Avoiding homework

When I was in primary school I remember having homework but not when I was really little. Changed days. I used to finish my homework in about ten minutes and then run out to play. These days it takes ten minutes to read the instructions.

So much to my seven year old’s delight I often miss half of it out. First there is the reading book, which is boring and which he gets nothing out of. Anyway he’s read it at school already. What is the point of reading it again? He’s not a goldfish.

So we tend to skip that part. Reading is not a homework task in our house. Instead we sit down together at bedtime and he reads a book to me, a book which is write a bit more advanced than his homework book, which he finds interesting and which occasionally has a ne word for him to learn.

I don’t know any child who nags their mum to do homework but I get nagged to sit down and read with H. And if he had his way he would be reading to me all evening.

Then we have maths games which require sitting and reading instructions, locating a dice and counters and sometimes cutting out also. By that time we’re both fed up. On son’s insistence we did one this week. It involved five minutes of reading rules and about two minutes of maths.

So usually we skip his reading book and maths game. Instead we read together and go on maths websites. And son thinks he’s pulling a fast one on me!

How to get your child to love maths – part 1

If anyone is suffering from insomnia I have the solution. I can give you H’s maths homework. The maths games he is expected to do are so boring that they could turn anyone in to Rip Van Winkle.

Needless to say we gave up doing them a few weeks ago and the fact that I have not ticked and signed the relevant sheet to say we had completed them, is not because I forgot. We just haven’t bothered.

Instead we have been having fun with maths. We started off by suggesting a game of Sum Swamp and we play this from time to time. Sum Swamp is an excellent game you can play with all the family and is a bit like Snakes and Ladders but instead you have three dice – two with numbers on and one with a + or – on each side. Instead of rolling a dice and seeing a number, children roll three and have to add or take away the numbers.

Suggest a game of Sum Swamp in our house and you are met with cheers of “Yeessssssss!!” as they all run in to the dining room. A bit different from the response we get when we mention his homework maths games.

The only problem is he is getting a past this stage and the mental maths is more suitable for his five year old brother but it is still good for him and good for us as a family to play games together.

So now I have introduced him to two websites Topmarks and Tutpup. At parents’ evening we were told that him as his friends are competitive and like to compete to see who finishes their maths first so TutPup should suit him down to the ground.

No you're not rubbish at maths

On a few occasions recently both my oldest children have voiced opinions that they were not very good at something at school – maths, spelling etc. This is an opinion which I don’t like.

I have a postgrad in a maths subject, and being a journalist I guess I can say I’m good at English, but at no point in primary school do I recall knowing that I was good or bad at anything. I just did the work.

But today school is very different. Parents and teachers feel the need to find a child’s strengths early on.

In my opinion this can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If a child grows up believing he or she is rubbish at maths, they are not going to have the confidence to tackle maths adequately.

When I speak with teachers at parents’ evenings I tell them that I want my children to enjoy school work and that that is my focus, not being good at it. Maths is fun (honestly) in the same way doing a crossword or Sudoku is fun. My focus is for them to enjoy maths.

I also think teachers get it wrong. A child who may be a poor speller one year, may have vastly improved the next.

And I’m glad that when I was in primary school nobody told me what I was good or bad at, for I strongly suspect I didn’t impress them all that much with any area of the curriculum.