While I am waiting around for Kindergarten to start at the end of Aug, I'd like to ask some of the posters to the K thread about homework.

I am not a fan of homework for K kids. Won't be able to find out what our district's policy is for at least two weeks. In the mean time, I am curious about other schools.

Have you found out in advance what the policy is at your school? (if your dc is going to school...) what is your opinion?

thanks, EW

Miss 8 is in year 4 and this is the first time we've faced 'homework'. While I grimaced at first, I've found that the homework activities are all open-ended and really suit my gifted child. We can make the projects as big or as small as we like. She LOVED her geography homework this week - which was to play a game of naming countries (like China) and then the next player names a country starting with the last letter (like Australia). It was designed to be an oral game but we turned ours into a written exercise and then mapped all of the countries in our game (@75 or so). It was quite cool! If homework is boring, monotonous worksheets - I'd have a real problem with that. So I guess what I'm saying is ... it's the nature of the homework that's the real issue. And I guess that all depends on individual teachers *sigh*

Does the school have a website? Many schools now have their handbooks online and policy on homework should be in handbook. At least that's how it works here. We had homework M - Th (lousy worksheets). We had a great K teacher who at least gave us more advance worksheets. She also gave more handwriting and writing assignment than his 1st grade teacher (who initially refused to differentiate homework).
I guess in the end it all comes down to the teacher just like pretty much everything else.

Ds had 1/2 day K but it'll be full day for dd when she gets there...but no homework. I don't think there was any in 1st either. 3rd was the first time ds had anything like an assignment which took more than one night to complete. This seems about right to me, homework in K doesn't make any sense to me, other than maybe once or twice a year just for fun.
Our county sets a list of grades and maximum avg homework times, such as <20 minutes per night for 1st grade. They do this in part to let you know things shouldn't be taking an hour a night, and if they are, to get with the teacher.

In our area it depends on private all day vs. public 1/2 day option. DD went to a private K as a 4 year old and they were expected to complete weekly homework and daily reading. The homework packet was given on Monday and it was supposed to take 15min. per day. Reading requirement was 15 min. a day as well. DD usually did the homework in two evenings instead of Mon-Thurs.

Our public schools also give homework but it was much less. Our friends told us there was a suggestion to read every night and then a weekly sheet for the letter of the week. Our public school has a 10 min. rule for homework, meaning 10 min. is added each year to how much homework the kids should have. I would ask what the requirement in in your school district. Our schools have a family handbook posted online that explains their policy.

Jen

My DS6 was in K and 1st last year and neither grade had any real homework. No required reading time either.

That being said, every few weeks he would bring home Everyday Math worksheets to be completed. I only had him complete the 1st grade ones. The K teacher seemed fine with it. Most of the Everyday Math homework in K was more about number concepts. For example: one asked that you allow the child to play in water with various containers, another asked the child to count the number of steps from one place in the home to another. IMO, things we had done with our children since they were 2 years old. The first grade ones were only slightly more challenging. DS6 hated doing them.

Also at the beginning of the year in K we did get a list of sight words the children should work on weekly to be completed by end of year. Since DS6 read them all perfectly on the first day I threw the list away. Same with the first grade "difficult words" spelling list. I had DS6 spell them in the bathtub one evening and then threw the list way.

My DD5 is actualy attending Montessori K this year I already know that they do not get any homework except a few family "projects" near the end of the year.

Thanks to all for the responses.

It is interesting to see how much variation there is.

The websites for the elementary schools in my district don't have the hw policies listed

I will be able to call and ask in a few weeks, but right now the school offices are closed.

I heard from friend in a neighboring district (schools are similar to ours) that their homework was along the lines of what M2myE described - weekly hw and daily reading.

I guess I will know for sure soon enough

No real homework is assigned at our public K. If an assignment isn't finished, the teacher may send it home for completion, but even my foot-draggingly slow DS8 rarely had anything in K. I don't expect DS5 to come home with anything at all 90+% of the time. He is more of a people-pleaser than DS8 was, and I think the work in K will be more appropriate to DS5's ability than it was for DS8.

We'll find out tomorrow.

Well DS5 will have homework in K, but not regular everyday homework. Just sometimes. That's what he had in pre-K, and he enjoyed it. It also gave DH and DS some good time together. DH is far better with working with reading/comprehension stuff. I am better with math concepts and grammar. We might just make a good team afterall. But that was totally unrelated to your question... I think some homework is ok at this age. But I think too much might make them resent school and hate homework far too early.

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?

DS5 is in first, he has homework practically every night M-Th. Most weeks he has a 6 page packet for spelling, but he just started getting differentiated spelling words. Each night he will have to do different things with them, put them in ABC order, write them 3x each, put them in a sentence. And then he usually has math 2-3 nights a week. It is the most simple ridiculous things...but we are working on trying to differentiate that. It usually takes about 3 minutes to complete at this point. I am not a huge fan of homework.