Rooster is a big kid first grader this year. That's all well and good except that it means she has big kid first grade homework this year. Even that would be alright if it wasn't for the fact that kindergarten homework just about did me in last year.
Last year, homework was a dreaded event as far as I was concerned. It wasn't work for Rooster so much as two hours of my time spent trying to get a kidlet who did not want to focus to pay attention and follow directions. She tried screaming, crying, recycling her homework pages before I saw them, refusing to look at the page, going boneless, kicking, and intentionally breaking her pencil point. None of that worked and she still had to complete her homework, but it took a lot out of me to get her to that point.
Tonight was our first example of what is in store for us this year. First was a paper which had sentences one one side and words in boxes on the other. Rooster somewhat easily read both sides of the page once I read her the directions. Next came a double-sided math paper. Just having Rooster read the simple directions involved me first reading almost every word out loud and having her repeat it. I doubt she actually looked at the written words. Almost none of the words she initially said even had the same beginning word sounds as the word she was supposedly reading. One side of the page was about the numbers zero to five. She had to draw a picture representing one of the numbers and then write the number she chose. She picked six, and could not understand why I told her to erase some of the drawn objects and try again. Spelling came next. Rooster was supposed to write a total of thirty words: ten spelling words three times each. She did this, but not actually on the lines she was supposed to use. We spent more time erasing her work so she could do it correctly than she spent writing the darn things. Her last homework assignment was to read a book out loud to a parent. Actually, make that two books. It was one of those annoying two-books-in-one deals. In and of itself, that might not have been too bad, if Rooster had even bothered to look at the words she was supposed to be reading. Half of the words she did not know and the other half she was supposed to know but only took random guesses. Once more, the random guesses had little to do with the printed words' beginning sounds. The fact that she also read "Mommy" as "Mudder" did not endear her to me as we slogged through those two evil books. For the life of me, I cannot understand why she would have to read a book out loud when it was so clearly above her reading level. Either the teacher is asking too much or my daughter is trying to pull the wool over my eyes somehow. Only time will tell which it is.
Rooster's homework took us over an hour to complete, and this was without her actively resisting. I am not overly sure I will survive this year's homework if this is what it is going to be like.
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