Does your aftercare do homework with your children?

[fabuloushair]

DS is in P1 and he gets so much homework (well, it seems a lot to me).

1 reading book, but four different activities for Monday-Thursday.
5 new tricky words to learn in his envelope.
1 handwriting worksheet which has sound practice, 3 sentences and a picture to colour.
1 maths worksheet.
1 additional topic task, like drawing or making a map of Katie Morag's island.

He goes to breakfast club at 8, and is in after care until 4.30/5, by which point he is HANGRY and needs dinner asap. That normally takes us to just before 6. He has to be in bed by 7 to wind down.

The homework is all due in on Friday. We initially asked the teacher if it was okay that we used the weekend to do it and handed it in on Monday, but I am beginning to resent spending our weekends on all of this work!

As a childminder, I am happy for children to do their homework here but I don't have time to assist. There are 5 other children to care for too and dinner to prepare for the children.

Our childminder will listen to DSs reading if there’s time but usually I get them back at 6, one reads then the other then 30 minutes screen time, bath, milk and stories and bed. DSs are 9 and 5. Longer pieces of work are done at the weekend (DS1 is getting much more independent and sometimes does his in spare moments through the week).

Ime after-school clubs will make space for kids to do homework, but they may not have enough staff for someone to support him one-to-one as he'd probably need at that age, and they won't push him to do it if he doesn't want to.

I thought they would probably say they don't have the 1-1 support. That's fair enough.

No, unfortunately. If DS(7) wanted to do his homework there (hollow laugh) there is a quiet table available, but the teatime TAs don't assist.

I also hate homework on the weekend but, having suffered through it, I totally see that the teatime staff couldn't be expected to deal with it.

That is far far more than ours ever had at that age. Any chance of talking with the school about it?
They pretty much had reading every day, and at some point spellings turned up but not at that age. And occasional “other”. It was an “outstanding” primary.

Is P1 the equivalent of reception? If so that is a lot of homework for that age. I’d really struggle with all of that with my 5yo during the week.

Wow. If he were my child I’d be telling school we’ll do spellings and reading. That’s what I did tell them when mine were that little. We’d occasionally give other fun looking stuff a go, but not often. When I have down time from work I want to spend it having fun with my children not doing work with them.

I’d take issue with that amount of homework

I’d consider saying you’ll do reading and spellings but that’s it.

I've stopped doing homework with my kids for the same reason. They don't do it at after-school, and they are too tired when they get home.
It's never been mentioned that they don't hand in homework, not even at parents evening.
My husband is a teacher, but doesn't believe in homework. Which basically means that it's left up to me to try and do it with them. So I don't

I really hoped that they would say it's not essential but when I asked about handing it in on Monday, not Friday, they were quite sniffy.

They also regularly hand out prizes and awards for completing it, so I feel a bit pressured into doing it.

It feels like so much, especially when they keep telling us that they're play based and posting pictures of them all building dens etc. I want to build a den with him, I send him to school to learn!

Do the reading and look at the tricky words at bedtime.

I wouldn't do any of the rest.