My dd is in year 3 and the amount of homework she is bringing home is getting silly. She has to read for a minimum of 15 minutes per day, which is fine, but then she has another task to do each day. A spelling sheet on day 1, with a word search and literacy tasks, then the need to learn the set of spellings to be tested. Then she'll have 2 pages of numeracy, plus 2 days of other stuff, often related to the topic they are working on. Oh and they have to find time to learn their times tables.
Yesterday she spent over 3 hours doing one side of her maths homework. I didn't think it was particularly difficult, but she just couldn't grasp what she was expected to be doing, which made me think it hadn't been covered in class. We ended up with her having a complete meltdown.
I've now decided that from now on, whatever can't be done in 30 minutes, won't get done. Am I being unreasonable, or does this sound like a lot for a 7 year old? I do hate homework and that it eats into their "free" time. It is eroding our children's childhood, which I really resent. I can't even see how it helps them, other than the reading and times tables. I think we are overloading children, which is going to switch them off learning.