Daughter getting nowhere at school but homeschool seems too much for me!

[mummy2jess]

I have three children aged 5,3 and 1 and I am 22 weeks pregnant with our third girl. We live in the UK. My older daughter is in the first year of school (she is the oldest in the class) and my son is in nursery. My older daughter is enjoying school has lots of friends etc BUT she has not improved in a single area since September. She is falling way behind her clasmates and the school seem to have given up on her. The school have different level reading booksshe started in September on level 2 and is still on level 2 now despite the fact all of her classmates are now higher than that (most are on level4/5).

I know she is young and to be honest it wouldnt bother me so much BUT she has started getting upset saying that the other children are better than her and asking why she cant read the same books as them, it would be a shame for this to affect how she feels about learning and school in general epecially as she gets older. As I say her school are either not interested or dont have the time to help her. At home she is keen to do work and the bits she does know are all the things I have taught her here. This had made me consider homeschooling as an option.

However, the whole idea is very overwhelming. I am not known for my organizational abilities, I find it hard enough keeping track of housework etc as it is and I am not sure where I would start with teaching her as well as lookign after my two (soon to be three) younger ones. They are home for 2 weeks now and most of today was spent running from one disaster to the next, the children get bored without constantly having something to do and the place is wrecked after about 15 mins of free time - all of my children prefer timetabled days rather than go with the flow (unfortunatley i am the opposite!).

Would it be better to leave things as they are based on this or can it really work if you are not naturally organized? I have been tryiong to do a bit of work with them while she has been home which has been FINE as long as we are doing it its when it stops and they have free time that the problems hit? would i have to plan every minute of the day? does anyone else have to do that??

[phathui5]

Wow. It sounds like a lot is being asked of a five year old. I wouldn't worry at all about her not reading books from the higher level bookshelves. If school is making her feel like she's not smart, I would definitely recommend homeschooling for a while. At five, all I really expect my kids to do academically is play with clay, draw pictures, sit through storytime at the library and let me read them books.

I don't think that waiting to do academics hurts kids in the long run at all. When my now nine year old was seven, he read all of the Harry Potter books to himself.

I also don't think that you have to schedule every minute of the day. Having a routine does help some kids, but it doesn't have to be a schoolwork routine. It could even be something like this:

Breakfast
Chores
Reading
Playtime
Math
Playtime
Lunch
Nap/quiet reading time
Outdoor Play

[cappuccinosmom]

Would it be better to leave things as they are based on this or can it really work if you are not naturally organized? I have been tryiong to do a bit of work with them while she has been home which has been FINE as long as we are doing it its when it stops and they have free time that the problems hit? would i have to plan every minute of the day? does anyone else have to do that??

You can do it!

I am not a naturally organized person. Over the years I've been learning better organizational skills, but I've been homeschooling while that was in progress. I didn't wait to start until I was super-organized.

For a 5 yo, "school" is very minimal, or should be. Is she in 2st grade, that they're reading? Or do they start that at the tail end of K5? My 5 yo's curriculum has some reading at the very end of the course, but it is stuff like "The Nut". Super simple phonetic reading, nothing advanced.

Anyway, we homeschool in a very laid back way. I do have a boxed curriculum for my kids (calvert) and we school through a cyber school, so they have courses online. With Calvert, the lesson is laid out for me, I can just grab ds books and sit down with him at the kitchen table. A lot of the extra activities given in the teacher's manual are things that just happen naturally in our family. We look at pine cones on nature walks, we made kites a few weeks ago, we talk and talk and talk endlessly

Our routine is something like this:
Wake around 7 am
breakfast
chores that need to be done (varies from day to day)
TV time (yes they watch TV )
School (starts anywhere between 8.30 and 10.30 am, depending)
Lunch at 12.30
Rest time/quiet reading time
Afternoon-free for play, hiking, library day, special projects, etc.

[mummy2jess]

hi cappuccinosmom - she is in the first year of primary school which is from ages 4-5. The youngest children will have just had their 4th birthday when they start (my daughter was only a few weeks off her 5th however). They start the year doing simple letter sounds and counting as well as learning to write cursive handwriting. Now they are doing addition and subtraction and they are starting to write sentences. The level two books that my daughter is reading are things like "Mum had a new hat" "Mums hat blew away". Level 4/5 that her friends are reading have paragraphs and more complicated words.
However there is huge variation in what they do - some children can only count to twenty other can go to 100 for example. They have alot of time to do play based activites and the whole thing is supposed to be child led (as far as I understand it) BUT as I say other children seem to be benefiting alot more from the time at school than she is. We have had a few comments from her teacher about her concentration but this is fine at home so I think she is maybe just not interested in some of the activities they do and finds it hard to sit through circle time for example.
If she were at home really I would like to kind of roll back to the start of the year and go back to the basics with reading and try to find books that interest her a bit more she doesnt like the stories but likes reading about the body or space etc so maybe this would help.
I am going to have a look around and a think about our options with this because as you say it is not a good idea to leave her somewhere that makes her feel a failure already.

[linclane]

Originally Posted by mummy2jess

If she were at home really I would like to kind of roll back to the start of the year and go back to the basics with reading and try to find books that interest her a bit more she doesnt like the stories but likes reading about the body or space etc so maybe this would help.
I am going to have a look around and a think about our options with this because as you say it is not a good idea to leave her somewhere that makes her feel a failure already.

I've needed months to think about it - wrap my head around it - and get prepared mentally. Take your time - it's a big decision (as can be all the decisions centering on what's "best" for our children).

I think the BEST part of hs is that you can do it at her pace. If you need to "go back to the basics" then do it. You can follow her interests, teach her in a way that works for her, and have very little/no pressure.

At her age I really don't think it's a big deal to be where she is with reading. There's such a broad range with kids and their reading abilities, and pushing too hard, or her feeling behind won't help.

Good luck while you mull this over!!

[amis2girls]

I would bring her home. They are asking a lot of a 5yo and it's not helping her self-esteem that she's not keeping up. Start out slow. Build her confidence in learning. Take an hour in the morning and work with her, then the rest of the day let her do her own thing.

My 7yo was having an awful time in school. I took her home not knowing how I was going to do it, but we've learned a lot this first year. One step at a time, and look back on how far you've come, how much happier she is, and what she's learned.