I don't mind the packet system in and of itself--as has been pointed out, it has some advantages. The length seems excessive. It includes a free writing assignment ("Write about these people and what they do"), a free drawing assignment (he took quite a while on this), a lot of handwriting practice, reading comp questions, capitalization work, a crossword, work on recognizing the parts of a book...I could go on. The 4 pages he did yesterday took him at least half an hour because he is trying to improve his handwriting, at my behest. (It's one thing he does need to work on.) I don't know if I should just let the handwriting go so he can work faster. It's not terrible by any means. Probably on the slightly low side of average for a first grade boy.
You might ask the teacher, seeing as he is not used to that workload, if he could try getting packet on Friday instead to give you a few additional days to spread it out. You could agree for him to just get a head start on the tasks like writing the words and hold off on tasks until the week that he hasn't been introduced to (maybe a math concept.)
I am going to see if this continues to be the norm and then I may ask for that. I worry that asking for accommodations may be seen as "He can't handle first grade."
As for math, this isn't even the math. He gets separate, challenging math HW (from an enrichment book) from his K teacher. I like the math HW and feel he needs it, since he is not getting much math worth his while in class--but it will add to the workload.
