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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]PreK and kindergarten homework should be limited to things like:

Go outside and count how many bees and butterflies you see.  Draw a picture of them pollinating a flower.

Count the numbers of windows and doors in your house. Which number is greater?

Have a grown up  help you cook a recipe. How many fractions did you use when cooking? What other types of numbers did you need to know to make your recipe?

Read for 20 minutes and draw a picture about your favorite part of the story. Explain why you liked it, either by writing it and reading what you wrote to a grown up or telling them why you liked the story.
Etc.

Drill and kill worksheets should not be part of homework at that age.[/quote]

First of all, I don't think pre-K and K should have homework.

Secondly, I think these assignments are awful:  What if a kid doesn't see an bees or butterflies? What if the kid is scared of bees and butterflies?

Windows and doors?  My kid would have stressed over how to count multi-pane windows.  Would all pre-K be able to count that high.

Cooking?  Families may not cook every night for a variety of reasons.  There are many times supper needs to be as quick as possible and this may mean nuking something or even (gasp!) eating fast food.

Reading and drawing:  Is a pre-K reading or is the parent?  Why 20 minutes?  Will a pre-K have a good concept of 20 minutes.  What if the story the kid wants is only 10 minutes long?  Do they have to pick a longer story and start over?  Do they read another short story and combine the times?  If so, do they need to draw pictures about both stories?  My kid would have spent 1-2 hours trying to get the picture right.

I still remember the assignment where my K kid told me she had to count the number of cylinders (cans, jars, etc.) and rectangular prisms in the pantry.  We don't have a large pantry, but it still would have taken hours to go through the whole thing.  Not to mention that most of the shelves were over her head.  I modified it to doing one shelf.  I'm sure somebody thought this was a great, real-life example, but I would have much rather had her spend five minutes circling cylinders and rectangular prisms on a worksheet.

In all of these cases a 5-10 minute worksheet would have been less demanding and been more productive.

I was an involved parent, but it worked best to do it according to my schedule.  On a beautiful day, I might want to go to the park and look at butterflies  instead of going to the store to get ingredients for a "cooking" recipe and then cooking.

Maybe, on a not so beautiful day, I'd rather bake cookies with my child than go on a butterfly hunt.

Maybe, rather than spending a lot of time on your activities I want to go to the library, or teach my kid to ride a bike, or play games (most games are great for math).

If I have to take an older sibling to soccer practice, but play on the playground with my pre-K or K kid, it doesn't mean that I'm a lazy or uninvolved parent.

There were times when I would curl up with my kids and spend hours reading chapter books to them.  Was this lazy parenting?  Would counting windows and doors be more educational?  They didn't draw pictures, but we talked about the books.

[b]These types of asignments are the worst kind of busy work.  [/b]They take a lot of time and effort and add negligible educational value.  Moreover, when you try to forcibly involve parents, you either catch them at a bad time, putting them in a bind and causing stress and resentment, or you take away from the time they had already planned on spending with the child doing something tailored to their childs interests and needs, and therefore far more valuable than the exercise someone's whimsy dreamed up.[/quote]

OMG, I agree with this so much! These types of assignments are indeed the worst. When we were given these work in preschool, I let my son make up the numbers. We don't bake, period. Never understood why baking is considered the pinnacle of math education. For what it is worth, my son excels in math. Always has since he was two. 
[/quote]

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