Totally OT- homework in kindergarten

Homework is a nightmare. My son in Kindergarten had to be read to or read 25 minutes per night, one math worksheet, one spelling sheet, one vocabulary sheet (you look at the word and circle what it means) and this all took at least an hour per night. Thankfully they would give the entire weeks worth at once, get it Monday turn it in Monday, on really good days he could do more leaving only the reading minutes for a few days per week and on bad days, we would leave it for the weekend.

OMG! An hour each night. Among playing with blocks, video games, and watching TV, how can a child be expected to do homework?! How much time do all the parents here spend on MFP and social media each day? I goof off regularly and still find time to check my kids' homework, and to be honest, my wife does much more than I do.

This response assumes a lot. Not all kids get hours a day to play and do nothing. My daughter is dropped off at 715 and attends school until 245 then goes to an after school program until 6 when we pick her up on our way home from work. She needs to be to bed by about 830 to get enough sleep which leaves about 2-2 1/2 hrs to have dinner, do homework, have family time/wind down, bath time, reading stories etc. She rarely watches much TV. On a good night she gets about 20 minutes of tv in with her dad while I get her younger sister to sleep. So dedicating 1 hr a night to homework would be a challenge. I agree it's important to reinforce what's taught at school with some practice but studies have shown that free play in young children has educational benefit and too much work like what the OP mentioned can inhibit learning.

Shouldn't they be digging for worms and making awesome art projects?

I think this is great, if your child is preparing to either dig holes or take his chances at being an artist later in life. (The term 'starving artist' comes up because so few are actually successful).

I went to one of the highest rated (often the highest rated) art school in the country. As an adult I have always found well paying jobs in art related fields. My last job (I am taking time off with the kids, I still have a 3 yr old at home) was working in computer arts. One of our regular projects was working on the photo archives for major film production companies. I got paid really well to work on images of Jurassic Park! No problems with my art background there!

In addition I've shown my own paintings in galleries, sold regularly, won grants and artist residencies. So yes, you can be financially and professionally successful as an artist!

I'm convinced. Definitely time to stop pushing kids in math and science.

phew! about time- it only took 4 pages! So...uh.... do you want to buy a painting? kidding kidding

Watcha got? Any artsy newds? I'm all for supporting the arts.

My daughter is also 5 and in Kindergarten this year, but they are doing everything she learned last year in K4, so what work she does bring home takes her about 5 seconds because she already knows it all.

I'm disappointed since she's not doing anything new, but she likes it because "school is easy"..hmmpph

Why didn't you have your kid in Preschool? The things you described are basic skills he should have going into school, and if he needs more work to get there, you should help him and bring him up to the level he needs to be, not let it go and bring everyone else down.

My third grader is reading a 200-300 page novel every month. Like it or not, the world is getting more competitive, not less, and the US is falling behind. We can either whine about what kids should be doing or we can push them to be competitive in tomorrow's marketplace. It's totally your call with your kids, but I'm not going to stand idly by and watch my kid lose college placement to students from overseas. Good luck!

While I agree with this general point, one of the main reasons why the USA is falling behind in literacy is because they teach with sight words/look and say type methods as the main reading method, and not synthetic phonics. Research in the UK has shown that synthetic phonics is a far superior method, requires way less memorisation and that about 40% of kids don't have the visual memory to memorise so many sight words, and so learn much better with synthetic phonics (and the other 60% can learn with either method but make significantly more progress with synthetic phonics)

additionally, having seen how maths is taught in USA schools and USA maths schemes of work for primary aged kids, again there's a massive emphasis on memorising number facts rather than understanding the concepts that underpin them.

Some good schemes of work from the UK I'd recommend would be any of the better synthetic phonics programmes (BRI-ARI is the one I've used with struggling readers when working as a tutor, and the one I use to teach my own kids to read) and the "maths makes sense" scheme from Oxford University. Also look at the evidence backing up these methods, including two very major studies backing up synthetic phonics.

Giving 5 yr olds an hours homework every night won't fix what's broken in the USA system. It'll just make the problem worse as kids who are struggling at age 5 will become severely disaffected with education and less likely to achieve later on, which negatively impacts the whole system as they throw time and money at these kids when if they'd have got it right initially, they wouldn't have half as many disaffected underachievers later on.

