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  • Should children do homework in the Christmas holidays?

    Monday 19 December 2011

    Categories: Education, Extra curricular, Family Relationships, Homework

    I’m actually a big fan of homework. I think the school-related work children do at home can be important consolidation or extension of what they have learnt at school. Time spent reviewing work at home can provide the valuable opportunity for reflection and reinforcement. Sometimes if your child’s interest is sparked by something at school, they can find the space to do further reading and research in their own time, including on the internet, which can extend their learning and deepen their interest. Independent reading, including in the holidays, is a tremendous way of building their literacy skills, and it can be a very good way of relaxing, too.

    Christmas is a tricky time; some older children may be facing internal, and external, school examinations when term starts in January. Children sitting entrance tests in other schools may be about to go through that assessment, and they and their parents will be considering the issue of how best to prepare for that. Click here to see the sound advice offered by Hilary French if you and your daughter are in this position. The dilemma of whether time should be spent during the Christmas break on schoolwork and, if so, how much time, and how it should be structured, is something that may be exercising a number of families round about now. It’s exacerbated by the fact that the autumn term tends to be the longest and most tiring of the three school terms, and children will certainly been in need of a good rest once they’ve broken up. In addition to all this, Christmas and New Year celebrations and the various family commitments involved take up a fair amount of time. All this can lead to significant stress – and this is supposed to be a holiday and a time of goodwill!

    My advice is that the answer is all to do with finding the right balance. Balance is important in our lives in so many ways – whether we are thinking about work/relaxation, a healthy diet and lifestyle or how we choose to divide our time. Many parents will be in jobs where the work doesn’t end each day at 5pm, and they will be used to making decisions about whether/when to stay and work late, or how much work to take home in the evenings, at weekends and in holidays. Many of your children will ultimately work in professions where the same is true of them. We know that, if this is the case, to resolve to do no work at all outside the time we are contracted to be in the workplace won’t allow us to do the job as well as we wish to or need to. We also know that if we work ALL the time we will not be fully effective either, and the quality of our home and family life will suffer. Somehow we have to find the balance, and this is true of our children with regard to homework in school holidays.

    Near the beginning of the Christmas holiday, try to have a calm and rational discussion with your daughter about whether she does need to do some homework, revision or preparation before the spring term starts. If so, decide together what would be a realistic estimate of how much time she should spend on this. Then look at the calendar for the Christmas period and decide which days would be good days to focus on schoolwork. Take account of her preferences and ensure she feels in control of this – avoid nagging and pressuring. She may prefer a ‘little and often’ approach of spending a couple of hours a day across several days to get it done, or she may prefer to set aside a number of full days to concentrate on what she has already decided she wants to achieve. Help her to make a list of what is to be done and encourage her to cross things off the list and feel satisfied that she’s working through it. But do ensure that she also leaves time for rest and relaxation, for socialising with family and friends, for getting the amount of sleep she needs properly to recharge her batteries, so that she returns to school refreshed and revitalised. If the plan has worked, she will also return to school feeling well-prepared and ready for the challenges which lie ahead.

    Posted by Jill Berry

Your comments

Seriously? I do NOT bring home any of my fashion portfolios on any day that I am home! My time at home is that…home..which brings my family to heart and memories to last! Why would our children be different? How would you like if you told your family about a disgruntled boss or a bad job evaluation…would they madante that you spend every free moment away from the “job” engaged in work? IF SO, MOVE ON. Spend the time with your children wisely for you only created one of them. Jobs created us…

By diannehatman@yahoo.com on Thursday 26 January 2012

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