Anyone else irked by the boatload of end of school homework?

[tigereye]

My son is finishing 3rd grade and for some reason, he is more forgetful as the end of school approaches... also all the teachers seem to have an attack of " oh my gosh, school's almost out.. we need the kids to do more projects." A few weeks ago, there was no homework at all for about two weeks!

He just spent about 1 1/2 hours total redoing some math, then getting together a science project to present tomorrow and then he has to rewrite the rough draft of a persuasive letter!


Yikes. My brain is full.

No negative aspersions cast on teachers are intended. ;)

[cally]

1. I've always been very annoyed at the amount of

homework given to young kids. My kids are older but I do remember the end of the year projects before the May open houses. :argh: What I finally did when my daughter was in 5th grade is that I documented the amount of time spent on homework. I showed that the assignments took her an average of 3.5 to 4.5 hours per day. (My daughter read extremely fast and did very little studying on Math. Most of this was busywork IMHO) Plus she wasn't practicing her instrument which was also assigned. This was a public school. The teacher wasn't concerned but the Principal freaked. New guidelines were adopted. By the time my younger daughter hit 5th grade, the teachers sent home monthly surveys to see how much time students spent. So my advice is to keep a record of how much time is spent.

I got tremedous pressure when I complained. I found out later that many parents did the homework for the kids or encouraged the kids to just skip it.

[tigereye]

2. well

when I checked the recommended homework times in general, they were 10 minutes per grade, not hours at a time! My son goes to a small private school, so I complained and gave them some research info... that always works and things improved quite a bit. It bothers me, though, when the kids have no time to be kids, or play, due to someone's odd conception of how much homework there should be or poor coordination by teachers.