Homework, homework, homework...

Homework times three kids - we're two days into week two of term one and tonight I have this overwhelming sense of, "D'oh, we didn't get around to..." It's not that we didn't do homework. We did! It's that straight after school there was Erik's parent-teacher meeting, and then Dave headed off for a movie with a friend, something he hardly ever gets to do, and I went home, got two in the shower, cooked dinner while wrangling the other two. We ate and then I all but got in the shower with the third one, who can't be trusted to wash his own hair. Then it was time to sit down and do reading with three children, plus spelling with one. By the time that was done it was 7.30pm and that's quite late in our house as far as bed times go.

Got the older three into bed, parked Master 2 in front of Harry Potter (yes, I know, I know), and as I sat here, I read over the newsletter Erik handed me as he climbed into bed. It was from the senior school staff going over the various points of interests for parents of children in grades 5/6 and it had this whole Mathletics scheme thing that has to be done each week. They're supposed to gain a Bronze medal in Mathletics every week. Well, we didn't have time to do that. I'm not even keen on them having another excuse to get on the computer - if I'm perfectly honest about it. I'm fairly anti-computers for my kids, mostly because I don't want some virtual parasite coming along and robbing me of my constant companion! We also didn't have time to review times tables or vertical multiplication.

I just don't know how families where the children do extracurricular activities manage it? Doing reading with Bryn is nothing, and he has no other homework - which is FINE by me because I think 6.5 hours of school a day is plenty for him. I get why the upper grades have homework, and I have my own areas of concern I'd like to see my boys do a bit of focused one on one work on to build their confidence, but three lots of homework seems to require an insane amount of input from us after school each day - Ari pretty gets ignored from 3.45 until he goes to bed (usually at 7.30pm, though not tonight because he has a late nap, d'oh). I'd better figure this out because it's only going to get worse!

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