I didn't know that the transition from K to 1st would be so hard

[Anonymous]

Everyone talks about the transition from preschool to K, and I was all mentally prepared for this to be hard on us - yet it wasn't bad at all. K was so smooth. Teacher was an incredible communicator, we always knew what to expect, got weekly emails every Friday with an overview of the past week and a preview of the week to come, etc. It really was a great year.

1st grade, on the other hand, has just been very hard. My child has an incredible amount of homework - it's overwhelming. I personally am overwhelmed by it and I am not a stupid person. Neither is my kid for that matter! But we are spending hours and hours on homework. I don't understand how they can assign so much homework when the kids don't even get out of school until 4:05. I don't even think it's the content that's overwhelming (the content is very easy actually) - it's more that there are so many tasks, it's not well organized so there's like three random sheets of paper with all these tasks due on different dates and I don't know what is supposed to go where. And the tasks themselves are very time consuming as well.

I'm just feeling burned out and it's the beginning of October, not a good sign huh? Is it like this for everyone?

[Anonymous]

Weird, we live in Vienna and our 1st grader had a total of less than 1 hour of homework, and that was for the whole month of September! (And I'm pretty sure this is norm in most 1st grade classes, with barely anything assigned, if at all).

Curious, what school is this?

[Anonymous]

There should not be a lot of homework in 1st grade. Whoever is teaching your child is doing a disservice to him/her.

[Anonymous]

Just don’t do it.
Tell the teacher you me child won’t be doing home work.
End of discussion.

[Anonymous]

This is weird. My kid is in third and really hasn’t had regular homework yet in his school career. What school?

[Anonymous]

I mean why are you stressing about this?

It’s all busywork through all of elementary anyways. Sure, look through their bags, but anything you don’t want to do, just skip.

[Anonymous]

Can you give an example of the hw?

[Anonymous]

My DC was 1st Grade last year and with NO homework except reading for 20 min.

[Anonymous]

The guideline I've always heard is that kids' nightly homework should be 10 minutes/grade. This would mean a 1st grader should have 10 minutes of nightly homework. Occasionally, there might be a project requiring extra time, but even those shouldn't be too demanding for first grade.

http://www.nea.org/tools/16938.htm

I agree with the previous posters to only do what makes sense to you. (I think teachers often include artsy assignments and "fun activities" trying to make homework more interesting for the kids, when really it's just an unnecessary hassle that doesn't actually help significantly with learning subject content.)
It might end up being more than 10 minutes, but it shouldn't be hours. The teacher might mark his grade down a bit, but at this age that shouldn't be a problem. Just make sure he learns the necessary content.

[Anonymous]

My oldest has a ton of homework in 1st. Looking back, I should have told him not to do it. It made everyone frustrated and he hated it. My youngest was in 1st last year at the same school and the only homework was to read. Much more appropriate.

[Anonymous]

OP here: I’d prefer not to say the school but we live in Great Falls. Here are some of the examples of what we had to do this week:
-20 min reading per night
-Pixk out meaningful photos, magazine pictures, and postcards (bc you know we obviously have a postcard collection lying at home) that represent important places and people and things. Have a discussion about each of them so DC is prepared to discuss them in class and can speak about why they are important. Send them all into school to be cut up for a writers notebook. (This took absolutely forever btw including a trip to cvs for the photos).
-a whole bunch of math word problems that she had to draw pictures for and draw our, the drawing took forever
-supposednto be studying some word list every week, but there are multiple lists and it’s unclear what’s what. Priority words, I can’t even remember the other categories. She’s having a test this week.
-go on a walk, identify different kinds of trees (deciduous and something else), learn about the definitions and I think draw the differences

That’s an example of some of the tasks, but it’s not the half of it for one week. Also, stuff has to be cut and physically pasted into a notebook on a certain way which of course drags the whole thing out.

My biggest complaint may be the disorganization and difficulty of knowing what to do because of all the various papers and types of work. I think this stems from the fact that some of it is assigned individuall by the teacher and some of it is a blanketnfirst grade assignment.. so it doesn’t look consistent and it’s just hard to keep straight.

Does this sound like more than what others are getting?

[Anonymous]

Odd. We get random fundation sheets for practice, but really my kid's teacher stressed that she only expected 20 minutes of reading (parent to kid or kid to parent either was fine).

What I found jarring about first grade so far is the independence expectation and the behavior expectations. The kids spend a lot of time going through stations in groups while the teacher is running an assessment station. The lack of the teaching assistant is very, very different.

We were a bit spoiled last year. DD was in an inclusion K class so her class had a teacher, aide, SPED teacher, and a SPED teaching aide for a class of 22 kids. Even non-SPED kids like mine got so much individual attention. We aren't in one this year and it's a big difference!

[Anonymous]

My 1st grader in fairfax co hasn’t gotten homework yet. I would talk to the teacher if I were you. It’s too much.

[Anonymous]

.. and here I was complaining about a math worksheet most nights of the week. Ooof, OP. I definitely think it's time for an email/conference with the teacher to discuss expectations.

[Anonymous]

OP, when you say hours and hours, is that hyperbole? Because that's how much time I spent when I transitioned from a public school in North America from first grade to a public school in Hong Kong during the second grade, without knowing how to write (can speak) a word of Chinese. What's worse is that the academic environment is hyper competitive over there where students do substantive written homework and take tests and exams just like the ones that upper middle school and high school students take here. At the end of the semester, students are ranked based on their overall scores and the rank is listed publicly. Heck, I didn't even have a concept (nor did I even know the Chinese word for it) of what is a test when I took the first one.

Of course, now, I'm really comparing apples to oranges, but are we really talking about hours and hours here?

So, tell me again,