how much homework?

my dd came home friday with 4pgs of math homework. I was wondering if this is normal for 1st grade?

[~Tara~]

Well, we homeschool...but I am just drop-jawed at the thought of 4 pages of math homework!!
I couldn't imagine.
My kids (9 and 7 (4th and 2nd/3rd grade)) do one page with 15-20 problems each day as well as 5-10 minutes of drill (either using their fact cards or online at www.mathusee.com ) Other curricula we have used had easily twice as many problems with a sheet of 100 for a 'timed' drill. eek! Mine couldn't handle that. It was just killing them. They knew/know the facts but that was just ridiculous. It was sucking the life out of them, all they had to do. Hence, our curricula switch. Muuuuuch better now.
Man oh man, I could not imagine 4 pages of math homework. Gee, whatever happened to 'spend 10 minutes doing your flash cards with mom this evening' ?? Just to keep 'em fresh and work on speeding up their recall.

[kymommy]

I think four pages is way too much!!! Four problems would be more acceptable. Is he having enough time in class to work? I would definately talk with the teacher and ask her to explain the reasoning behind 4 pages.
kymommy

[stephwhiz]

I think 4 pages is too much. My son had 2 pages of math every night for homework when he was in the 1st grade. Stephanie

[Marlo Boux]

My son is in grade 2 and we do 10-20 minutes of homework each night - whether there was any assigned or not...

Four pages of math sounds excessive for just one subject and for one little person to complete - their attention spans don't seem long enough for that. MY attention span won't hold that long some days (LOL!)

thank you every one for your replys. thankfully the homework has slowed down to 2days a week. I still do work with her everyday for about an 1/2 hour. things seem to be going smoother now at school for her!

[mom2pbj]

My daughter is in 2nd grade and she gets 2 pages of math homework a night. It is usually review of what they did in class that day. She also has spelling words to practice for her test on friday and of course no homework on friday. I couldn't imagine 4 pages!

[kassismom]

That's quite a bit!
My daughter usually has 1-2 pages a night (except Wed they don't have homework) of letter tracing, graphing, cut color and glue, etc..

There have been a couple times when she came home with music homework where she had to identify 30+ notes and I thought that was waaaaaaaay too much for a 5 year old.

I think sometimes they push kids too far. Let them be children, you know? Just my two cents.

[JoyLynn]

I agree, Amy. This is my theory... An adult works, on average, eight hours per day outside the home, then comes home and, hopefully, commits the rest of the day to family/household responsibilities and relaxing. So, why should children do more than that?

I'm a homeschooling mom and have been for 10 years. My kids don't need to review what they've learned in the evening. They don't lose what they've learned while playing in the afternoon and evening. I think that if the schools are feeling like they aren't giving children enough time during school hours to complete their work, or enough time on a subject for it to sink in during school hours, they should give the kids more quiet study time while they're there.

Golly, even in college I only took an average of three to maybe four classes at a time. That's only three or four hours of school per day, plus about two to three hours of homework. That works out to less than an eight hour work day, and I considered that to be a challenging time of my life.

Okay, maybe I'm being unrealistic. It's possible I'm missing something here. Anyway, those are my two cents.



Joy

[meg]

Our school sent home a homework survey for parents to complete just this week.

Our 2nd grade son has reading to do each day, a spelling list, and a 2 page worksheet to be completed over the course of a week.

Our kindergarten son has reading to do each day, sight words, and with those words, making sentences, copying them out and illustrating them, counting homework, and writing/tracing.

Dh and I feel that in infants school (which is kindergarten, year 1 and year 2 down here), there shouldn't be any homework at all. Six hours a day of structure should be plenty for 5-7 year olds. If they can't learn all they need to in a 6 hour day (or 5 hour, taking out an hour for lunch), then there is something wrong with the system, in our opinion. Children should be allowed to come home, unwind, play, spend time with their families.

Whew! Sorry, I'll get off my soapbox now I just feel that our kids are being pushed way to hard, way too soon! Obviously, unstructured learning (being read to by parents, colouring in, playing games, etc) should always be encouraged!