I'm Not in Kindergarten, SHE Is...

Yep..totally normal for both issues. Teachers want the students to learn how to do work daily. As each year comes, they get more and more responsibility to do work daily on their own. By 3th grade here, the students have planners and have to write down their own assignments and be in charge of getting it in on time.

As for the Show&Tell date. Put the far away date up on the calendar and the paperwork in a specific spot. I have a filing system...I got it at Target. All paperwork pertaining to the child goes in his/her slot. Then I know where to go for it once the "date" arrives. I have 3 kids so we have tons of individual papers and due dates streaming in weekly.

Good luck and best wishes for a great kindergarten year...for you daughter and YOU!!

Yep -- Trust me, it's better for the parents to look after the papers. I learned the hard way. I had my daughter try and keep track of her homework page this week and she lost it Tuesday - she found it today IN THE FREEZER!!! Thank goodness, it's due tomorrow!

Yes.
My son is in Kinder.
He has similar things.
The parent, keeps track of the deadlines and timelines.
They give you a calendar of events, so that you can plan ahead. The parent with the child.

This is how it is, all through school.
Only as the child gets older and in upper grade levels, then THEY need to learn to keep track of what is due and when.

Yes. It is called following directions. Teach your child this is the way the directions say they need things done.

You are modeling it for your child.

Our daughter could do a packets worth of work in one night, but we were asked to spread it out over the week, so the child would learn, "homework, is each afternoon".. At the end of the year your child will be required to read for a certain amount of time each day, are you going to have her just read the whole book in one afternoon?

I am sure there are lots of reasons they do these things.. I have learned to just do them.. Some teachers just have a system and it works for them.. If you want to know "why" ask the teacher.

I should not generalize, but I know my husband would want to do it HIS way.. He has to question "Why" all of the time.. While I just follow the directions, because when I ran a store and was a buyer, I did not always have time to explain why.. I just needed it done.

He wants to make suggestions and tell me how to do it better or how he does it.. I remind him, at work that is great, but at my work, I get to do it my way.

Just attach the paperwork to the back of the family calnedar and when you change out the calendar Viola! There will be paperwork. I actually had a special calendar for all of the school info. I had clips to attach envelopes for forms, envelopes.. etc.. that were due and when they were due,

This sounds pretty normal to me, and pretty reasonable. Really, what is there to keep track of. Keep the homework on her desk, and tuck the student of the week forms into a drawer or post it on a bulletin board. Problem solved.

My son gets a weekly homework packet on Monday. There are several activities to do. It was explained at back to school night that the intent is for students to do a couple of the activities each night during the week. I don't think the intent (or desire) is for you to finish it early... they're looking for your daughter to do something EVERY night to reinforce what she's doing at school.

Hope this helps,
T.

Didn't you get the memo that school kids need executive assistants now-a-days?

& your job is only beginning.....

Yes, it's normal and expected for parents. Teacher are trying to keep things organized for 20 or 25 kids. The teacher is not going to grade the homework til the weekend - during her UNPAID time. She wants all the homework together, at once, so she's not losing track of it among the hundreds of other papers the parents are sending in or she is having to send home. I'd take that January paper and attach it to your December calendar for now and then to the January one when you get your 2012 calendar. Your child is responsible for doing her own homework but the organization part you really do need to be in charge of at her age.

yes, with 20 kids it is a lot easier for you to keep track of what your daughter needs when than it is for the teacher with 20 kids to deal with! Just get a push pin board, that is where all our stuff is.

J.,
Our daughter is in 1st grade and I could have written your post regarding homework due no earlier than Friday. Our daughter's share week is June 4 of 2012 so I will be holding on to the papers and poster board I received last night at Back to School Night for almost a year!

Yep. I think it's normal. I used to teach. Sending stuff in early causes it to get misplaced or lost. Teachers are notorious for stacks of papers...it's easy to misplace things. Most teachers have a system that not only keeps them organized, but keeps the class running more smoothly. Think about kindergartners interrupting the morning schedule to randomly turn in various unexpected items. Plus if assignments are assigned for daily work, it needs to be daily, not all in one sitting. We simply found a magnet folder that we keep on the fridge for the homework folder. We do homework in the mornings most days. My son is an early riser and it helps slow him down and not do it all at once. For the stuff that's not needed for while we clip it to the family calendar on that month (although our teacher hasn't really bombarded us with too much "future" stuff). It really hasn't been a big deal. And as a nice side effect, I think it's helping teach my son time management and responsibility.

Yes dad, they are preparing you for all the papers that come home in the upper grades....it only gets worse! =) I have a folder for each of my kids that I keep these things in and I look at each sheet every night so I don't forget anything. So yeah, kids homework is also our second job... GOOD LUCK!!!

YES! Our counter is overrun with paper/packets/things to return, etc. from the first week of school to the last. It is sometimes too much for me to even track, LOL. Trying to find a system that works for you is the best thing. I leave the items in my DS's folder, but half the time he leaves his folder at school and then we can't work on the homework at night :(. I can't win. Heh. Good luck!

Yes, this is usual. Doesn't he have a folder in his backpack to carry papers back and forth? If so, you can put his homework in the folder on Tuesday and leave it their all week. Then the teacher will take it out on Friday. Same for the other papers. My daughter leaves all my grandson's papers in the folder. It has two pockets. She does move papers from one side to the other depending how the teacher has labeled the pockets. Some teachers don't care which pocket it's in. In that case you can use whatever "filing" system you want.

If the teacher hasn't asked that there be a folder then you can put one in yourself. Then on Thursday night or Friday morning take out the homework for him to turn in on Friday.

Or you can have a letter sized envelope in which you put these papers that you keep at home. My daughter has one on her counter for the older child.

