I've found our homework also to be very non-rote. This approach might not be best for weaker students, and it never seems to be enough for the really advanced, but it definitely encourages higher level thinking skills!
Hmmm. Could you give me some examples of non-rote that should be rote instead, Dottie? Aside from the math facts and spelling that I mentioned--which pretty much just have to be memorized--I can't even envision what you could be talking about that would be better as memorization than concept. What higher level thinking skills are involved? Analysis? Synthesis? Or just application of knowledge to solve the problem? (which isn't a whole lot higher on the pyramid than memorization...)
As for the wacky word problems, I think those are always an issue for kids, but they're also the way math comes to us in real life, so I tend to take those in stride. I have a yard I want to fence and I need to know the perimeter, how much water does it take to fill this container, etc. It all comes with story-problem baggage. My DH hated word problems until he hit physics and realized that THAT was why they'd had all those words cluttering up his math books for all those years! LOL!
