Kids, parents and homework...

[murron]

I was just reading this article and it's a bit interesting, though vague. The gist of the article is helping parents draw the line at where they 'help' their children with homework.

Honestly, that's really not something I've ever given much thought to. If my kids needed help, I helped them. Sometimes that even meant doing an assignment for them (ok, so it was nice to know I can still pull A's, lol).

On one hand I can see where parents doing the assignments for the kids is harmful, but on the other hand...no one excels in all areas and one of the most important things I've tried to teach my kids is that it isn't always a matter of knowing the information so much as knowing your resources to get the information.

One thing in the article jumped out at me though and it was the bit on busy-work versus relevant work. It was nice to see a distinction made between the two forms homework can take. Personally I find busy-work to be a fault on the part of the teacher; amounting to a lack of effort to come up with an assignment that actually relates to the material. Then again, I'm not a teacher so I could be mistaken.

I'm still waiting for one of my kids to get the infamous volcano assignment, too. I wanna make a volcano!!!

[ThenThereWasRED]

Do you know WHY many parents start homeschooling? They realize they are doing a lot of teaching helping their kids do their homework. Some experts say no more than 30 minutes of homework a day and I have friends who has spent from time they get home from school, to late going to bed trying to do homework. That's really too much, cause the teachers either don't have a lot of time to teach, cause of doing extra things. There was a survey of teachers in a teacher's magazine said that the average child gets 3-3 1/2 hours of true schooling a day out of an 7 hour day (some days not even that). Most parents don't even realize they are really the ones doing the teaching.

[DMcKay]

Actually, we decided that we were going to home school our children before we were married and had even thought about starting a family. Why, because of the rampant humanist bent to public schools today, as well as their bias against anything Christian. When our first child came along four years later we had another reason added to the list. He started reading on his own by age 3. At first we thought he was just parroting the words he had heard over and over in his favorite books. Until the night we were discussing the possibility of visiting the park the next day. My wife spelled it out so that our son wouldn't get his hopes up just in case something else came up. I was only half paying attention to what she was spelling and asked her to repeat what she had said. Daniel chimed in with, "she wants to go to the park tomorrow."

Suddenly, our world changed. We knew that public schools were definitely out, they would never be able to challenge him and keep his interest. He was home-schooled K-12 and ended up qualifying for Annapolis and M.I.T. He choose a local University and majored in Law Enforcement with a minor in computer sciences. His goal is to work for Homeland Security in computer investigations. Currently, he is serving as a deputy sheriff, to get the experience he needs to move along his chosen career path.

By home-schooling we were able to escape the homework demons as well as the "busy-work" gremlins. Our problems stemmed from having to constantly come up with new and challenging ways to keep him interested. For example, when the box of materials came with his kindergarden books, he asked to look at the math book while I read through all the material and developed a schedule to handle and spread out all the material. It took several hours to set up his first schedule. When I went looking for the math book he had already finished it, complained it was too babyish, and asked if there was another one he could do.

Our salvation came in the form of a computer and educational computer games. He especially liked the ones that evaluated how the student was doing as they were gong along and automatically increased the levels to make things more difficult.

[givengrace]

Hello,

My son does go to Public School. And I do admire people who are able to Home School. It's just not ME.

But This year My son's teacher has him doing something intresting for Spelling Homework.
I'd Like to Share. They are to pick 4 of these different assinments One is the Write your words 5 Times (he's just in 3rd grade) but others are writting them using at least 4 diffrence colors (crayons) calling it a Spelling rainbow, There's Spelling Steps which is like this
Say the word is WORD

W
WO
WOR
WORD

I thoght this was cool for the kids. There is more I don't remember them all
If you know of more I'd like to hear them if they aren't using them I'll pass them along.

[ThenThereWasRED]

One of the things I noticed with the spelling I had as a homeschooler, I had more spelling words, usually harder ones and had to write them twice a day and also played games/puzzles with them different ways to help me learn/remember how to spell them and also how to use them properly. Some teachers uses & likes rote type learning, while others don't. I think it's a good idea as long as you keep it fun.
Some of the things I done to help learn spelling words were, when I was younger my mom would let me jump rope while I spelled my spelling words and that was fun. Also my foreign language was Sign Language, sooo many times I would also practice my spelling words using finger spelling.

