I was appalled to discover that my daughter (now 12) would have homework in K. However, we did it together and it set a tone of enjoyment and time scheduling. I always saw that she completed all her homework and worked any bonus questions.

Fast forward to preparing for 7th. She would never think of homework as an option, knows there is time to spend on homework, and enjoys it.

In retrospect, they knew what they were doing when they assigned it. It was not difficult and sometimes fun. I just saw it as a time to understand what they were doing at school. It is more for attitude than learning.

We had homework 4 days a week in K.
It was usually fun, creative, and took less then 5 min to complete.
However, I have heard of some schools that give boring stuff like writing your name and words 10 times! yuck

DD4 will be entering K this year in a private school full day program, they do some homework (5 to 10 minutes) a couple of times a week. Personally I prefer she does have homework so that she learns that she needs to set the time aside to do so.

In K, our public charter school did not have homework in the first semester. However, the teacher said the kids need to get use to doing homework, so she assigned 5-10 minutes a day in the second semester. It really depends on the teacher.

I had to fight with DS5.5 to do his 5 minute homework yesterday... but apparently he was upset b/c writing the number 8 is difficult for him to do. I don't know if it's just because the number itself is hard or whether it's a separate issue all together, but I finally convinced him that it was ok not to be great at it (perfectionism in him for sure), and that he will only get better if he kept practicing. At the end, he was excited to do it.

Oh that's great that you convinced him to do it and that he ended up being excited! I know we are going to come across the same difficulties with writing. DS5 stopped wanting to write long ago when it wasn't turning out how he wanted it, and we have had a hard time convincing him that it gets better with practice and that it doesn't have to be perfect. I think outside reinforcement helps (e.g., piano teacher saw DS's piano workbook and asked "Did your mom write those half-notes? No? Those are great!")

Any clues as to how you convinced him that perfection was not required?

We talked about how he used to not be great at this game or that and with practice, he got better... the things that I'm not great at, but get better at with practice. And just told him that just because he isn't the best in one thing, doesn't mean he won't be in another, etc... that and I sat down with him while he was doing it, of course.

Sadly, there's definitely a perfectionism thing going on. He wrote an "e" and erased it twice to rewrite it. And NONE of the first two were sloppy/bad.

My son gets homework at night. Most nights he has to write his name three times and we're supposed to read a book to them (that he reads to me instead). It's not a lot and I don't mind it. I notice that the more he practices his writing the less of a fight it is to get him to do it and the better he gets at it.

Our K classes do a hw packet on Mondays that is due on Fridays. With the exception of the coloring (which takes 2-3 days to get accomplished and it's not much, lol) he finishes it on Monday easily. This leaves us time to do a few challenging pages of our own to send in with the hw

So, DS5.5 has homework once a week in 1st (other than reading 15-20 min daily). Who knew 1st would be so much easier?