Homework Again

Since Bryant started kindergarten, we have always had a rule that homework is done as soon as you get home. I struggled with this for a while because the kids had been sitting all day, and surely they need a break to run around for a while. However, in our house, if we wait, it is worse. With sports, choir, etc. and friends coming to play, there is always something to prevent timely completion of homework. And if we wait until after dinner, the drama would kill us all. My kids need sleep, and sleepy children and homework do not mix in our home! So, no one comes to our house until 3:30, and we do HW right after school. It works for us in elementary school.

Anyway, I remember when Bryant started back to 1st grade, his really important HW was to draw a picture of his family. He fell apart about this! Bryant learned in K that he didn't know how to draw, so he hated all things related to drawing. (That is not what they were trying to teach him in K, but my little perfectionist took it that way. He could not draw things accurately, and if you used unrealistic colors for people or left off things like ears, it ws pointed out. Realistic drawing is part of the curriculum here in NC.) Anyway, it took us about an hour to get this simple drawing done! He wailed about how Daddy was too big to fit on his paper. He couldn't draw a circle for the head. We used a quarter to get a perfectly round head, and we made Daddy a wee bit smaller than his 6'2" height. We got through it. Fortunately, he didn't have much more drawing to do for HW after that. I remember that incident as related to his loathing of drawing.

Well, it turns out that just maybe, 1st graders are tired the first week of school. Because, Ann Bennett fell apart this week over writing letters. She writes all the time, but she was having a fit about even starting HW. Then, she was impatient and didn't listen to my directions and did it wrong. So, we had to do it again. I got a new piece of paper and did not make her erase her work! Anyway, it took us forever to get through a simple task. The next day, I made sure she had a snack first, and we've been fine since.

So, the moral for the 3rd child I don't have and won't be having is that even though kids seem so big by the start of 1st grade, they are still LITTLE kids. They get tired when they start school and need some TLC that first week. And, most likely, they need something to get their blood sugar back up before starting HW. I don't know if HW right after school will be our rule in 2 years when Bryant goes to middle school --YIKES!, but for now it works. They get home so late in MS, that if he doesn't have a chance to play after school, he might not have the chance at all. I don't know, but I guess we'll figure it out then.