Also, if a parent has to sit and help the child do their homework, then the parent is teaching the child. That shouldn't be happening. Homework should be for extra practice or assessment of what they learned in class. That means they should be able to do it independently (as in maybe a parent needs to make the child sit down and do it, but the parent shouldn't have to show or teach the child how to do it). Giving hours of homework a night where the parent has to bascially teach the child how to do the homework, the question to be asked should be why hasn't the child been taught this in class? I'm not blaming classroom teachers for this, they deliver the system as they've been trained to do it. It's the system that's the problem, i.e. teachers are not trained in the best methods, the way children are grouped etc is not the most effective way for learning, and the curricula are not based on the most effective teaching methods. And the result is the teacher having to siphon half of what the child's supposed to learn onto the parent.

Also, when schools rely on parents teaching the child at home, this greatly disadvantages kids whose parents are uneducated or don't care enough to help. If all the teaching is taking place in school then these kids are a lot less disadvantaged.

I'm sorry, but no. There is nothing wrong with parents helping their kids learn and we are not talking about "hours" of homework for 5 year olds, only an hour or less, and my child is perfectly capable of doing her own homework. We do make sure she does it, help where necessary, and we check it. If that disadvantages some other students then tough luck. As for phonics, I couldn't disagree more. My older child was exposed to both phonics and site words because of school changes, and she had a much easier time with site words and memorization. If anything, we do far less memorization in the US than we did decades ago, and again far less than I saw in Asia. One doesn't learn kanji without memorization. I find it absurd to teach children to spell incorrectly only to have to "fix" it later. If you have a full study on this, with the methodology included, I'd be interested in reading it, but these studies on teaching methods are usually rather self serving. Our experience with phonics leads me to believe that it's absolute garbage. In the end, I would argue that the problem isn't so much one specific teaching method or another, but one of motivation and effort and the US is falling behind both because of the lack of effort of teachers but also from the lack of effort from parents. This thread is a great example. My child is sitting here next to me quietly reading her book and will continue to learn at home every bit as much as she does at school. If someone wants to raise their children differently, I'm certainly not standing in the way, but all I'm reading in this thread are a lot of excuses and justifications for less work rather than pushing for maximum effort.

I agree that there's nothing wrong with parents helping kids at home - that wasn't my point. My point was that teachers should not rely on this, they should teach what they're supposed to teach at school. If parents supplement education at home then that's up to them, but they shouldn't need to be teaching what teachers are supposed to be teaching in schools. Also, you must agree that there's no point in taking several hours to do something that could be achieved in half an hour if it was done properly... that's my point. Bad teaching methods waste everyone's time and sending kids home with tons of homework as a sticky plaster fix is inefficient and doesn't actually fix the problem in a lot of cases. I'm all in favour of doing more work... but efficiency of work is important too. Putting in lots of hours for the sake of it when you could achieve a lot more if you worked more efficiently is pointless.

re phonics studies:
The Rose Report and another major study in Scotland - I can't remember the name of it, it was a major study comparing different schools in Scotland. The two are usually cited together, so if you find the Rose Report you may find references to the other one alongside it. The British national curriculum switched over to synthetic phonics a few years after the results of these studies were published (I knew about the studies before the government made the decision to do that).

Phonics isn't about teaching kids "wrong" and then fixing it. At no point are kids being taught to read or write anything incorrectly (if it's done properly). Your own experience was with one particular school and your own children, so maybe that was a particular problem with the way phonics was being taught in that case. Phonics is a lot more difficult to teach correctly (although with a properly written scheme of work it shouldn't take any more effort for the class teacher to actually deliver in the classroom, but whoever writes the schemes of work needs a lot more expertise) - a bad phonics scheme will confuse both teachers and kids, as will teachers not being trained well in delivering it.

Asian writing systems are not relevant here because they're not phonetic systems.

