you have to get all of them right to get a housepoint, so kiddo really feels it if they make just one slip-up. And one slip-up could be "good" spelling - it might sound right, and follow a pattern of some sort, but not be absolutely "correct".

And our lists of words are rubbish - don't get me on to them - they are neither well constructed from the synthetic phonics point of view, nor got useful high frequency words on them.

Aaaaaaaargh.

But hopefully like the Scarlett family everything will magically click overnight sometimes - probably when they have spellchecker.

[scarlett]

But hopefully like the Scarlett family everything will magically click overnight sometimes - probably when they have spellchecker.

I like to think it's actually the drip drip effect of my splendid teaching at home .

My children never get 10/10 for school spellings because they don't seem to write them down correctly from the board. Perhaps I need to make a family appointment at the opticians.

[mad?]

My children never get 10/10 for school spellings because they don't seem to write them down correctly from the board. Perhaps I need to make a family appointment at the opticians.

Are you sure it is them? When DD2 miss-spelt a word which I was confident she already knew in her spelling book, it transpired she had 'correctly' copied it from the board...where the teacher had miss-spelt it. This becasme such a regualr feature of her spelling lists that year that she would always start (prompted by me) with a game of 'spot the miss spelt word'. School were very blase about it, but having to invest time in getting your child to 'un-learn' what she has erroneously learned in school (and trying not to indermine the teacher in the process) is time wasting at its worst.

[mystery]

Maybe the teacher didn't spell them correctly on the board. Oh you beat me to it.