Porosenok,
That is a shame that schools in your area are implementing SM this way. If you look at the teacher's guide for the original SM and its pre-HMH revisions, this is not how it's designed to be used. (Granted MIF is an Americanized version, so probably complete with all the mindless busywork that is so beloved by USA curriculum designers.) A day's work should consist of a number of hands-on exploratory problem-solving activities, a number of in-class worked problems, then about 2-5 pages of widely-spaced problems for homework (often about 10 problems per lesson), with plenty of space to write in-between them. The tests, admittedly, are pretty intense, and start right up from first grade. Of course, I used it for homeschooling, so I was free to omit anything that I felt was unnecessary or unhealthy for my children.
