Well - I guess below is the ultimate reason why parents should always check their children's homework before they hand it in. This was submitted by a first grade girl for a homework assignment:

After it was graded and the child brought it home, she returned to school the next day with the following note:

Dear Ms. D.,

I want to be very clear on my child's illustration. It is NOT of me on a dance pole on a stage in a strip joint. I work at Home Depot and had commented to my daughter how much money we made in the recent snowstorm. This photo is of me selling a shovel.

Mrs. H.

How can parents best help their children learn?

Is homework necessary for young children, or is it burdensome? This debate is not new to America, but in recent years it has gained new momentum. News sources from PBS to The Washington Post have discussed the issue, searching for the balance that would educate children at all socio-economic levels without overloading them. Some innovative schools have begun to work at eliminating the kind of monotonous busy-work that kills a child's incentive to learn and keeps them from their families for extended periods in the evenings.

But could all homework be bad for children? Homework proponents insist that some subjects cannot be mastered without repetitive rote memorization. Even homework critics allow for the fact that well thought-out assignments can certainly contribute to a child's love of learning, especially when it requires the full engagement of an inquiring mind. However, many educators believe that the over-application of monotonous rote learning often has the opposite affect.

In addition, some teachers find that when children are left on their own to complete homework, their misunderstandings about certain tasks can become entrenched. Unfortunately, fewer families than ever are intact, and single parents may find themselves working long hours with less time and energy to spend helping children complete assignments.

Posted with permission from A Dad's Notes

It’s a new year and we’ve decisively entered a new phase in the twins’ childhood. Both Libby and Henry have started their five day a week morning preschool. Henry, to quote his teacher, had a “rocky start.” He was crying when we dropped him off and he was crying when I picked him up. Libby was all smiles and hilarity. She’s taken to this experience just as we thought she would at Tot Time in September.

So I was helping Mr. Z with his math homework, this afternoon, and it mostly consisted of converting metric measurements from one size to another, like kilograms to grams or millimeters to centimeters and shit like that. At first I was like, "ah, no fucking problem," but as I was trying to explain it to him, my withered synapses fucking seized up on me and I found myself rapidly spinning down some bottomless numerical vortex, and I began second-guessing every answer and well, frankly, it got pretty ugly pretty quick.

We made it through to the other side with only a few tears (and he was pretty upset, too) and then we closed the book and I let him watch some Spongebob so that any trace amounts of understanding he may have gleaned from our little study session were instantly erased and replaced with "GAAAAHHHHHHH!"