Homework

Last night, Charlotte was very upset about her homework. Not upset that she had to do it, but upset that she could not. She’s my daughter, no doubt.

 

Char is only in Kindergarten, but she has ten to fifteen minutes of homework every weeknight. Usually this is a worksheet or a book to read. Actually, anything math or number related becomes a two- to five-minute assignment, depending on how much of the sheet needs to colored after the questions are answered.  The kid likes numbers.

 

Last night’s sheet was supposed to be a math sheet that involved counting out groups of ten bees and drawing hives around them. Char could describe in detail the directions, but the paper was neither in her homework folder nor in her backpack. The kid actually teared up when I told her that.

 

Now, she’s a bit of a drama queen, but she was honestly disappointed about the missing homework. I can relate. I was enough of a nerd to enjoy most of my schoolwork, all the way through college even. Sure, I got annoyed by the assignments I thought were busy work—the ones with unnecessary repetition or quantity of work that didn’t actually teach or challenge anything new. But I enjoyed work that challenged me.

 

It’s a lot of fun to watch my daughter learning new concepts and being excited about them. Her eyes light up as she works out a subtraction problem or a counting problem. And homework at her age frequently involves crayons, scissors and glue along with the reading and problem solving. The curriculum does a good job of keeping the kids learning and having fun at the same time.

 

I hope that she will continue to be as excited by school and have fun with her homework. But I don’t for one moment believe that she will always cry when she finds out that she has an unexpected break from the homework. And when she’s about twelve and whining about how much she has to do, I’m totally reminding her of this incident.