I am impressed at the well rounded "education" you are giving your children. You are this teacher's dream parents.
I have just one question about the homework and then a few thoughts. First, is this homework the same for ALL of the class? If so, just imagine, your gifted child is taking two hours to finish. Wonder how long it takes the LD child? You are SO right; that is excessive on both counts.
My other thought on homework is always the purpose. The bright child probably already gets it after 10 problems (maybe less).
The middle child needs to practice more, but is likely to make errors without some reinforcement. I like to spot check classroom assignments as the kids work, just to make sure that the process is resulting in correct answers. (Note that I didn't say the child is using the "right" process.) I sure don't want a student doing 50 problems and reinforcing something that is always resulting in incorrect answers. He or she would be better off with the same 10 problems as the gifted child, but probably needs the skill reinforced quite often.
Then there are those children that I have the most sympathy for. They are the ones with the poor study habits and/ or weak skills (and often less than helpful parents.) How is this child supposed to even think about getting those 50 problems right? In all likelihood, he/ she probably got very few done at school and by the time he begins the work at home there is little recall to the process. Where does he turn for help?
For these reasons none of my students have much homework. Let the child pursue his/ her own interests to broaden their horizons. This does so much more to make a well rounded child. If I give "homework" for the sake of homework.....especially to a bright child, it is going to be something open ended. The one thing that I have found with my classroom experience is that most GT kids want concrete answers and they do not like being wrong. (One other thread mentions creativity as one of the important factors in programming. In my opinion this should be #1.) Our brightest---your children--- are going to be problem solvers of some type. They need to learn that it is okay to have to back away and regroup. It is okay to not have an immediate answer....And that an 84% is an okay score if I go back and LEARN from my mistakes. Children often learn more from evaluation of mistakes than being the perfect student in the beginning.
I would guess that few of us recall those tests that we got 100% on, but I can tell you about the question in seventh grade math (over 30 years ago) that I missed, but found out in looking for my mistake that the teacher had used the wrong formula. If that hadn't been the case, I would still remember because my goal was to know what the mistake was so that it never happened twice. Even if it was a careless mistake, it was a learning experience. I also learned some very useful skills of communication while asking about the mistake or defending what I thought were correct answers.
