Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy 10 P.M. and stil doing the homework

How much homework do your kids get?

My DD (5th grade) brings a steady amount of homework. About 1- 1.5 hours each day.

DS, 7th, most of the time does not get any (trust me, he does not get any, he is not the kind to finish it at school) but occasionally (twice a month) it gets insane!!!

Tonight he had to do an essay for LA (The Importance of the Written Word), another one on his life between K and 5th grade, do something for Science and something for Math. He also had a class at AoPS and he had to practice with the accompanist for the upcoming violin thing. It is almost 10 p.m. and he still has ways to go.
I am not complainig. I am here to help on those rare occasions.
I guess I just want to find out if anybody is dealing with similar situations?

GS8 has one sheet of homework, Mon-Thur, nothing on Friday. It's done in less than 5 minutes. The school expects them to read every day, but that's up to the parent. We have lots of time for him to pursue his own interests after school.

Our homework is supposed to take about 30 minutes. If it is worksheets, DS is done in less than 10-15. If it is a writing assignment it usually takes around 3 hours. After that he has drum and piano practice for a total of 30 minutes, chores and dinner. On the days that his homework takes less than 30 minutes, he usually spends another 30 minutes doing Aleks. Lately though, that time has been going toward his science project. When time permits, we read aloud to each other from the Chronicals of Narnia. I tend to let the music practice slide on the heavy homework nights. I really hate writing assignment nights... Some days, I feel like we are rushing to get homework done just to give good night kisses.

After Spring Break, things start winding down--more field trips, workshops, guest speakers...less homework (except the high schooler who has steady masses of work, mostly because he's making up for missing so much school due to golf or MESA Club). My kids are almost obsessed about getting their work done at school, BUT that sometimes means it's rushed & messy, careless mistakes. I wish they'd be a little less obsessed with that idea to make sure they're doing a good job. My 7th grader usually only brings math home every night (< 30 minutes) and occasionally an additional project.

My DS10 has always taken lots of time with homework but not because he has tons of it, but because he is easily distracted and likes to live in his head rather than concentrating on his work. He probably has about an hour or so of actual work a night. He also has occasional additional projects but they are usually assigned well in advance so he can work on it a little at a time - or usually cram it all in at the last moment!! :-)

My DS7 has about 3 different things to do, math page, reading work book, science or social studies work sheets, and his reading book and AR book. He is my kid who sits down and gets it done and usually the written work takes no more than 5 to 10 minutes. He also has the occasional project but they usually aren't that big of a deal.

All in all I have no complaints.

DS7 (1st grade) has maybe 5-10 minutes a week of homework. Maybe if we actually had to study spelling words it would be more.

A lot of nights if we are home, I have him do 10-15 minutes of Singapore math and this works great. Where we're working is still effortless and he can get through 4-6 pages of a workbook much of of the time. Considering what he working on at school this year, I'm very thrilled there isn't a bunch of busy work to do!

We actually had much more homework in kindergarten strangely. We had really great homework for kindergarten - very open ended and fun. Things like find out how many steps you can take from the kitchen to your bedroom. And then you could build on this, and get a yard stick and figure out how much further it was from the hallway or something. Ahh ... the good old days.

DD8 gets a weekly homework packet. You can choose to have your child do it all at once or a little bit per night. The only part that takes any time is writing sentences.
She gets a spelling list of words she already knows how to spell and has to write a sentence for each word.
At the beginning of the year I thought it was really silly. I guessed writing the word in a sentence helped children learn to memorize the word for the test, so I let DD blow it off.
The teacher cornered me on it and explained this was actually a great assignment for DD because is was open ended and there was no limit to how complex her sentences could get.
I have to admit I had not thought about it that way and was glad the teacher talked to me.
Now DD sits with her list, a dictionary and a thesaurus. She really loves challenging herself to come up with really great sentences and takes about 45 minutes to an hour, but she really enjoys it. I've seen her writing skills really improve this year and am happy she has such a creative teacher.

Neato

Well, it is not 10 P.M. here yet, but DS has been working on re-writing his AwesomeMath proofs, and DD is soaking her feet in a foot bath after her first school dance.
Think priorities :-) !!!

Ania,
DS11 must be on the same schedual as your son, as he mostly does his homework in aftercare, or study halls, but occasionally a whole lot will pile up all at once. Thursday was one such occasion, and it happend to fall on the day when there was a sports practice AND a music lesson. So from 7 to 11pm he cycled through 15 minutes of solid work and 5 minute play breaks. Usually he only has 2 hours when the 'pile up' nights come. I did sit next to him and rub his aching feet while he annotated his novel. I figure if he does most of his homework independently and I can help once in a while during the extraordinary times that I'm happy to do so. Hope that doesn't lead to more dependency....we'll see.

Elh - my heart goes out to you with those long writing assignments. Have you spoken to the teacher to get some perspective? Would she allow you to scribe for your child? Does he know how to type? My son's ability to write really opened up around age 9 when his typing skills solidified. Before that he would just freeze up - very messy stuff.

Love and More Love,
Grinity