Homework

Amy loves homework. LOVES it. Some days, she forgets her homework journal at home, so when she's at Quantum Leaps, she'll do her homework on a loose piece of paper. And while another kid would just shove the paper into their homework journal at the appropriate spot, Amy will re-do her homework, so that it's properly done in the right place. She got two "homework passes" that would allow her to skip doing her homework for a day. They hung in the kitchen for months before she decided to take them back to school to see if Mrs. Mitkowski would let her give them to another child. She had zero interest in skipping a day of homework. Quite different from our experience with Reed's homework in kindergarten, where it was a literal fight more days than not!

Reed doesn't mind his homework too much, though he does think it's boring and useless. The only thing he really takes issue with (and I don't blame him) is the word searches on Thursday. These are computer-generated word searches based on the week's spelling words. Now these are not like a word search you'd find in a book, oh no...these computer-generated word searches are hideously awful. The words are upside down and backwards and sideways and just terribly difficult to find. We've long since given up on getting him to find all the words on his own (usually there are 15-20 words), instead we say "outside" is in the upper left corner and let him find it that way. So much easier. He doesn't see the value of these word searches, and frankly neither do we. He doesn't get a single thing out of it other than frustration, it's not like it helps him know the words any better. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that word searches will end when second grade does in a few weeks.

We finally figured out how to get Reed to do his homework at his after-school program (CASA) most days...if he does his homework there all week, he can bring his Nintendo DS to CASA on Friday. So much easier on all of us! Only problem is that we're probably not paying as much attention to his homework as we should, but that seems to be okay.

I certainly don't remember ever having homework in elementary school, so all this is pretty foreign to me. Hopefully they're getting something out of it!