James is not yet 3-years-old. He is 2. He is in daycare. Not school. So you can likely understand our surprise when at the start of this semester (or "9 weeks" as it's called around here) he was sent home with a "BEAR Book", which contains useful things like a daily behavior report, information on what the kids are learning each week, whose turn it is to bring the class snacks, etc. But in the front flap, we started seeing papers labeled "Homework" and "Please return tomorrow". Well, at first we thought it was cute. Homework for 2-year-olds. Ha! Then a page here and there turned into 3-5 pages at least 3 days per week. It's mostly tracing activities (lines, squiggles, and shapes, but also some pages of letters - one had the entire alphabet on it! - and some "fun" coloring). Then we tried to get James to do this homework, on multiple occasions, and ended up with no marks made on any of the pages, yet plenty of fussing and tears and pencil/pen/marker/crayon throwing. And our boy doesn't cry easily, so we figured something was up. We tossed that "homework" aside and had a discussion with his teachers and director (after having a discussion with many of you via facebook - thank you for that!), which I'll summarize for the blog records...
1.
Apparently the homework IS optional, even though they never said it was, and instead asked that it be returned the next day. The "extra" homework that James was being sent home with (for not completing it in class) was a fluke due to his normal teacher being out sick and will not happen again (we complained about it seeming like punishment to James).
2.
The teachers say that James doesn't like seatwork (AKA Table Time). Well, I could have told them that back in October when he started there. He's never liked to color (you may recall my dismay back when James was in K1 at his old daycare and I was told to have him practice coloring at home - AKA "homework"). He's not the only kid in the class that dislikes the tracing though. I asked.
3.
The seatwork, which doesn't include the crafts and playdough time, but just the coloring and tracing, is only a small portion of each day (this daycare is a Montessori school that also utilizes some ABEKA coursework). The tracing is mostly meant to teach the kids how to hold a pencil correctly and they are not expected to correctly trace letters. Though they are expected to try.
So, what do we take away from all this discussion? Well, I can tell you that James hasn't been sent home with homework (or even the BEAR Book - kinda miss those behavior reports...) since last Thursday. We do still have a stack of old "homework" on the counter though, since James hasn't been doing it. Our plan is to offer a page occasionally, whenever James seems like he might be in the mood to sit still for 5 minutes and "color" with us. We will not be calling it homework. And we will only be giving him the lines and shapes to trace for now, no letters. But mostly, we'll be doing the types of projects and crafts and games with him that we always do (little science experiments, letting him help us cook and do household chores, reading books, working with flashcards, painting in the bathtub, drawing on the easel, etc.), because we DO enjoy spending time teaching our kids in the evenings, and we know what types of activities engage them based on their personalities and abilities. Coloring just isn't James' thing. While we want him to continue to learn new things, we do not want to push him. We worry that pushing him hard now would lead to disenchantment with school and/or homework in the future, and we're not willing to risk that. I had a few parents (the minority by far) tell me that we shouldn't give in, and we should MAKE him do his homework, so that he doesn't grow up thinking that a bit of whining and crying can get him out of it. But I disagree. 2-year-olds may be plenty old to know how to manipulate their parents, but I guarantee you that our struggles last week were not manipulative. It was true stress and anxiety. And to us, those are not emotions that a 2-year-old needs to deal with. As it stands now, James LOVES going to "school", he IS a very intelligent 2-year-old (he's known all his shapes and colors for about a year already, he can count to 20, and now he knows his ABC's - yes, that was intentional there), and we want to KEEP that spirit strong!
It's really hard to see, but he actually did complete a sheet of "homework" last night, lightly pressing with his cut-in-half, standard-size, blue crayon (a suggestion from his Auntie Taryn, to help him learn to hold a writing utensil properly and with more confidence). I had him take a break near the end so that I could show him how to press harder (cool, I can trace U's), and he did try. He was pretty proud of himself when he was done. But he was probably happiest because I handed over the Silly Putty that I was using as bribery to get him to at least attempt a page...
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