Homework revisited

This might be a long shot, but my daughter's are five years
apart. Often the younger one finds it cool to do homework
with the older one, and ask the older one for help. However,
she's not happy asking me for help. What if your older daughter
played spelling with her?

"Sue" wrote in message
...
Are there some techniques that anyone has tried to get their kids to do
homework.

Two of my girls don't have a problem with doing homework. They are in 5th
and 3rd grades.

However, my 6-year-old definitely has a different personality and getting
her to do anything is like pulling teeth. So far, she has failed two
spelling tests (And isn't first grade a little early for spelling tests?).
I
can't get her to willingly to do her spelling every night, with or without
my help. She has a fit every night about it. She really needs to do this
every night as she is not doing well. Any suggestions for me?
--
Sue
mom to three girls

Are there some techniques that anyone has tried to get their kids to do
homework.

Two of my girls don't have a problem with doing homework. They are in 5th
and 3rd grades.

However, my 6-year-old definitely has a different personality and getting
her to do anything is like pulling teeth. So far, she has failed two
spelling tests (And isn't first grade a little early for spelling tests?). I
can't get her to willingly to do her spelling every night, with or without
my help. She has a fit every night about it. She really needs to do this
every night as she is not doing well. Any suggestions for me?
--
Sue
mom to three girls

I have tried that already, with no success so far. I can't really explain
how Kara is, but she really resists anyone knowing what is going on with
her. She gets mad if her sisters try to help her and yells at them to leave
her alone. So if her sisters know that she is having a hard time with her
homework, she tells them to go on and she will just talk to me.
--
Sue
mom to three girls

Cathy Kearns wrote in message
. ..
This might be a long shot, but my daughter's are five years
apart. Often the younger one finds it cool to do homework
with the older one, and ask the older one for help. However,
she's not happy asking me for help. What if your older daughter
played spelling with her?

"Sue" wrote in message
...
Are there some techniques that anyone has tried to get their kids to do
homework.

Two of my girls don't have a problem with doing homework. They are in
5th
and 3rd grades.

However, my 6-year-old definitely has a different personality and
getting
her to do anything is like pulling teeth. So far, she has failed two
spelling tests (And isn't first grade a little early for spelling
tests?).
I
can't get her to willingly to do her spelling every night, with or
without
my help. She has a fit every night about it. She really needs to do this
every night as she is not doing well. Any suggestions for me?
--
Sue
mom to three girls

"Sue" wrote in message
...
Are there some techniques that anyone has tried to get their kids to do
homework.

Two of my girls don't have a problem with doing homework. They are in 5th
and 3rd grades.

However, my 6-year-old definitely has a different personality and getting
her to do anything is like pulling teeth. So far, she has failed two
spelling tests (And isn't first grade a little early for spelling tests?).
I
can't get her to willingly to do her spelling every night, with or without
my help. She has a fit every night about it. She really needs to do this
every night as she is not doing well. Any suggestions for me?


We home school. DS has always been very resistant to the sitting and doing
work sheets part of things. I stumbled on a couple different techniques
that have worked more often than not: We sang the instructions and spelling
words back and forth to each other *loudly* [pity the neighbors]. This also
worked when we were doing some phonics and he had to select the correct word
and write it into it's proper blank. I also found that having a drink on
the table seemed to help. Don't ask why. Cold water worked just fine. I
wondered if it was kind of like the let me take a pause while I think that
helped him move along.

In the spelling words dept. we have found that oral works much better with
DS than written. I suspect that is because you are only involving one sort
of activity: spelling, rather than two: spelling, & writing. We found if
we played games of what did it rhyme with that has helped, but especially if
the word is pronounced then spelled then pronounced [like in spelling bees]
it gets DS to pause long enough to remember how to spell the word.

Good luck. If you experiment enough you will probably find several things
that help make the work more fun and therefore more likely to be done and
done well.

-Aula

Sue wrote:
Are there some techniques that anyone has tried to get their kids to
do homework.

Two of my girls don't have a problem with doing homework. They are in
5th and 3rd grades.

However, my 6-year-old definitely has a different personality and
getting her to do anything is like pulling teeth. So far, she has
failed two spelling tests (And isn't first grade a little early for
spelling tests?). I can't get her to willingly to do her spelling
every night, with or without my help. She has a fit every night about
it. She really needs to do this every night as she is not doing well.
Any suggestions for me?

I knew a kid who only practiced memory things (like spelling or learning
state capitols) while swinging. Weird but it worked for her. I can't
remember what they did in the winter???? Maybe a rocking chair or
something. It must have been sensory I'm not sure, it was long before I had
kids and I didn't give it much thought.


--
Nikki
Mama to Hunter (4) and Luke (2)

Sue wrote:

Any suggestions for me?

Two ideas:

1) If your daughter has a favorite CD, try playing music
while she does homework. My girls didn't have a favorite CD,
but they did have favorite movies, so I bought the soundtracks
and played those during homework.

2) Instead of quizzing your 6-year-old on her spelling words,
see if you can get her to quiz your older daughters on them.
The older girls probably won't mind taking a 1st grade
spelling test since they'll get them all right, and your
6-year-old will have to pay attention to make sure her sisters
are correct.

"Sue" wrote in message ...
Are there some techniques that anyone has tried to get their kids to do
homework.