[AbidingInHim]

Wow, thentherewasred thanks for the idea I am a homeschooling mom trying to help my kids with spelling, they really struggle with it. They know the alpabet in sign what a great way for my kenistetic to learn. Bless You.

[3grands]

There are tons of free educational websites now (especially compared to even 10 years ago).

If anyone is interested and it's ok on this website, I can post a couple of urls - one has a flexible spelling lists - the list is typed in (which of course they would be spelling the words to type them in - we paid $20 for a program like that years ago), etc.

I admire anyone who home schools with as much free information that's available now, it's more of an option now than ever before. Your child could even take standardized tests (the old ones that have been released) and you could see how they're doing. Also, you could observe and see what is their preferred learning style and then use it. Plus more importantly to me, the things that some teachers feel free to teach that is beyond what you want for your children. For ex., some are teaching yoga to very young children. At least when you home school, you can teach what is important.

I know it's difficult when they're tired, deadline approaching, pages of work, etc. but we don't want to assume their responsibility. They could easily apply that to everything in their lives - their rooms and other responsibilities. A social studies fair I attended, the teacher said "Kim's father did a great job on ..." In regards to repetitive work, one teacher had told my son's class, the last row of math problems are the most difficult. So my son took that to mean - do that row and you don't have to do the others - which made sense to me but it wasn't his teacher's perspective. Most students learn by doing.

Several years ago, a teacher was telling me about a reprimand he received. Situation: his 2nd grade class has to cross a street to get to their playground 2x daily. One child he had individually told 8 times to stop talking and hold hands which were his requirements to cross the street. The final time, he placed his hand on the child's shoulder and told him the instructions again. The parent found out and was furious and reported the teacher. In the conference, the teacher asks the parent how many times should I have to tell your child to do x before expecting him to do those things? The response was - as many times as it takes. I would have ask the father - What if that 1 time instruction could save the child's life? But if we take this parent's perspective and apply it to every child in a classroom setting to every instruction, you could spend all day trying to get one student to do one thing what needs to be done. Further when this child enters the work force, how many times will he have to be told to do something before he decides to do it? Even supervisors have supervisors.

I don't see anything wrong with showing them reading strategies, checking every few minutes on their progress, turning off the tv, explaining things, etc. to aid them.

[under His wings]

I am all for helping them if they need the help. But, in all honesty, most of the time it is within their abilities to do it. They may need to be shown once or twice or until you see the "click" but then let them do it. You are right, they are all not great at everything. That is where, as a parent, we have some learning to do. If your child excels at math and gets all A's, but struggles a bit in English and gets B's or an occasional C, that is okay. Doing their homework for them to help them get an A will only hurt them later in life. God loves us enough to let us learn from our mistakes, we must love our children the same way.

School did not come easy for my daughter, she worked hard to maintain a B average. Yet, she is very well rounded and very mature, therefore she was accepted to her first choice school. Although she was prepared to go elsewhere, she accepts the fact that she does not excel in everything, but she enjoys the things she does excel in. (or perhaps excels in the things she enjoys?)

My point is, if we as parents think grades are a measure of our child...our children will think grades are a measure of their worth. The teachers know when the child did their own work and when the parent did it (so do the other kids and parents)!

I hate the busy work too, word searches serve no purpose but my son came home with them every week. Sometimes we do need to draw the line and insist that family activities come before busy work.

[Jenniewren]

Yes we need to help, but the help should be showing the child what to do and encouraging their efforts rather than doing it for them.

I was amused to see the "spelling" help suggestions. My family had an evening routine of washing up. Mum would wash, my brother and I would wipe and my father would put the dishes away. He and Mum would take it in turns to call out a word we had to spell. I hated spelling, and hated washing up even more. Today I am not a great speller and I don't think it did much for my housekeeping skills either. Right now my drainer is full of nice clean dishes drying by themselves and my most wanted appliance is a dishwasher!!!

So I would say that while extra practice can be good, remember the child has been learning all day and needs some relaxation time. If you overdo it it could have the opposite effect and like me they may never dry a dish again! Or even worse may think of spelling when they see a rainbow rather than remembering God's promise..

[Jenniewren]

I just wanted to add that explaining how to do something to a child is OK, but doing the work for them is cheating.