Year 3 homework

[FineAsWeAre]

How much homework do your kids get? Mine has to do activities in his spelling book and on an app to earn so many 'points' a week. Same with maths/times tables. They then get a piece of homework and have a reading book every week as well as a project every holiday. My son goes to a childminder every day before and after school and has extracurricular activities 4 nights a week so we're struggling for time to do it all but if he doesn't do it he misses playtime. It seems a bit excessive to me, he's only 7!

Weekly spellings
Reading book
1 piece of maths homework.

DS Y3,

• expected to read daily.
• every Friday 'Topic' homework due the following Wednesday. This is open-ended 'research' on a given topic that they will use in their next topic lesson to create a poster or leaflet or something. So notes need to be taken or the child ends up 'stuck' during the lesson, not able to produce anything.

It is always difficult to keep this within reasonable time frames (the time frames indicated in the school's homework policy for example). And it assumes that parents can provide the children with appropriate resources (most simply consult google and/or watch YouTube films, but even that assumes internet availability. Some parents have been telling me they spend hours simply searching for appropriate resources that their child can then use to do 'research'. I tend to buy age-appropriate books. So it is a strain on the parents' resources (time/money)).

• Every Friday one of these four: Online Spag/Online maths/paper Spag/paper maths. Due in by the following Wednesday.

Also a very generic 'please practise spellings and times tables regularly'.
But no spelling or times tables tests.

4 nights after school extra curriculars seems quite a lot too though.

What is he doing?

Mine gets a 'menu' of 12 homework items and they have to complete at least 8 of their choice in about 4 weeks. They have reading every week on top of that. It's a new system and I really like it for its flexibility. It means if we have something on then it doesn't matter, we can make up the worm another day/time. Before that we had 2 pieces of homework a week and I did struggle if we had a busy weekend. It does seem unfair he's being punished if it doesn't get done.

We got similar in yr3, and like you say, it was compulsory.
I don't think amount is excessive. If you spread out, it doesn't take that long to do.
Can you ask your childminder to supervise him to do some of them? So you only need to help him if he was struggling at something? (I assume he must be able to do most of it without any help, just encouragement to do it.)
Also if you are not planning to change his/your schedule in the future, yr3 is good time to set out routine. It only gets worse as he gets older.
My ds always do his homework as soon as he get it, sometimes during free time(end of the day getting ready for home) at school. He knows he needs to do it, because he doesn't want to lose play time.

He doesn't have time at the childminders, I pick him up just as he gets back, he has tea and we go out. He does football, taekwondo, beavers and performing arts. I don't think that's too much, it's his choice and I think he gets enough academic input from school. As he gets older, he'll go to bed later so it won't matter so much. Reading and learning spellings is fine but all the extra activities seem so unnecessary, especially if he knows the spellings or sums.

DS Y3 has 20 spellings which are supposed to be written out every day to learn for weekly test, literacy activity, daily reading, 2 sheets of maths (~ 50 qu) per week.

Luckily he has prep time at school 4.20 - 5pm so he gets a lot of it done then.

He swims 3 nights a week (and both weekend days) and has Saturday school so it is a struggle to fit in anything not done during prep. However, I don't worry about it because he's only 7. Harder to just drop it if your DS is going to get kept in for not doing it though. Maybe just tell him that's his prep time!

I totally agree that if the homework isn't differentiated, some of them seems totally pointless.
My ds was getting times table work sheet every week. He got so bored of it, he started modifying it into more challenging ones himself.
In the end, teacher stopped sending those home.

We have 1 piece of maths and 1 English per week. Supposed to be about 40 minutes each. Plus spellings and they have to read 5 times a week. Our ks1 have the menu style homework someone else mentioned up thread and ks2 have this more structured weekly one. I much prefer the ks2 format as you know where you are with that and can get in a routine.

Have a DD in Y3 and finding the homework a bit much too. One spelling test and a times tables test a week to revise for, one maths homework and one written homework plus all the nightly reading. I work full time and resent how homework creeps into our family time.