Spring Soccer

What to do.... Ashley really wants to play spring soccer but I am hesitant to let her play because she is already in activities two nights a week. Fall soccer isn't an issue because her dance is over by then and it only overlaps for a week or two at the end of the season for soccer/beginning of season for dance. I really want to let her play, but part of me is saying that I need to stick to the two activity rule.

This is a tough one! If you have a rule of only two activities, then don't break it, because this is only the beginning, the choices are tougher as they get older.

That being said, if the rule is not hard and fast yet, then this may be a time to have a family meeting and see what you want to do. I can only relay what we did. When Mary Beth was in first grade, she wanted to do it all. She was in Karate, which required 2 classes a week, but they were allowed to do more. She did Hockey which was 2 practices per week. Plus she was a brownie, we had church activies, and plus something else, can't recall now. MB wanted to go to Karate every class she was free. She tried to do too much and got wore out. We put a slow down on it and things had to give. We came up with the plan as a family.

Good Luck in figuring out what to do.

This post has been edited by amymom on Mar 17 2010, 06:22 AM

I dunno. I always thought I knew what I would do, and have done what I thought I'd do up until now. My rule was 1 or 2 activities at once, no more. I'm starting to feel like it really has to do with the kid. I thought 1 or 2 activities would be good for Kylie but the amount of homework she has is so UNREAL that she is starting to stress, literally. She's stressing because she feels like she has NO time to be a kid, to just play. She's only in dance one night a week, but then there is girl scouts at least 1 day a month, then there is a billion other things - birthday parties, things that come up that we as a family have to do, and then the amount of time she spends on homework, she really never gets much time at all to play, except after school for 1.5 hours until we pick her up. She does play then, but to her it's just not enough time. I was also going to sign her up for spring and summer baseball and swimming lessons because they are no option, we do swimming lessons in our home no matter what or we don't get to go swimming in the summer. Just my rule. But now that Kylie is so stressed, she doesn't want to do ANY activities.

So if Ashley wants to do more and it doesn't stress her out and you all have the time, go for it.

Kylie has an hour to an hour and a half of homework almost every night - at least Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and some Thursday's then homework over the weekend due Monday. She plays at the sitter til we pick her up at 5:15, then if she doesn't have an activity it's dinner, homework, bath, bed. Nothing else. On the nights she has activities she does homework at the sitter and has no play time. Then it's dinner, activity, bath, bed.

I'm starting to think our school is the only one who gives homework. I know not every kid in her class gets as much homework as her. She's in the accelerated math and reading and that's where most of her homework is. Seems to me they'd give the kids that are farther ahead less homework and the ones who are far behind more, but it seems to be the opposite for us.

This post has been edited by coasterqueen on Mar 17 2010, 06:39 AM

That sounds like a lot of homework for that age. I think the general rule of thumb is that it should be 10 minutes per grade, so in second grade they should have 20 minutes of homework, but it may differ depending on the child.

Ashley usually finishes her homework quickly... I'd say she's done in less than 10 minutes. But, that is not including the nightly reading. She's supposed to read 20 minutes a night, but we do that already so I don't include that as homework. She also receives 15 spelling words that she's supposed to study, but she has them memorized by the first day. I suppose if you add time for studying for the spelling words and the nightly reading, her homework is closer to the 30-40 minutes.

She doesn't have homework over the weekend, unless it's a longer project that they've been given some time to do.

That sounds like a lot of homework for that age. I think the general rule of thumb is that it should be 10 minutes per grade, so in second grade they should have 20 minutes of homework, but it may differ depending on the child.

Ashley usually finishes her homework quickly... I'd say she's done in less than 10 minutes. But, that is not including the nightly reading. She's supposed to read 20 minutes a night, but we do that already so I don't include that as homework. She also receives 15 spelling words that she's supposed to study, but she has them memorized by the first day. I suppose if you add time for studying for the spelling words and the nightly reading, her homeword is closer to the 30-40 minute mark.

She doesn't have homework over the weekend, unless it's a longer project that they've been given some time to do.

No, ours isn't even any of that. They take a pre-spelling test on Monday. If they get 100% then they don't have to take the regular spelling test on Friday. They only take "bonus" word spelling test on Friday which is 5 words and Kylie has never studied for it yet and got them right. ETA: Kylie has only not gotten 100% twice.

These are usually some reading type of assignment that is really simple and short to read, but then you have to do all these problems to go along with it. Like tell a story of your own, put a story in your own words and sequence, etc, etc, etc. She doesn't have problems doing it, it just takes a long time to do, kwim? Then she gets homework sheets some times. Those are simple and fast. Then there is studying for Rocket Math, which we spend about 10 minutes on. Then she sometimes has math homework sheets to do.

We'd LOVE 10 to 20 minutes of homework. Then there is all this other accelerated homework her teacher wants us to do at home with her besides the homework she sends home, but we aren't doing that, it's too much.

