I attended a HLE workshop at Little Buddy’s nursery, which was trying to tell parents about the Home Learning Environment programme/initiative and get more parents involved.

The workshop facilitator mentioned that HLE has significant impact on learning outcomes, and I quote from a paper:

Research also establishes that parental involvement has a significant effect on children’s achievement and adjustment even after all other factors (such as social class, maternal education and poverty) have been take out of the equation between children’s aptitudes and their achievement. Differences in parental involvement have a much bigger impact on achievement than differences associated with the effects of school in the primary age range.

The nursery manager also popped her head in briefly during the workshop and mentioned in passing that the nursery was hoping to measure outcomes.

So given that the Little Buddy’s nursery/key worker is really enthusiastic about giving us HLE bags/activities – at some point this week, we had 3 bags with us at home (!! partly because I haven’t been sufficiently organised and on-the-ball to get all these done) – and all these comments about learning outcomes… I’m getting a bit paranoid and worried now… does that mean the nursery thinks Little Buddy is under-achieving and requires parental intervention/involvement to get him up to scratch??

Previously, I had only assumed that Little Buddy’s key worker kept giving us the bags because I’m quite curious, involved, and enthusiastic about the bags – I write up detailed commentary, and even type it up and print it for the observation forms we have to submit. But given that the only other parent (besides me) at the HLE workshop who had already been receiving and using the HLE bags, has a special needs kid, I’m a little bit concerned. Hmmmm….

I don’t really want to ASK the question either, in case the nursery staff are shocked. I think Little Buddy is pretty bright, and I was hoping to get him into an academic school, so the whole situation is somewhat disconcerting.

Anyway, given I’m behind in my HLE activities and submissions, I quickly did one of the sets of activities this past week.

Our observations are below :

• Little Buddy does not seem very interested in the containers. When they are placed on the table with other toys in the vicinity (trains, puzzles), he doesn’t engage with them unless specifically asked/instructed to
• The HLE activities were carried out over 2 days to observe his progress and changes in the way he interacts with the containers
  • First session: Little Buddy needs verbal guidance and added demonstration by parent in order to open 2 of the containers (plastic klip-it container and glass jar with snap lid)
  • Second session: He is able to open the containers with verbal guidance (no need for demonstration)
  • He has not closed the containers and doesn’t seem interested in doing so despite requests to do so
• Detailed observation from first session: 28 Jan 16 (Thurs) with Papa:
  • Plastic Sistema Klip-It container: Papa asked him to open it, at first, Little Buddy says : “it not working”, Papa talks him through the way to open: “ pull on the blue clips, but he repeats “not working”; Papa then shows him how to do it, closes it again, and asks Little Buddy to open it again, and he manages it and opens the lid.
  • Plastic jar with screwtop: First Little Buddy tries to lift up the little flap openings on top of the lid. Papa tells him he should turn it, and he turns it and easily opens it. Papa asks him to close it, but he says “no”, and moves on to the next container
  • Glass jar with snap lid: Little Buddy initially tries to turn the lid, but it doesn’t work. Papa tries to talk him through how to open it: “ pull on the metal snap”, but he asks for help. Papa shows him how to open it and closes it again, then he attempts to open it. He struggles with it at first, but then manages to open the glass jar
• Detailed observation from second session: 29 Jan 16 (Fri) with Papa:
  • Plastic jar with screwtop: Little Buddy immediately opens and closes the flaps on top of the lid, but he seems to struggle with unscrewing the lid, and loses interest
  • Plastic Sistema Klip-It container: He struggles with the glass jar and moves to the plastic klip-it container. He opens it with some verbal guidance from Papa
  • Glass jar with snap lid: He opens it quite easily with verbal guidance from Papa
• Next steps (in future): learn to close the containers