We went through this struggle, too. TBH, homework before middle school seems pointless to me. I mean, what are they doing in school all day in second grade that they have to keep working on it when the day is over? Also, I wonder if the current homework craze is simply inertial:
they're doing it, so we have to do it.Children should be playing and painting, not doing math worksheets.
Okay, rant off. As others suggested, we omitted the nightly reading thing. My feeling was that it was going to turn something enjoyable into a chore. I had my kids read aloud at times (still do), but usually in the context of reading a story together: you take a turn, I'll take a turn.
People justify the reading out loud thing (I believe) on the premise that kids miss words, and when you get them to read out loud, you can correct them. FWIW, I remember being chronically frustrated in first grade over reading out loud in school. I would flub things. In my case, though, it wasn't that I was failing to see words. It was because my brain was going faster than my mouth could keep up with. Obviously, I have no idea if this problem applies to other children, but it was certainly my thing, and the cure was time and developing an ability to hold two ideas at once (
what I'm saying and
what I'm thinking)
From what I've seen, a fairly large chunk of parents have bought into the homework-is-great thing. A few years ago, an administrator told me that only a few parents at the school complained about too much homework. More parents were complaining because the school wasn't assigning
enough work --- especially over vacations! This person's cynical theory was that the ones complaining didn't want to be dealing with the kids when school was out, and sending them off to do homework helped in that regard.
My eldest is in a dual enrollment program this year at a local community college. He describes it as "less homework, but more learning," because the assignments he does get are on-target and make him think.
