Originally Posted by Portia
Originally Posted by bluemagic
... my son was in a gifted program at that grade that had CRAZY insane amounts of homework for a 5th grade student. 3+ hours a night and more on weekends...

I was in a school like this for 5th grade as well. I spent all my time on homework and none developing social skills outside of school, outside interests, etc. It is the one schooling decision my parents actually regret. I think there is a lot more to childhood than just academics and school is not the primary place those other things are learned even though children spend more time there than elsewhere.

That being said, I am a firm believer in meeting a child's academic needs. That does not necessarily translate into homework.
Yes I regret this although because by 6th grade he developed anxiety disorder. Since we have tested DS and found that he has low-average PS & WM it explains things a lot. We weren't the only ones who thought the homework load was excessive but looking back on it the same amount of work probably took him even longer than some of the other students. Most of the class time was taken up by group projects, in depth class discussions, and other good projects for gifted kids. And most of the seat work sent home for the students to do on their own.

Ironically I put him in this program because it didn't give him as much busywork. It he had stayed in a regular class with GATE as an extra pullout, he would have been expected to do a huge host of boring busywork and only be given the more challenging stuff as extra. I had already determined that this didn't work well for him.