Two of my girls don't have a problem with doing homework. They are in 5th
and 3rd grades.

However, my 6-year-old definitely has a different personality and getting
her to do anything is like pulling teeth. So far, she has failed two
spelling tests (And isn't first grade a little early for spelling tests?). I
can't get her to willingly to do her spelling every night, with or without
my help. She has a fit every night about it. She really needs to do this
every night as she is not doing well. Any suggestions for me?

Absolutely. Put the onus squarely on your daughter and her teacher and
stay entirely out of the equation. If the teacher insists on requiring
homework and your daughter refuses to do it (shades of our first grade
experiences!) then talk to the teacher, tell her that you absolutely
refuse to ruin your relationship with your child over homework, and
that you will not interfere. Thus, either the teacher backs off, which
is highly unlikely, or she makes your child stay in and do the
homework whilst the other kids are at recess. A few weeks of missing
playtime while all her friends are outside will either make your
daughter change or tune, or it won't. Either way, YOU don't have to
fight over the issue every night.

This was recommended to me years ago and it's worked very well. We go
through this every year for a few weeks, and then we settle in. Now
that there isn't recess, no homework means lunch detention or even
afterschool detention. Neither is worth the refusal to do homework
longterm.

Marjorie

Sue wrote in :
[snip]
However, my 6-year-old definitely has a different personality and getting
her to do anything is like pulling teeth. So far, she has failed two
spelling tests (And isn't first grade a little early for spelling tests?).
I can't get her to willingly to do her spelling every night, with or
without my help. She has a fit every night about it. She really needs to
do this every night as she is not doing well. Any suggestions for me?

I get the kids to copy the words once every morning. Maybe that would work
for you?

--
Penny Gaines
UK mum to three

chiam margalit wrote in message
Absolutely. Put the onus squarely on your daughter and her teacher and
stay entirely out of the equation. If the teacher insists on requiring
homework and your daughter refuses to do it (shades of our first grade
experiences!) then talk to the teacher, tell her that you absolutely
refuse to ruin your relationship with your child over homework, and
that you will not interfere. Thus, either the teacher backs off, which
is highly unlikely, or she makes your child stay in and do the
homework whilst the other kids are at recess. A few weeks of missing
playtime while all her friends are outside will either make your
daughter change or tune, or it won't. Either way, YOU don't have to
fight over the issue every night.

This was recommended to me years ago and it's worked very well. We go
through this every year for a few weeks, and then we settle in. Now
that there isn't recess, no homework means lunch detention or even
afterschool detention. Neither is worth the refusal to do homework
longterm.

Marjorie

I have a feeling, given how difficult everything else has been with this
particular child, that I *am* going to have to back out of it. I probably
need to talk with the teacher really quick here because it is not getting
better and we are only three weeks into it. Although given how poorly Kara
is doing with spelling, she does need to come home and study her words more,
but she is giving me a hard time practicing it.

I'm not sure if you Marjorie or anyone else is familiar with the news sheet
Time for Kids that they are using now in some schools. Basically, it is a
four page magazine that scales down to their level of what is going on in
the world and other different tid-bit of news. I had to pay $4.50 for the
year for this magazine. Usually, they go over it in class and then they
answer some questions about it. I got the magazine sent home on Thursday,
with a two-page answer sheet that the teacher wants Kara to fill out. I am
absolutely floored that this is expected in first grade (it wasn't like this
with other teachers in first grade) Kara cannot even read and she expects
Kara to fill this two page thing out. So you know it is me who is going to
have to take the time out and help her with this. I am guessing that it will
take us around 2-3 hours to fill this out, given how difficult Kara is about
sitting and doing work.

And it's not like I haven't gone through first grade before, but never with
this teacher. I wanted some sort of way to make homework fun for Kara, but
it seems given her personality that I am going to have to have the teacher
step in and possibly take something away. Too bad, I really didn't want to
have to go this route.
--
Sue
mom to three girls

My answers are below.

just me wrote in message

We sang the instructions and spelling
words back and forth to each other *loudly* [pity the neighbors]. This
also
worked when we were doing some phonics and he had to select the correct
word and write it into it's proper blank. I also found that having a drink
on
the table seemed to help. Don't ask why. Cold water worked just fine. I
wondered if it was kind of like the let me take a pause while I think that
helped him move along.

Hmm, singing eh? My poor neighbors, lol. I can give that a try. I have a
feeling that if I can get silly or make it fun, it might help. I am hoping
anyway. I gave her a snack one day to eat while we were doing the work, but
she got too interested in her food to do the work, but I will try just
something to drink.

In the spelling words dept. we have found that oral works much better with
DS than written. I suspect that is because you are only involving one
sort
of activity: spelling, rather than two: spelling, & writing.

Ah (light bulb comes on) maybe that is the problem. I will definitely try
just orally this week and see perhaps if it goes better.

We found if
we played games of what did it rhyme with that has helped, but especially
if
the word is pronounced then spelled then pronounced [like in spelling
bees]
it gets DS to pause long enough to remember how to spell the word.

Rhyming might help too. She loves to sit and see how many words she can come
up with that rhymes with other words.

Thank you Aula. You have some great ideas and I will try them this week to
see if it makes a difference.
--
Sue
mom to three girls