I didn't know that starting from this year, even the 1st year pre-schoolers in Evan's daycare would have homework twice a month. Knowing how "well" he follows instructions, when I found the homework package in Evan's mailbox, I said to myself: "Oh, oh, this is going to be interesting."
The first assignment was recognition of letters A, B, C, D and E. There were five rows of letters. The first row started with A followed by A, B, C, D, E. The 2nd row started with B followed by A, B, C, D, E…and so on. The student was to circle the letter which was the same as the first letter for each row.
The good thing was that Evan was very enthusiastic about doing the homework (because that's what his sister is doing these days). The "bad" thing was, well, he insisted on circling all five letters in the first row and wouldn't move on to the next row. I reiterated what he was supposed to do, but being as stubborn as he was, he wouldn't listen and even started crying. Unable to reason with him, we ended up having all five circles on the first row.
The 2nd part was to circle three pictures (ant, bee and apple) whose name started with letter "A". After he circled the "ant" and "apple", he decided that we shouldn't leave the "bee" behind and insisted on circling that one as well.
Then we got the 2nd homework, part of which was to let the student practice writing their names. We received four rows of dotted letters of E, V, A and N respectively. I explained to Evan that he was to use a pencil to connect all the dots for each letter and then he would have his name.
And guess what? He looked at the dotted letters (probably thinking this thing seems pretty hard to do since his writing skill is still at the scribble level) and then said to me: "No, mom, I can't do this." and he refused to even hold the pencil.
"Yes, you can! Just give it a try. It would be fun!" I tried to convince him.
"No, I can't do this!" He said it again without hesitation and then just walked away!
Finally, I had to grab him back and help him to finish this part by holding his hand.
Oh, boy. Apparently the daycare doesn't think I am stressed enough as a working mom. Now I have to deal with my three-year-old's troubles with his homework? Isn't it a little bit too early? (Oh, well, I am just being sarcastic :)). But it does look like my brain cells will have to die some more every two weeks from now on. But hey, that just comes with the territory, right? :).