Fir Ends Primary School

Just wanted to say to all our parents getting to grips with the challenges of encouraging children to learn at home that you're ALL doing great, regardless of how much you think you're achieving.

If you can get your children to be enthusiastic about learning anything for more than thirty minutes a day, you're doing the right things.

If you can trick them into writing things down or doing maths in a real world scenario, you're awesome!

If they're 'just' doing things in online apps like mathletics - they're still doing something and that's enough too. 

Don't judge yourselves against anybody else's standards or achievements, just do what you can, when you can.

Remember that people seldom put anything they don't want others to see on social media, only the things they want others to notice. You don't have to take any notice if you don't want to. 

Remember that teachers will set more work online than anyone can actually do in a day - it's a bit of a habit and this situation is new to them too.

You don't have to try to do it all. Pick the things that interest you as much as those that interest your child and do those - interest is infectious!

If you've managed to find a tiny spark of interest in something and kindled it into a 15 minute conversation or activity that involved finding out more about that thing... congratulations, you've become a teacher. 

You can do other things instead of the work set too; a timed washing up race with a weekly leaderboard, for example?

Some things will work, others won't. But as long as you're trying something, and can keep laughing when it goes wrong, you're doing alright.

Whatever you're doing, keep it up.

And make sure you all stop at 4pm no matter what - you'll have done quite enough homework by then!