Kavya is in 2nd grade. For the past 2+ years of her Elementary education (KG, 1st grade, first couple of months of 2nd grade), I have never felt any pressure or stress due to her homework or tests. I have to push her to finish her homework, but that's just because she is interested in doing everything else first. Her homework has always been easy and simple. I always wished that the teacher gave more challenging homework to keep her busy and motivated. To that extent, I was also thinking that may be I could give some extra homework sheets to the teacher that she can give to Kavya as extra homework (without Kavya realizing that it came from me :) )
This changed all of a sudden yesterday. I got an email from Kavya's teacher that they have a Social Studies test on Friday. So, she will be sending some papers and the text book home for the kids to review and she requested parents to go over the material with kids. She also said that the test will be in a different format than what the kids are used to and that she will allow them to refer to their books for this first test. The email got me serious (probably more serious than I should be) So, after dinner, I sat down with Kavya to review the materials. The test was regarding Unit#2 which was about 70-80 pages long. I started reading the pages with Kavya and asking every possible question to test her. We covered about 20 pages when I realized that both of us were tired. So, I told her that we will finish the rest of the pages the next day.
After finishing the social studies review, Kavya said she needs to practice 50-in-a-minute. Since those are getting harder (both due to level of difficulty and due to the time limit), Kavya wants to practice every day to make sure that she clears the level during every Thursday test.
After she finished both sides of 50-in-a-minute practice, I remembered that she had Library on Thursdays and so she would have to return both of her borrowed books. But she had only read one of them and she wanted to read it again. I could see how tired she was. So, I told her to read it later.
After all this, when I went to sign her homework folder, I realized that she hadn't done 10 minutes of Lexia. There was no time for it since it was late and Kavya was very tired. So, I did not mention it.
Then today, I spent almost another hour with her to finish reviewing the book for her Social Studies test - asking her multiple questions along the way. Although I knew Kavya would do well in the test and that the tests here are not as grilling, the Indian mom in me wanted to make sure Kavya knew the entire unit properly :)
After finishing the review, she spent 15-20 minutes doing Lexia on the computer (the homework that wasn't done from yesterday).
She can also take 2 AR (Accelerated Reading) tests during their computer labs on Monday and Friday. That's how they meet their allocated target goal for AR. While Kavya has already reached her target of 8 points, I always ask her to have 2 books that she can take the test on. That way she will read and identify books she want to test on. After all the studies yesterday and today, there was no time to read a book for the AR test. So, without tiring both of us any further, I decided to call it a day.
For the first time, I felt like there was too much going on in school. Reading books for the monthly reading log and AR tests, everyday homework, 50-in-a-minute practice and tests every Thursday, Spelling Word test every Friday, Lexia and Dreambox practice on the computer at home and Accelerated Math (AM) is starting this week and to top it is this Social Studies test for each unit that they finish. Oh.. and not to forget the monthly book project and the monthly poems :)
Studies are starting to get busy. I wonder how will we manage once both kids get in this phase ? Hopefully, Kavya will manage her own things by then :)
This changed all of a sudden yesterday. I got an email from Kavya's teacher that they have a Social Studies test on Friday. So, she will be sending some papers and the text book home for the kids to review and she requested parents to go over the material with kids. She also said that the test will be in a different format than what the kids are used to and that she will allow them to refer to their books for this first test. The email got me serious (probably more serious than I should be) So, after dinner, I sat down with Kavya to review the materials. The test was regarding Unit#2 which was about 70-80 pages long. I started reading the pages with Kavya and asking every possible question to test her. We covered about 20 pages when I realized that both of us were tired. So, I told her that we will finish the rest of the pages the next day.
After finishing the social studies review, Kavya said she needs to practice 50-in-a-minute. Since those are getting harder (both due to level of difficulty and due to the time limit), Kavya wants to practice every day to make sure that she clears the level during every Thursday test.
After she finished both sides of 50-in-a-minute practice, I remembered that she had Library on Thursdays and so she would have to return both of her borrowed books. But she had only read one of them and she wanted to read it again. I could see how tired she was. So, I told her to read it later.
After all this, when I went to sign her homework folder, I realized that she hadn't done 10 minutes of Lexia. There was no time for it since it was late and Kavya was very tired. So, I did not mention it.
Then today, I spent almost another hour with her to finish reviewing the book for her Social Studies test - asking her multiple questions along the way. Although I knew Kavya would do well in the test and that the tests here are not as grilling, the Indian mom in me wanted to make sure Kavya knew the entire unit properly :)
After finishing the review, she spent 15-20 minutes doing Lexia on the computer (the homework that wasn't done from yesterday).
She can also take 2 AR (Accelerated Reading) tests during their computer labs on Monday and Friday. That's how they meet their allocated target goal for AR. While Kavya has already reached her target of 8 points, I always ask her to have 2 books that she can take the test on. That way she will read and identify books she want to test on. After all the studies yesterday and today, there was no time to read a book for the AR test. So, without tiring both of us any further, I decided to call it a day.
For the first time, I felt like there was too much going on in school. Reading books for the monthly reading log and AR tests, everyday homework, 50-in-a-minute practice and tests every Thursday, Spelling Word test every Friday, Lexia and Dreambox practice on the computer at home and Accelerated Math (AM) is starting this week and to top it is this Social Studies test for each unit that they finish. Oh.. and not to forget the monthly book project and the monthly poems :)
Studies are starting to get busy. I wonder how will we manage once both kids get in this phase ? Hopefully, Kavya will manage her own things by then :)
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