If there's an upside to all the homework my daughter has, it would have to be that I've finally learned how to do long division with 3 digit numbers ie 34,567 divided by 234, not 5 into 215 :). I was not all that good at maths, as Mr Scorpio, who was my maths tutor a very long time ago, will attest. I always found maths to be such a chore. I didn't get it and even less so when those horribly long maths books not only had impossibly complicated equations in them, but those equations also had letters in them. Those letters caused me hours of anguish when I was a teenager.
I must have gotten cleverer as I've gotten older (not), but I can do the maths, well long division anyway. My daughter is getting lots of maths homework, dividing number like 33567 by 245 and 28690 by 28. I don't know (and I probably should) what a similar grade is learning in Australia, but this work seems a little high for kids this age. Still, they are doing it. And with a bit of coaching from me, she's doing it quite well. I feel as if I'm learning all over again, but this time it's good. I just hate having to watch her do all the work though. There is a lot of it and with that, the battles and stress of getting it done on time.
I'm not happy with the homework, or the curriculum at her level. It's OK I guess, but I think they could make it so much more interesting. There are times when they have to copy portions of their textbook into an exercise book and without me even telling her, daughter knows that this type of learning doesn't really make sense. For Malay, every week she has to memorise a passage written in Malay then when at school, they write it out and I guess, get marked on their memory?!?!?!
The other day, during a tantrum she said "there's so many other things that I want to do and I can't because I've always got homework". I agreed and I feel sorry for her and all the other kids that have to do this. But my job here is to get her through this. As I told ex the other day, whatever that school gives our kids, I will make sure that they can handle it. That was during a conversation where, if I remember rightly, he was commenting on what a good job I do with the kids because I was telling him all the things I do with them.
This week gone was a tough week for both my daughter and I. She had an ear infection on Monday, took her to the doctors, got antibiotics and other flu medicine but it turned out that she needed the whole week off. The school sent her homework home with her cousin who's in the same class but she couldn't do it because she was sick, dizzy, feverish, coughing and generally unwell. So Friday, Saturday and today were taken up with catching up on all the homework. It's been quite the marathon. I feel like all I've said to her this week is do your homework, do your homework, c'mon, do your homework. I see her stress and it stresses me and though I try to contain it, it does show sometimes, like tonight, when she realised she'd lost a book that she needs and found yet more homework that she hadn't yet done (and it was 9.30, which is now bedtime). I almost lost it completely and all the while, ex is sitting on the couch watching tv, seemingly oblivious. In the end I had to ask him to just help her with what she had to do (bina ayat - make sentences in Malay, using particular words). It was easy work, even I knew most of the words, but she just couldn't think any more. Poor baby. I'll have to find a better way to deal with this, because it really is taking over our lives at the moment. Yesterday I missed a dinner with my friends because I was so consumed with getting the damn homework done.
Tomorrow is a new day, a chance to start fresh and do better - or maybe not. My girl is sound asleep and I'm going to bed too. It's an early start again, for the next two weeks, then Chinese New Year is upon us and the kids will get another weeks holiday. Have a good week people.
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