Kylie does her 20 minutes of reading either in Free Choice at school, which is when she also takes her accelerated reading tests, and then she reads on the bus to and from school and the first 20 minutes she's in bed.

I'm exhausted just typing what all she does.

We still have some ridiculous poster to do yet that is due this Friday. She got the note over this past weekend, but we had company all weekend for Megan's birthday so it got pushed aside.

This post has been edited by coasterqueen on Mar 17 2010, 06:50 AM

That sounds like a lot of homework for that age. I think the general rule of thumb is that it should be 10 minutes per grade, so in second grade they should have 20 minutes of homework, but it may differ depending on the child.

Ashley usually finishes her homework quickly... I'd say she's done in less than 10 minutes. But, that is not including the nightly reading. She's supposed to read 20 minutes a night, but we do that already so I don't include that as homework. She also receives 15 spelling words that she's supposed to study, but she has them memorized by the first day. I suppose if you add time for studying for the spelling words and the nightly reading, her homeword is closer to the 30-40 minute mark.

She doesn't have homework over the weekend, unless it's a longer project that they've been given some time to do.

No, ours isn't even any of that. They take a pre-spelling test on Monday. If they get 100% then they don't have to take the regular spelling test on Friday. They only take "bonus" word spelling test on Friday which is 5 words and Kylie has never studied for it yet and got them right. ETA: Kylie has only not gotten 100% twice.

These are usually some reading type of assignment that is really simple and short to read, but then you have to do all these problems to go along with it. Like tell a story of your own, put a story in your own words and sequence, etc, etc, etc. She doesn't have problems doing it, it just takes a long time to do, kwim? Then she gets homework sheets some times. Those are simple and fast. Then there is studying for Rocket Math, which we spend about 10 minutes on. Then she sometimes has math homework sheets to do.

We'd LOVE 10 to 20 minutes of homework. Then there is all this other accelerated homework her teacher wants us to do at home with her besides the homework she sends home, but we aren't doing that, it's too much.

Kylie does her 20 minutes of reading either in Free Choice at school, which is when she also takes her accelerated reading tests, and then she reads on the bus to and from school and the first 20 minutes she's in bed.

I'm exhausted just typing what all she does.

We still have some ridiculous poster to do yet that is due this Friday. She got the note over this past weekend, but we had company all weekend for Megan's birthday so it got pushed aside.

It sounds like she may have extra work because she's in the advanced/accelerated program? In fact I was talking about this with Janelle (MommytoKKC) at lunch the other day. It seems like kids that are advanced in school almost get punished with double the work.

That sounds like a lot of homework for that age. I think the general rule of thumb is that it should be 10 minutes per grade, so in second grade they should have 20 minutes of homework, but it may differ depending on the child.

Ashley usually finishes her homework quickly... I'd say she's done in less than 10 minutes. But, that is not including the nightly reading. She's supposed to read 20 minutes a night, but we do that already so I don't include that as homework. She also receives 15 spelling words that she's supposed to study, but she has them memorized by the first day. I suppose if you add time for studying for the spelling words and the nightly reading, her homeword is closer to the 30-40 minute mark.

She doesn't have homework over the weekend, unless it's a longer project that they've been given some time to do.

No, ours isn't even any of that. They take a pre-spelling test on Monday. If they get 100% then they don't have to take the regular spelling test on Friday. They only take "bonus" word spelling test on Friday which is 5 words and Kylie has never studied for it yet and got them right. ETA: Kylie has only not gotten 100% twice.

These are usually some reading type of assignment that is really simple and short to read, but then you have to do all these problems to go along with it. Like tell a story of your own, put a story in your own words and sequence, etc, etc, etc. She doesn't have problems doing it, it just takes a long time to do, kwim? Then she gets homework sheets some times. Those are simple and fast. Then there is studying for Rocket Math, which we spend about 10 minutes on. Then she sometimes has math homework sheets to do.

We'd LOVE 10 to 20 minutes of homework. Then there is all this other accelerated homework her teacher wants us to do at home with her besides the homework she sends home, but we aren't doing that, it's too much.

Kylie does her 20 minutes of reading either in Free Choice at school, which is when she also takes her accelerated reading tests, and then she reads on the bus to and from school and the first 20 minutes she's in bed.

I'm exhausted just typing what all she does.

We still have some ridiculous poster to do yet that is due this Friday. She got the note over this past weekend, but we had company all weekend for Megan's birthday so it got pushed aside.

It sounds like she may have extra work because she's in the advanced/accelerated program? In fact I was talking about this with Janelle (MommytoKKC) at lunch the other day. It seems like kids that are advanced in school almost get punished with double the work.

That's the way I see it. It makes no sense. All it's going to do is make Kylie not want to be advanced. This past week we've seen a huge breakdown with her and I need to address it with her teacher or else it's going to get worse.