Why I don't send homework
Your five-year-old works hard for seven hours. Here is what I'd rather you do with the evening.
By two o'clock, a kindergartner has made roughly four hundred decisions. They have shared, waited, held a pencil correctly, sounded out words that don't want to be sounded out, and eaten lunch in a loud room. That is a full working day.
So I don't assign homework. Occasionally something comes home that looks like it — a page of letters, a counting game. It's optional. It never comes back to me. There is no list, no chart, and nothing to feel behind on.
Read together, talk about the day, go to bed on time. That's the assignment.
If you want more than that, the single best thing is twenty minutes of a book you both like — you reading, them interrupting. That does more for reading than any worksheet I could send.
What to do instead
- Read a book they choose, even the one you've read forty times
- Ask one specific question — "who did you sit by at snack?"
- Let them be bored for a while. It's where the good play comes from.