Homework already?!

Spike's nursery send homework assignments home on a Friday for us to do over the weekend. Admittedly at first I was ever-so-slightly horrified. Home work at this age? According to Alfie Kohn who wrote “The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing,” a close look at all the research available contradicts this practice. In an e-mail regarding homework for young children,“No research has ever found any benefit. It’s all pain and no gain.”

I was relieved to discover that at Spike's nursery the assignments are very relaxed and there is plenty of scope to adapt it to his particular learning style. An absolute must for Spikey. The assignments centre around a teddy bear called "Ginger". 

The first week there was a small paragraph to read about Ginger, her family and where she lives. A picture of Ginger to colour in and reference was made to a poem called "teddy bear, teddy bear". A quick Google search soon found it for me. We started with the paragraph, which he enjoyed. We expanded on it talking about Ginger's house, what it looks like; her family and friends and the games they play. Then we did the colouring. This was over in a flash, he just does not care for colouring at all. He did enjoy getting a scissors and chopping the picture to bits. The best bit for Spike was the poem. We were able to get up and put actions to it, I videoed it and he was really proud of the results.

The second week Ginger bear shows us what a good listener looks like and we have to talk about this and show that we can be good listeners too by sitting still, looking, being quiet and of course listening. The poem wasn't as good this week. It was hard to put actions to it and Spike kept going off on tangents and reciting the one we learned last week. The poem was about what a teddy bear is for (cuddles, tickles etc) so I went and got his big blue teddy bear and acted out the hugging and other actions on it. This sustained his interest for about one and a half recitations until he took the teddy off me and started acting out last weeks much preferred poem instead. Well you can't win them all. 

As long as I am able to introduce the activities in a gentle play based way I have no objections to Spike's "homework" assignments. If we had physical sit down pen/pencil in hand stuff at this point it would be way too much. So far I think his school definitely seem to have the right approach.