Phonics requires memorising how to write individual sounds in words, rather than memorising every word as a separate entity and how to put them together to make words. Of course phonics requires less memorisation because there's much less to remember. Even with irregular words, you only have to memorise the one sound that's irregular, not the whole entire word. Phonics works both for spelling and reading (if it's taught correctly you learn both together), while sight words only teaches reading, the whole lot then has to be memorised again as spellings (which doubles the amount of memorising). For people with strong visual memories, this comes very easily so they don't commonly realise just how difficult it is for people who don't have a strong visual memory. The more intelligent of these people also manage to infer the phonics system, i.e. that sounds are represented by letters and groups of letters, and that spelling follows a set of mostly logical rules (albeit with some oddities in English).... However the logic behind the writing system is not obvious to everyone and not everyone has the visual memory to remember many words by sight, or the ability to infer the logic behind the writing system without being taught it explicitly. The difference between sight words and synthetic phonics is that in the latter, the logic behind the writing system - i.e. that sounds are represented by letters/groups of letters that can be sounded out and blended into words - is taught explicitly, rather than giving kids a lot of lists of words to remember by what they look like alone and expect them to figure it out by themselves as they go along or memorise everything without ever understanding the connection between letters and sounds... which 40% of kids can't do, hence 40% of kids in British schools taught with sight words getting to secondary school without enough reading ability to understand secondary school textbooks, compared to 0% of kids in schools that taught synthetic phonics (that's the figures from the Rose Report and the other study I can't remember the name of).

Anyway, I get you that a lot of these kinds of studies are not very good and are just banging their own drum - but the two studies I mentioned were long term studies following the progress of thousands of children, comparing schools that taught synthetic phonics with schools that taught sight words methods, and the results are pretty striking.

Also, this is what a good phonics scheme looks like: http://www.piperbooks.co.uk/ - I can't see anywhere where kids are being taught anything wrong and then having it "fixed". It's just teaching reading and spelling in a very systematic way, where unfamiliar words are read by sounding out and blending them and new sounds and new irregular words are introduced bit by bit as they go along. It's the scheme I've been using to teach my kids and all the struggling readers I tutored while living in Bahrain (one of my three jobs there), it's great and I'd recommend it to anyone who's teaching struggling readers of any age (although there's a separate scheme aimed at older children and adults who are struggling to learn to read which has more age-appropriate books, but the method is identical)

America is in a sad state when Kindergarten gives homework and Colleges teach Remedial English

Honestly, I love it. I feel it helps me connect to my daughter and what she is doing in school. (Mine is in Pre-K.) Plus honestly I think she sees us involved, which I like. I do worry about not allowing her to be a kid, but I see the other side.

Now maybe I have a different perspective too, because my wife is an elementary school teacher, teaching 1st & 2nd grade. (And she has taught in a couple of systems/districts now.) And like it or not the School Boards, with the help of Board of Education, (and the federal government since they fund most schools, and set standardized tests,) set VERY strict standards of what they are to cover. (Normally packing 18 months of lessons into the 9 months of classes the kids have.) So if a kid comes in behind, because he was digging too many holes, he may find himself WAY behind, and you struggling to get him caught up.

I am not saying that they should not have play time when they get home, but I do not see a problem with homework. Work with your teacher, and see if you can help your son. See if you can make parts of it into a game, or at least quality time together.

America is in a sad state when Kindergarten gives homework and Colleges teach Remedial English

It is a sad state, mostly run by want to be politicians who expect all kids to be the cream of the crop and to have covered everything by the end of first grade. Not teachers, or individuals who know what goes into the classroom. Meanwhile most teachers are given 25 to 35 students at a time with all sorts of backgrounds, and beliefs. Some can count and write, others are struggling to identify numbers and letters. Some have two active parents, some have one who works three jobs, and barely has time to say hi to the kid let alone help with homework. Yet at the end of the day the tests all come back, how many kids passed? Enough, yea, raise. Not enough, well obviously it is the teacher's fault, they did not do there job.

The system, is broken. Of course where does the majority of funds and standards come from???? And if everything is funded by political powers, do we wonder why, every few years, the tests, and the standards continue to change, as the power at the top changes? You may have a local board of Ed, but where do they get their funds for schools, and what about all the extra "race to the top," "no child left behind," funds.

OK, I allowed myself to get off topic here, let me get off my soapbox for a moment, this is politics, not MFP.

My third grader is reading a 200-300 page novel every month. Like it or not, the world is getting more competitive, not less, and the US is falling behind. We can either whine about what kids should be doing or we can push them to be competitive in tomorrow's marketplace. It's totally your call with your kids, but I'm not going to stand idly by and watch my kid lose college placement to students from overseas. Good luck!

