This year I have another kindergartner and the homework that started to trickle in at the beginning of the year has been gaining speed by the week.

Last week, when I went on my writer’s conference/cruise, the kids went with their dad to visit their grandma in the hospital for a couple days, thereby missing school. I got home to find a huge pile of make-up homework for Logan. We’re still not done with it, a week later!

I’m beyond frustrated. Logan, being a completely different kid than Cody, is a perfectionist when it comes to his work. Everything takes him 5 times as long to do as it took Cody. For instance, he had to color a few animals in a picture. Instead of just scribbling one color like many other 5-year-olds do, he had to painstakingly draw colored stripes in each animal. He wanted it to be “pretty so my teacher will really like it.”

The 1 hour+ picture

Completion time: over an hour. Yes, seriously. I was sitting there watching the whole process, so I know he wasn’t messing around.

Tonight he had to create a “Word Monster.” He chose to use a cereal box for this project, cutting the top into little strips for hair and adding multiple bee stickers, and it took him approximately two hours to complete.

Word Monster

It even has a “backbone, so he can be straight,” explained a proud Logan.

The backbone

Sigh.

This is going to be a long, long year.

What is a parent to do? We all know that if I protest the homework, even silently like I did last year with Cody, I’m going to be viewed as a bad, uninvolved parent. At the same time, I’ve already got way too much on my plate and frankly, I don’t have time (or patience) for this sort of homework.

I said it before and I’ll keep saying it: Beyond reading, I don’t think any kid this young should have homework. He’s already gone every day from 7:30 to nearly 4:30. Having to come home and do homework on top of that, when bed time is at 8:00, doesn’t give him a lot of time for kid stuff. At the rate he works, it barely gives him time to eat and bathe, let alone play.

Yes, I understand teachers have to meet certain requirements with their students, I really do. In this situation, though, I think it’s the teacher (who I like very much, incidentally — she does a great job) more than test scores. Case in point: My first grader does not have anywhere close to the amount of homework that my kindergartner does and this was particularly noticeable when the kids missed school.

I’m curious what others have done or would do in this situation. I adore feedback and comments, so please share!

In fact, I love comments so much, I’m going to send a little something to the author of my favorite comment for the month of November, so post to your heart’s content.

Have you dealt with the homework dilemma? What are your thoughts on homework in kindergarten?

Homework in kindergarten??

Yes, it’s true. Homework. In kindergarten. At the tender age of 6.

Maybe it’s just me, but I have a big problem with my kindergartener having homework. A HUGE problem.

Hence the homework pileup. It’s a symbol of my silent rebellion.

To be fair, a lot of the homework is reading, which is good. My objection is to the other stuff, including fairly long activities involving uncommon household objects and time-consuming math projects.

I feel very strongly that young kids should not have homework. They are already in school for seven hours a day; if they can’t learn what they need to learn in that amount of time, then something is wrong. My kids, and many kids in this area, spend an additional hour and a half on the bus besides, so they are gone from 7:25 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. That’s a long day.

When they get home, I want them to be able to have a snack, relax, play and do their chores, not do more school work. There isn’t a whole lot of time in between getting home from school and getting to bed. When the weather is nice, they often play outside until supper time. By the time they eat and bathe, it’s time for bed. The older two can stay up later to get their homework done, but there isn’t much time for Cody to do his and still have time to just be a kid.

So, Cody’s homework gets done when it gets done. At one point, we had about a month’s worth piled up that we worked on one weekend. I felt a little guilty leaving it for that long, but since I can’t agree with the teacher’s views on the necessity of homework, the lack of time and resentment far outweigh the guilt.

I think a lot of the time homework is assigned to force parents to interact with their children and get involved with school. While I get that, and even think it’s a good idea, for those of us who do get involved and interact with our children already, being forced to do unnecessary homework just makes me crabby.

What’s your take on homework for young children? I’d love to hear opinions on this.