Advice on homework- year 1 - keeping my cool

[keepmycool]

DD5 homework time. Challenging !

she gets very distracted and it takes a lot of input from me to help her finish it.

it takes a good while to complete too.

I get pretty frustrated when she’s not focusing and messing around.

but then again, how long are kids supposed to be able to focus on something like this ? It takes at least an hour to complete the homework each week. I’m not sure that’s normal ? I’ll ask the teacher how long it should take, but at the beginning of term she said one of the homework's should take around 20-30 minutes. I’m not sure if all of them should take that long. They’re not that easy.

it takes at least an hour and a half. I’ve started doing a few sittings as it’s just impossible to get it all done in one go.

any advice ? Is this normal ? What do other parents do ? Thank you

What is the homework? Why are they even giving homework to 5 year olds?!

Part of is is maths and the other is English. Word scrambles, writing stories, filling in missing words in a story- that kind of thing. Focus is always on a particular phonics sound they’ve been learning. A lot of writing into small spaces.

At that age I’d give it maximum 10 mins a day, whatever she could do without any real stress would get done, then it would go away whether it was finished or not.

Is this a very academic private school? No 5YO should be doing 1.5 hours of homework, it’s completely inappropriate for their attention span and ability. Not to mention homework has been proven to have very little benefit for primary school age kids. I’d set a 10 minute timer for English and a 10 minute timer for maths, this is also in line with the time the teacher thinks should be spent on it, and when the timer goes off DD is done no matter where she is on the worksheet. Write a note to the teacher explaining this is what you’ve done.

Oh and that was weekdays only, we didn’t do homework at the weekends. I’m actually in agreement with doing some practice at home to revisit a topic and give them a chance to have a go without other kids being distracting or the teacher being on hand, but it’s also really important in my opinion that it doesn’t create a dislike of learning and that they get a couple of days a week downtime.

Too long.

speak to the teacher, and only spend about 10-20 mins on it.

Ours had reading every night, 20 mins recommended, then
a maths or English type activity a few times a week

When they got to age 8 they then had different subject specific homework ie geography history science etc. Something every night

In my experience yours doesn’t sound unusual

Ah I find it quite hard to do weekday homework. The work is set on a Friday and they collect it on a Tuesday I think. So we always do it over the weekend.

during the week I can just about get her to do a little bit of reading every day ( some days not, when she’s very tired).

I thought we had to finish the homework. I will speak to the teacher about it. Thanks for you advice.

No homework at KS1 in my child's primary school (except for reading phonics book). There is little evidence to suggest homework in primary school is beneficial. I'd thought most schools had moved away from it, the ones in our area certainly have.

Make sure she’s eaten and had a drink.

Make sure the tv and any distractions are off.

Be sitting at a table next to each other.

Do short bursts. Anything over 10/15 minutes is not going to be a productive.

That was the same in reception, but now in year 1- they get this homework on top of the reading. I’m honestly hating it. It’s quite hard too. She does get it, but I’m surprised by how challenging it is.

much preferred it last year !

It helped us to really think about when DD would be more receptive to doing it, for her that was early morning before school. By the end of the day she was too tired, too distracted and it just ended up being a battle. In the morning, after she had breakfast she was awake, fed, in a good mood and could rattle out 10 mins of worksheets or reading happily. Then she’d get dressed and be ready for a day at school.

Our school has no homework other than nightly reading for both ks1 and ks2. It's a good school with a good ofsted. I can't believe some schools are giving so much homework, they work hard enough as it is. 10 minutes should be plenty if it's non-negotiable.

She's five! Why does she even have homework?

At that age homework is optional. I’d ignore everything other than reading to her each day.

90 minutes is extreme.

do 20-30 max that’s enough

Split it up into more manageable sections; no more than 20 minutes per section.

Trust me!

You should write on the homework how long it took. It's useful for the teacher to know. It's possible every child is taking that long and therefore there's too much homework. Check what the school policy is on homework, most schools set a certain amount for each year group and teachers are supposed to stick roughly to that.
On the other hand, maybe it's only your DD who is taking that long and other children are completing it in 20 minutes. In that case it's also useful for the teacher to know because it would suggest your child can't concentrate for as long or is more easily distracted than the average 5 year old.