Yes, but we also have unprecedented levels of obesity in children. Meanwhile they are cutting recess time and PE. We also have young adults being medicated for depression, anxiety disorders at increasing levels. Some Scandinavian countries do not start schooling until later, and homework much later. I know these are not the countries that our jobs are going to, but it something to consider. I'm not sure how we fit it "all" in to childhood, but when 5 year olds are at a desk all day, and have very limited time to be physical outside when returning home...I think the balance is tipped too heavily towards academics at such an early age.

I have a few things to add. One: the countries that have the highest focus on academic success have the highest suicide rates among teens. Two: It's called burnout. I get it, my kids get it. Make it stop. Three: In my kids school they're pulled out of classes constantly to test their proficiency. This takes away from class time so constantly I feel it's hindering the teachers ability to cram in all the necessities. Just an IMHP right there.

My third grader is reading a 200-300 page novel every month. Like it or not, the world is getting more competitive, not less, and the US is falling behind. We can either whine about what kids should be doing or we can push them to be competitive in tomorrow's marketplace. It's totally your call with your kids, but I'm not going to stand idly by and watch my kid lose college placement to students from overseas. Good luck!

Yes, but we also have unprecedented levels of obesity in children. Meanwhile they are cutting recess time and PE. We also have young adults being medicated for depression, anxiety disorders at increasing levels. Some Scandinavian countries do not start schooling until later, and homework much later. I know these are not the countries that our jobs are going to, but it something to consider. I'm not sure how we fit it "all" in to childhood, but when 5 year olds are at a desk all day, and have very limited time to be physical outside when returning home...I think the balance is tipped too heavily towards academics at such an early age.

I have a few things to add. One: the countries that have the highest focus on academic success have the highest suicide rates among teens. Two: It's called burnout. I get it, my kids get it. Make it stop. Three: In my kids school they're pulled out of classes constantly to test their proficiency. This takes away from class time so constantly I feel it's hindering the teachers ability to cram in all the necessities. Just an IMHP right there.

TIL that homework in kindergarten causes suicide in Finland and China (hint: it doesn't). In fact that whole pressure and suicide thing is way off... did you know that New Zealand has a teen suicide rate equivalent to Japan? And that the teen suicide rates of the Asian countries where it is high, it is also lower as a teen to adult ratio than in America? Japan and South Korea have adult (cultural) suicide rates that are quite high - it's not that little Johnny/Kitoshi got extra homework.

How many hours a week are your proficiency tests taking away from students?

That information so often thrown out by "documentaries" on Asian education is significantly biased.

I like this thread.

Has anyone read those articles that say that homework need not be thing before the 3rd grade? That it doesn't really help learnin before then? Don't remember when or where I read them but it would solve the "burnout" mentioned above and other complaints I've seen here.

Just wondering?

Never read the article but when I was in public schools I never had homework until the 3rd grade. This was about 20 years ago though.

I like this thread.

Has anyone read those articles that say that homework need not be thing before the 3rd grade? That it doesn't really help learnin before then? Don't remember when or where I read them but it would solve the "burnout" mentioned above and other complaints I've seen here.

Just wondering?

I agree with some that our education system could be better and make our children more competitive globally but I don't think more homework will achieve that change. I think in order for that change to occur we need to look at the way we are teaching our children including the overemphasis on standardized tests. While I believe some tests are a good way to measure learning I think in general kids are given too many. Studies have shown benefits of Montessori education which has less traditional methods of teaching.

Here's a few articles worth reading:

http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/edweek/homework.htm
" To begin with, I discovered that decades of investigation have failed to turn up any evidence that homework is beneficial for students in elementary school. Even if you regard standardized test results as a useful measure, homework (some versus none, or more versus less) isn’t even correlated with higher scores at these ages. The only effect that does show up is more negative attitudes on the part of students who get more assignments."

Montessori Benefits
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2006/sep/29/schools.uk
"Five-year-old Montessori pupils were better prepared for reading and maths, and 12-year-olds wrote "significantly more creative" essays using more sophisticated sentence structures."

http://www.gainesville.com/article/20140915/ARTICLES/140919722/-1/photonews?Title=Susan-Bowles-letter-to-parents-over-FAIR-testing
One Kindergarten teacher made headlines recently for refusing to give one of the standardized tests. She outlines all the testing required in her state (Florida).

