Best time for doing homework?

[DonaldDucksTowel]

When do your Primary aged kids do homework?
Is it best to do it :

• straight after school while they’re still in the zone (this feels a bit mean to me, they’ve just finished doing school work and I make them do more straight away?)
• after a little break and some dinner (mine are vile creatures when they’re hungry?)
• at weekend when they’re more rested (but then we’re back to me feeling a bit mean and also it interfering with weekend plans)

When do you do yours?

Our school takes the homework bag away for "correction" on a Friday and doesn't return it until Monday afternoon.

Children have specific homework Monday-Thursday and none over the weekend, which I think works well.

In this house, we have a small snack when we get home, then sit at the table for homework and then they are free to play.

Mine do their reading and spellings in the mornings before school (after school they are tired and less enthusiastic) any other homework (eg maths or projects) they do at some point over the weekend

Just trying to figure this out myself. Have tried straight away but takes ages as she constantly says she's tired or has a meltdown. Think she's probably hungry and needs a break. So now going with snack, bit of down time and then homework. Still some protests but not as bad.

Mine are in the routine of doing it straight after school, otherwise it would never get done. If they are hungry they have a small snack first.

If we are waiting around for older ones then we sometimes do it in the car.

Mine do their homework at 6pm

Eventually I worked out that it worked better if I let them control the timing 'shall we schedule it in ten minutes or straight after tea?' But no arguments once they picked the time. To this day dd16 works best late in the evening after she has done sport/played music/relaxed/showered. whereas me and dh used to be the types to do homework first.

Thanks for the replies

Thing is we’re quite limited as to what times I can help them properly as we have 2 younger DC, and ones they’re in bed the older ones are too tired and crabby to do homework 🤔

It also doesn’t help that the homework is never a simple 10 minute jobby, it’s paper mache and baking and do 10 things and print photos to bring in kind of bullshit

Snack and then straight after school. No TV until homework done.
We’ve started doing the big weekend homework on Fridays as well. DS is 6- this week it was “Find out about the true meaning of Christmas and show it in any way you like”.
He’s written 2 sentences and drawn a labelled nativity stable.
He’ll do spellings, times tables and reading over the weekend.

While dinner cooks.

After a snack when we get home and then she goes and plays while I start dinner. This is for the daily sorts of homework. The big project stuff though we save for the weekend, usually Sunday afternoon.

Ok I’m going to try after a snack but before play/screens on a weekday, this might work quite well actually as the baby has a 3:30-4:30pm nap so I’ll only have 1 other small running around
Do you all do spellings/times tables/reading at this time too? I try to do those 4 times a week but failing miserably (they read for pleasure every day but I mean school reading books at write in their diary’s)
So maybe I could do the same routine every day and sit them down after a snack 1 weekday do homework and the other 4 days so spellings/times tables and reading books, then we don’t have to think about it at weekend unless it’s something ridiculous like make a working volcano (🙄)

Thanks all!

Our school has changed the homework policy this year, and it's much better.

Year 2 child has spellings, mathletics activities and reading book. Then term homework, which is three craft activities and a reading challenge.

Reception child has handwriting practice, reading book and then term homework as above.

Spellings and mathletics done in the morning as they don't require much input. Reading for both in the morning if I have time, and then between after school activities.

Handwriting practice comes home on a Friday, so we do that and the creative term homework on weekends.

It's great because you can plan the creative stuff around your social plans, and it's technically optional so it doesn't matter if we don't do it.

When we had creative stuff every week, we did it on the weekends. We keep Saturday as a pyjama day, so there's loads of time for playing with toys, crafts and a bit of homework slipped in.

Monday night straight after school. Still in zone, energy levels still high after weekend, no after school activities on a Monday and it gets it out of the way.

My mum started me off when I was very young as having a small snack when I came in and then homework time before dinner. She’d prepare dinner and I’d sit at the table doing homework until it was finished. After dinner was relaxation time. If I finished before dinner then I could go into the living room and watch TV or play. It always worked well for me and I continued doing it that way all through GCSE’s and A-Levels and even up to my MA!