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I posted that I overscheduled DD. She is now in grade 1 and I am a little surprised how much homework she is getting.

Right now it is only reading, composition, math, and spelling. But she gets chess homework once a week and she has mandarin homework from her Chinese extracurricular. Luckily she doesn't get homework for Spanish at school.

The math takes more time than just going the equations because she has to show problem solving and do it several ways, in pictures and then explain in words how she did the math problem. The writing takes time for a kid just turned 6 on Tuesday.

What kind of homework are you guys seeing for grade 1?

Ren

About 20 min. a day, in a non-gifted program. Now in grade 3 it can be easily an hour.

DeeDee

In first, a short book (~6 pages, maybe 50 words) several days a week. Once a week, a math worksheet with ~10 problems. There may have been spelling words, but no formal practice of them, and whatever in-class work they had was sufficient for DD. Most nights, there was either no homework, or DD had finished it on the bus ride home.

3rd requests 30 minutes a night, split up into 20 of free reading and 10 of either spelling practice or math. We generally practice spelling words on Monday when the new list comes home, and either Thursday evening or Friday morning, and that's sufficient. They're working on 10x10 addition and subtraction facts at the moment, and DD isn't fast enough to "pass" the subtraction, so she's doing a page of that as practice each evening. Tonight she had a cursive worksheet that wasn't finished in class, sent home to be finished as homework. That's unusual, though.

We've dropped down to 2 evenings a week of extracurriculars - DD goes to bed at 7:30 almost every night, in order to get enough sleep, and after-school activities just make it too hard to get everything in. In first, she could only handle one activity a week, for the same reason.

In P2, our equivalent of first grade: some reading every night (usually a minimum of just a few pages specified), 10 or so (appropriate) spelling words to learn once a week, plus an obligation on us to have him to "some appropriate maths" each day (usually either on the computer or orally on the bus). Nothing written. Piano practice daily. He used to stay at school for a club until 4pm twice a week, and otherwise finish at 3pm; he was (and is) in principle in bed by 7.30pm to get up at 6.30am.

DD goes to bed at 8 pm and wakes up at 6. She needs 1.5 hours for breakfast. We get scales done on the piano in the morning. So that leaves 30 minutes of practice on pieces, which is not quite enough. Since she does have afterschool and now gymnastics is 1.5 hours on Tuesday, coming home and having dinner, piano, reading, bath etc. And it is 8 pm.

We are trying to develop a better schedule and do Chinese on Sundays and a refresh on Fridays, when there isn't any homework. We are giving her a point system where points add up to minutes she can watch Wizards of Waverly Place and Hannah Montana, but there isn't time to watch these shows.

My 1st grade DD got homework on Mon and turned in on Fri. Every week she has three pages of spelling words. One reading page with some simple questions. Four pages (2 sides) math sheets. A practice sheet for practicing spelling test at home. One poem to memorize and recite. Every day it took her about 20 mins to do homework writing plus 20+ mins book reading for reading log. She also needs to spend one hour per week on Chinese homework.

When DS was in 1st grade, it took him much much more time on homework. He got same teacher and same work as DD. He still has time management problem, so it seems DS is always doing homework and DD has nothing to do.

In 1st grade, DD had 20 minutes of reading per night, a worksheet of some sort that could take 5 to 25 minutes depending upon what it was, and a weekly spelling packet that included doing various activities with the words and writing a story or sentences with the words. On average, she did 45 min to 1 hr per night.

What kind of homework are you guys seeing for grade 1? Well, as a grade one, it should be 30 minutes homework about addition and subtraction. So that children would be happy on doing it.

Hmmmmm. This is making me wonder if we should be making our 2nd grader do more homework! At curriculum night, the teacher said there was an option to send homework every night, but he figured "2nd grade/2 nights of homework" sounded good. It's working out great for us, since DS6 didn't have regular homework last year in kindy. He gets a spelling list of 12 words on Monday for a test on Friday, plus math homework on Tuesdays and Thursdays. His math homework has taken about 5 minutes so far, but he's been started going to the gifted teacher for math, so hopefully he'll get something a little more challenging.

st pauli, FWIW, I thought that my first grader had too much homework doing 45 min to an hour each night. A lot of it just seemed like busy work. I didn't see it as value added.