My third grader is reading a 200-300 page novel every month. Like it or not, the world is getting more competitive, not less, and the US is falling behind. We can either whine about what kids should be doing or we can push them to be competitive in tomorrow's marketplace. It's totally your call with your kids, but I'm not going to stand idly by and watch my kid lose college placement to students from overseas. Good luck!

Same.

My third grader reads one or two "chapter books (100ish pages)" a week. Our school expects nightly homework to be completed in every grade, including kindergarten. Most of the homework requires a parent's assistance and takes 15 to 30 minutes. Since the second grade, homework has also included 20 minutes of reading.

I cheerfully support my child's teachers and encourage her to take her homework seriously and do a good job. My husband is the "designated homework helper" because I am at work 3 evenings a week, and he has higher standards than I do and makes her re-do it if she is sloppy or careless.

I fully expect my child to be a doctor, veterinarian or phd-level something or other. I want my child to be adequately prepared to succeed in life, school and business, although I am far from a "tiger mom."

I understand what you're saying, OP, that homework can be a struggle and can cause melt-downs, but I also believe that it is a great way to instill discipline and academic dedication. I would actually double-down on the homework if my child was struggling with skills that her classmates had already mastered.

Homework is a nightmare. My son in Kindergarten had to be read to or read 25 minutes per night, one math worksheet, one spelling sheet, one vocabulary sheet (you look at the word and circle what it means) and this all took at least an hour per night. Thankfully they would give the entire weeks worth at once, get it Monday turn it in Monday, on really good days he could do more leaving only the reading minutes for a few days per week and on bad days, we would leave it for the weekend.

OMG! An hour each night. Among playing with blocks, video games, and watching TV, how can a child be expected to do homework?! How much time do all the parents here spend on MFP and social media each day? I goof off regularly and still find time to check my kids' homework, and to be honest, my wife does much more than I do.

Everyone's life is different. I am glad that you or your wife have time to sit down with your kids and do that much homework every evening. I wish I did.

my daughter's schedule is a little packed.
8-10 hours of sleeping (depending on how pissy she was/is)
1 hour to get ready for school
15 min to get to school
7 hours at school
3 hours at after school program
15 min to get home
1 hour bothering me for food while I try to cook dinner
1 hour to eat dinner and talk about our days
30 min griping to me while I try to clean up from dinner
1 hour to do hair... because yes, it really takes me that long to brush it out and braid it.

On a good day, if she can survive with only 8 hours sleep and be able to behave at all like that we have a little bit of time to sit down and read together. We have time to play in the bath, not just scrub up super quick before hair time. Having the school send home another hour worth of school work after she has spent 10 hours there each day is kind of excessive. I rarely feel there is a moment to just spend time with her. I am too busy making dinner, feeding the cats, doing dishes, doing laundry, sweeping, vacuuming, being at work, and the time I get with her is full of her being angry and resentful at me for making her do even more work. She is 6, not an adult. She should have a childhood. She should remember playing and having friends and fun. Book learning should be a part of her life, not her WHOLE life.

I used to dream of being able to get my kids into dance, karate, gymnastics... whatever it was they are interested in. We just don't have time. She begs me for dance classes and I want to take her with all my heart, but there is no time.

(Side note: My MFP time is during work hours, aka, while she is at school. I rarely post or surf it outside of my work days. Facebook only gets looked at on my lunch break and I can't remember the last time logged into Fetlife.)

Regarding your daughter's schedule...

My daughter also goes to an after school program (paid child care) and they have homework time for 20-30 minutes where everyone has to work on homework, reading or quiet activities like drawing. Honestly, most nights, she finishes her homework there.

It seems like you have an hour and a half when you are preparing and cleaning up dinner that your child could sit in the kitchen and do homework instead of "bothering me for food while I try to cook dinner," and "griping to me while I try to clean up from dinner."

Life is busy. My kid doesn't have time for a bunch of extracurricular activities either. We go to family yoga together on the weekends, which serves numerous purposes: physical activity, mom/daughter time, fun and learning.

Maybe my school is the exception to others, but our district offers a lot of extracurricular activities (for a fee, as it would be with a private company) that are right after school. My daughter has taken karate after school (a private company sends a sensei to teach), and is currently taking a science extracurricular on Friday afternoons. She goes to after school care after her activities.

We just work homework into the nightly routine -- usually right after dinner, which allows her some time to play outside and decompress after her school day.