Yep... normal. We have a file by the door and a cork board for stuff like this. For us, the homework due on Friday thing is so that they are doing a little each day to reinforce the material. So they don't want kids to turn it in early. They also realize that some kids are involved with after school activities and don't have time to do it all in one night or in two or three...

It's frustrating, but at least you're involved in knowing what your child is learning.

This is normal for kindergarten- my son is in 3rd grade and we still get the weekly folder- AND the daily folder- then the notes and papers and the only reminders I ever get are that I forgot to do something. Get prepared it doesnt get any easier

Yes...isn't it upsetting!?

When the kids go back to school, so do we....aarrgh! No fair!

it helps to get a binder and just put everything in there. It's great for referencing newsletters and keeping papers in one safe place.

Oh......yeah......it just keeps getting better after this! LOL

My son had a "weekly packet" in K. O. page per day (no Friday homework). You should have seen that thing by Friday--spindled, mutilated, folded, torn and shabby. Just the way it should be! LOL

My advice--get some sort of an "in-box" for in your kitchen or a big accordion folder & start getting the paperwork overload under control now.

I keep the classroom policy, homework "typical description", classroom rules list, and teacher contact info & bio in a big magnetic clip on the fridge along with the weekly summary and spelling words and vocabulary for the week. (the last items change weekly--the rest stays.

Completed assignments, tests & projects go in a "3rd Grade Under the Bed Bin" for this year.

It's just the beginning................

I've got a huge cork board in the kitchen where I hang up things that I don't need to tend to RIGHT THIS VERY MINUTE, but if I put them somewhere where they're not in my face I'll forget about them when they DO need tending to.

My kids, now teenagers, are so accustomed to this system that they hang things there themselves for the same reason.

Someday she can hang things herself, but not in kindergarten. It'll happen, I promise.

:)

Nope, not for us, but we go to a private school where there are only 15 kids in the class. Our school also does almost EVERYTHING electronically and almost no papers come home. Its great. All I have to do is save the email and print what I need when I need it, or fill it out online and email it back.

This was totally normal in our kinder. The teacher actually gave out a folder for homework for the MONTH.

What we did - I have a "station" of sorts set up in the hall by our front door. It has coat hooks to hang backpacks and a large bulletin board. Anything that needs attention goes on that board. On things that are due on a certain day, I put a note in my day planner the day before to make sure I pack it in the correct backpack that night. It's worked really well for us.

My daughter is in 2nd grade this year. She had some project that they sent home paperwork for in July - same as for you, my daughter's "week" wasn't until this week. Well, thank goodness I had it on my Outlook calendar that she had something due or we both would have forgotten it. Needless to say, at this point I had no idea where the stupid assignment went off to, so I had to ask the teacher for another copy. I'm not sure why she couldn't have just given them out to the kids maybe a week before they were due, rather than handing them out in July and then thinking that these papers would magically stay safe until the project was due months later... I do like my daughter's teacher, but this one had me scratching my head!

Wow, I was expecting that all the answers would say "No way! Completely unreasonable!" I have no advice, but I am sure I would fail Kindergarten in this case.

I am not sure what the teacher is trying to accomplish with this.
Wouldn't it be neat if the work was assigned on Monday and those kids who did the work early could turn it in and get a great sense of accomplishment???

By middle school and high school when the work really piles on, those kids would already have those "non-procrastination" habits already built into their time mgt.

This is not normal for Kinder. What I think might be going on is that the teacher doesn't want to organize and keep track of the papers and so the burdens fall to the parents. A look at her class room will tell you whether she is organizationally challenged....and doesn't want to manage more paper.

If you have parent - teacher conferences coming up, I would inquire nicely, if it were me. "Ms. Jones, I know you have lots of students and lots of papers to handle, but have you ever thought about a brightly colored tray on your desk for the papers? That way, kids who finish before Friday could turn their work into the tray early and begin to learn some great time mgt skills for life. If this interests you, let me know what size and type tray you want and I will provide it."

I have gotten very far in 16 yrs, 3 boys & their educations by offering to help the teachers.

Just leave them in the backpack so they don't get lost.

Wow. All my kids had a folder with a school side and a home side.
Any notes to teacher went in on the school side, any notes home came to me on the home side.
None of mine had to keep things from Mon through Fri until maybe 3rd grade and that was only big projects
Get a 12 pocket accordian file and start filing important papers in the month slot they are due.
Or buy a home calendar with pockets, I have one this year, and put her important papers in the pocket for that month.

I hope not I loose everything!

I went to school when computers still filled and entire room. When a calculator was a slide rule.

My teachers had file folders set up on their desks so that when a student finished his assignment he put it in the proper file folder. The teacher simply took the file folder and graded the papers. Easy. No one worried about where the papers were if it wasn't time to turn them in yet because they were put in the file folder before the completion date.

The idea was to complete the assignment and learn.

Good luck to you and yours.

If we return things early in my daughter's folder (1st grade), the teacher does take them out. However, the folder in her backpack is a pretty good place to keep things so they don't get lost. If I'd put it in there on Monday, and no one took it out, it would still be there on Friday. We just moved, so our house will be a war zone for several months while we make repairs to cabinets, etc., before we can unpack. But her folder in her backpack is a pretty secure place. Good luck!

My daughter didn't have the weekly assignments until at least 2nd grade. But then she did have them every week. We just keep all her papers for the week in her backpack, since she transports it between two households.

The January thing? That's bizarre to me. I would absolutely lose it before then. Sounds like other moms here have better organization systems than I do!

My son is in kindergarten and it's normal but FRUSTRATING! We're already on our second big project and presentation for the year. He does most of the work like he's supposed to, but the parents are told to help and we have to practice the presentations over and over -for kindergarten! When I was in school we didn't start having homework until 4th grade!