To find this really depressing?

Thank goodness for GS1's teacher who took one look at him on Friday morning and told his mother to take him home again because he'd been all over the place all week. After a long weekend it looks as if he'll make it through to half term. More than six weeks is just too much for him at the moment.

Very depressing - Elrel said it all earlier.

Come on girls - let them study 'grandma' (and 'grandpa') not 'grammar'. What goes around comes around and they will remember!

GS2 who was three and a half found an exciting yellow caterpillar. He then treated us to a lecture about how it would soon turn into a pupa and sfter a couple of weeks hatch out as a butterfly and be able to fly! I do apologise, I realise he should have been sitting indoors studying grammar.

Role on the day when Grandparents have Ofsted inspections and then you will surely be marked down as 'inadequate' Grandma2213 and it will all be your own fault. Improvements need to be made.

tiggypiro Yes I am so ashamed. We spent several months of the summer watching the development of house martin babies in the nest in our eaves. There was a lot of poo on the window ledge below! I'm afraid to say she can recognise magpies, seagulls, blackbirds, starlings and of course robins. I can't imagine how she learned this useless knowledge.

We watched frogspawn turn into frogs in a washing up bowl (cunningly disguised as a pond) in my garden and she planted poppy seeds on the local green to remember the soldiers who died in World War 1 to keep us safe.

Today one of the books we got from the library was called 'Mermaid' by Cerrie Burnell. This is about a little boy called Luka who is taught to swim by Sylvia who has a wheelchair on land. 'Luka saw that her dreams were as wide and as vast as the sea, and that she was brave enough to go after them.' DGD has a friend in her class who has a wheelchair too.

DGD and all my DGC use complex sentences and subordinate clauses in their (very articulate) speech but I have been wicked and never told them. I am 'ticked off' (informal - phrasal verb!)

This last week in China there was a 3 day National holiday. In order to give people more time to visit family etc schools etc were closed for the whole week. To make up for the lost 2 days of schooling DGS has to go to school on Saturday and Sunday this weekend followed by a full week.

No clipboard or tick boxes Grandma2213 ? You should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself. How on earth is your DGD going to learn anything ? Fancy imagining that she could learn about language and numbers at a bowling alley and Pizza Hut of all places. You will be wanting to take her for a walk next to listen for birds. Back to school with her and the quicker the better so that she can learn all about those valuable subordinate clauses.

Jalima, they're not teaching the basics, they're rushing past the basics to learn linguistic theory which is completely unnecessary.

They have to cover stuff in primary which wasn't even needed for English A-level in the past.

Homework hmm. We took the DGC bowling on Saturday. Taking four year old DGD as an example she learned new vocabulary eg Strike, Spare, bumpers (yes I needed them too!) She recognised her name on the screen, could count how many pins she knocked down and how many more were left and even had a strike! Excellent hand eye co-ordination and muscle strength (those balls were heavy even for me!) She socialised with her siblings and cousins and was able to take turns and cheer when others achieved strikes too.

Afterwards she selected her own meal at Pizza Hut(with a little help reading the menu). She enjoyed colouring in a BFG booklet, beautifully within the lines I might add. She also found her way through mazes, played noughts and crosses, with some help completed a word search and drew a picture of her dream. Her dad has previously read the BFG book to her at bedtimes and she has seen both films.

When she got home she drew and coloured a picture of what she had done in her 'Magic Moments' Books sent home from school as homework. She dictated what she had done for her dad to write down but insisted on writing her own name.

This was a 'special treat' outing but her learning takes place in every activity we do at home whether it be baking, playing in the park, going for walks, collecting stones, shells, flowers, conkers etc etc. We talk. In her speech she uses main clauses, subordinate clauses, adjectives, adverbs, relative clauses and conditional clauses and many more grammatical structures, though we have never told her that. She has fun and learns. No clipboards or tick boxes - amazing isn't it!!!

I taught for 50 years, so sad to see what we have now come to in many UK schools.
Reading is about acquiring information and the enjoyment of the written word. Writing is about communicating and expressing oneself.
Soon we shall be swamped with young people with MH issues. There is far too much stress in education lately. Schools should be places of learning through curiosity and cooperation, not of rigidity and force feeding with facts.

