Could someone please give me some advice on DS1 and his homework?

[ingles2]

Bit of background...
Ds1 is a very bright boy, Oct born, yr 4. He's just moved from a small primary where he was easily the brightest in his mixed yr2/3 class. He had never had a piece of homework.
New school is a much bigger town junior and he's gone into a yr4/5 class doing yr5 work. He is totally capable of the work, but obviously it's nowhere as easy as before.
Homework is meant to take 30 minutes a night. Ds1 is very competitve and a perfectionist.
This weekend he had
research on Hitler and
world news, find a subject, write about it, illustrate it and give your thought.
It took him about 3 hours yesterday! (he is quite slow but still)
Firstly he's not sure where to start, then he's looking for too much information, then he wants to include everything he can find on the internet, then draw loads of pics, it has to be absoutely perfect and thorough. Don't get me wrong he's enjoying doing it, but I'm just worried he's taking too much time over it, and worrying about it too much. I think is teacher is pleased as he seems to be getting plenty of house points, but I just don't want it to become this huge deal every weekend.
Obviously this is all very new to us and I'm not sure exactly what he should be doing, I don't think ds1 is either which is why he wants to cover everything.
What should I do? Set him an hour and then say that's it?
leave it for a couple of weeks and see if things settle down? Speak to teacher? Advice please....

[ingles2]

anyone?

[Blandmum]

Is he enjoying himself?
Is this stopping you doing things as a family?

(2 serious questions, I'm not having a dig)

[MrsWeasley]

We sometimes get a project (like your Hitler one) but its usually given over a longer period. Our world new homework is usually just asking the children to watch a news programme.

My DS used this for ideas for a similar type of new related homework. They send you an email every week (iirc) with a newspaper style report and then there is a set of questions to see if you can pick out the revelant information. You can subscribe to a full edition but we didnt I think we had the classroom edition and it didnt cost us.

Personally if it wasnt causing any problems I would see how is goes over the next few weeks and if it doesn't ease off speak to the teacher and ask for guidance on the amount of time and work they expect.

HTH

[welshdeb]

I beleive the Estyn (Welsh ofsted) advice is that primary homework is about an hour a week. If this is taking more than that long to do then its probably excssive. My dc have had similar projects but these have taken a few weeks.
I would go to speak to teacher and ask what she expects.

[ingles2]

Thanks for your responses...
MB he is enjoying it but is kind of panicky... I think he's trying to be the best like he used to be but I have explained to him that this is a much bigger school and he's in a class with children who are older than him and this is their 3rd year there, not their 3rd week! and the usual as long as he's tried his best that's good enough for me.(my mantra!). He does tend to put pressure on himself that isn't necessarily there iykwim.
He does love the work though, he wasn't pushed at all at the old school, and is very excited at all the info he can find out for his homework.
Timewise I don't relish the thought of spending 1 entire afternoon of the weekend given up to homework either. His teacher seems lovely, I'm sure she doesn't mean him to spend this much time on it.
Mrs W, the hitler homework went from wednesday to wednesday but they still have other work during the week, spellings, maths sheets, sentences so it's got to be the weekend really.
We just seem to have gone from one extreme to the other. Somewhere in the middle would have been good

[ingles2]

Thanks for the link Mrs W btw, that looks just up his street

[Blandmum]

If he is happy, and you don't have enything else that you want him to do, I'd be tempted to leave him be.

Remind him that he only needs to spend 30mins, and don't let him drop/block other activities.

But if he is anjoying himself and finds it fun and exciting, I'd let him go with the flow!

If it starts to tip over into anxiety, remind him to the 30 minute thing, and if need be, set a timer

[ingles2]

Great.. Thanks MB I'll try that.