Re: Homework for a 5 year old - how much involvement needed.

bizby40 wrote:

My son has never had to answer a why or how to a simple
question such as what is 5+7.  In fact, the worksheets he
gets home with the basic math fact problems look very
much like the worksheets we did 30 some years ago.
They do sometimes add a fun component.  Like one time
there was  a dot to dot, but instead of going from 1-20
or whatever, it started at 47 or something, and then they
had to go through their addition problem answers one
by one.  If they got a problem wrong, they wouldn't be
able to find the next dot.  Or they'd end up going to
the wrong dot and the picture wouldn't come out.  Okay,
so doing the dot-to-dot might not have helped with
addition, but it was a self-check help.  They had another
one with a hidden message.  They had to black out all
the squares with math problems on them, and the squares
that were left revealed the answer to a riddle.

Do you all think these kinds of things are a waste of time
too? 

	I think if the "gimmick" doesn't take a lot of
extra time, that's fine with me.  If it takes twice
as long to do it because of the gimmick, then I don't
think that's very reasonable.  I think most kids would
decide that they'd net more fun if the homework took
half as long and they got to play the rest of the time ;-)

And  all these "I don't know what the teacher is looking
for. "  And "I don't know what the right answer is supposed
to be."  Are ridiculous.  If you don't know, ask the teacher!


	At some point it becomes a big ridiculous
to keep nagging the teacher.  At some point, you
just accept that the homework is what it is and
your kid does the best he or she can and you move
on.

If you were to say, "Hunter has always had an instinctive
grasp of math.  He learned his addition and subtraction facts
long ago, and so he doesn't have to think or figure out these
problems, he just knows them automatically."  Is she really
going to say, "Well, that's too bad because he has to make
up something anyway.  And I'm not going to tell you what,
you have to guess?"


	The answer I usually get is that they should
just write whatever they think is the appropriate
answer to the question.  Not all that helpful, in
my opinion.

Best wishes,
Ericka
.

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