Its the same all over the world, the other day here in Sweden, there was a debate about teenagers not being prepared for their further education at sixteen, because they havent had the correct education from when they start at seven, lots of parents dont know how to help their children with homework, what a state this Country is in,poor kids/youngsters.

Perhaps a slightly more rigorous approach to teaching grammar in primary schools may not be a bad thing. There was a time when spellings, grammar etc were not taught or corrected because it 'daunted the child's imagination' and resulted in cringeworthy statements such as the review I have just seen on another website :
a gentle touch approach to hoasting that leave's you well cared for but not overly fussed over. There rooms are clean, warm and we'll furnished. We had an early start to the day and was still offered the full breakfast menu

One of our local comprehensive schools starts at 8.30 but they are out by 2.50 pm

hildajenni I am impressed by how my DGD is learning at her primary school, the enthusiasm of all the teachers and the generally happy and encouraging atmosphere (apart, of course, from the homework with which I disagree, but it seems to be a part of primary education these days).

8am and finishes at 3.45pm is not much of a longer day than here, it's only 45 mins longer than many academy primaries in the UK

They never give the kids breathing space to feel confident in the basics.
For example: the week DDs class did telling the time, she came home on day 1 of it all keen to read every clock in the house… however on day 3 of telling the time she was expected to do it in Roman numerals.. and although she managed that homework she lost her brief enthusiasm for time telling because it must always be hopping on to the next more complex concept..

Reading all this is just so depressing. I am so glad my daughter took her children out of school to educate them herself. The lady from the DoE who visited last week to assess how they are progressing was very impressed with her teaching, and how the children are learning.

Meant ' losing', can spell, just fingers a bit stiff and fiddly today !

Spent 30 + years teaching. Latterly spent all my time 'assessing' rather than teaching, so frustrating and unfulfilling. Reminded me of a story, a man constantly weighed a pig, which left no time for feeding it, and then he wondered why it was loosing weight! Go figure educational specialists!

Yes, we wore uniform from junior school onwards Bluecat; DGD (4) loves her new uniform.

The only school my DC attended which was anti-uniform was a chaotic open-plan 'progressive' primary school from which I removed them because they were learning so little.

Morgana! What was the homework? 'Can you identify a potty, describe its use and how it could be beneficial to you and mummy in 500 words'?!!

We used 'First Aid in English' at primary school

It didn't dampen my enthusiasm for reading.
However, we didn't have any homework at primary school so there was plenty of time for reading at home as well as playing.
However, we did have regular tests (but no-one following us around with a clipboard -weirdly worrying).

I find it a vital component of my everyday life djen!

Although I am sure I did learn in primary rather than secondary school
But that is all so long ago.......

DGS now in Primary school in Beijing does not get homework but is expected to review the days lessons. As it is all in Chinese DD has employed a Chinese tutor for 30 mins a night to go over his work with him and that is all he is expected to do. School starts at 8am and finishes at 3.45pm - a much longer day than in the UK.
How sad that I am not surprised that Morgana's GD has been set homework at 18mths old. Just when will the powers that be realise that children have more in their lives than school work. I find it all absolutely depressing and I was a teacher who fought (often unsuccessfully) against giving homework for the sake of it.

Has anyone ever found it useful to be able to recognise a subordinate clause? Apart from, of course, to teach it to children who will never need to know apart from to recognise it in an exam.

One of the problems seems to be the idea that formal = better. This is a delusion which has shaped the education policies of both the Tory and Labour governments. Hence the insistence on correct grammatical terms (even for the very young), the emphasis on testing, and the adoption of school uniform for all ages. Did you wear uniform at primary school? I didn't - in fact, I remember it being introduced when my eldest daughter was about 6, and it was an informal and voluntary colour scheme. Now, at the same school, it is a strict uniform which has to be worn by all, even the 4 year olds. Is it necessary?

Our 4 and 6 year DGDs are now being home educated, mainly by their mum and myself, and we're trying to use quite a bit of the Montessori method. (They may attend a new Montessori group 2 days per week, if it gets going.) It's a good way of imparting abstract information in a visual and tactile form, which is a problem, I think, for the way that state education is going at the moment. The only problem is that it requires a lot of equipment, which is either very expensive to buy or time-consuming to make. It's a pretty good method, though. Shame that our schools are unlikely to adopt it.