Yesterday was the day Noah has been waiting for since school started in August.

Drum roll please…..HOMEWORK!!!  Yep.  He and the rest of his first grade class were all equally excited yesterday to get their first homework.

I know, cute isn’t it?

I watched him walk to the car, homework folder in hand with a huge smile on his face.  A smile that said “I have made it.  I am a big kid now.”  Homework serves as his first right of passage, as it should be.  Homework should be special and should focus on building the skills that are taught at school.  It should be relevant.

I want to give a big shout out to the kids school for giving homework that is relevant and makes them think.

As soon as he got into the car, he started talking about his homework and questioning where he was going to do it.

I suggested the dining room table.  You would have thought I suggested doing it on the roof of a moving car.

“NO. Mom it has to be somewhere quiet and it should be my own desk.”

Well, we have been dragging our feet on getting a new desk for our den where the kids can do homework.  So, Noah convinced us to bring up his desk from the basement.

So, we moved it upstairs and cleaned it off and he was so excited.  We got “real” pencils out–“yellow ones like I have at school.”

He did two word problems: Draw a picture or write a number equation to solve each problem.  1) An avocado has 1 seed.  I used 4 avocados to make guacamole.  How many seeds do I have?   2) This week I ate 2 plums and 3 peaches.  How many seeds did I end up with this week?

What is great about those two problems is that they have spent the last 5 weeks exploring seeds and learning about fruits and vegetables.

He worked on his homework for about 20 minutes and completed most of it–they get it on Monday and it is due on Friday.  I can already tell that science and math will be what he enjoys more than writing.  One of his homework pages is brainstorm a list of “15 things I can write about”–for writers workshop.  He struggled a bit with grasping the idea of topics for writing as opposed to specific events–but the writing teacher in me was in HEAVEN.  He has one page left–a sheet with pictures of fruit–cut so that you can see the insides and he is suppose to write what he notices.

I know that this LOVE of homework will be short lived and so I want to document this moment, so when he’s in 2nd or 3rd grade, I can remind him how excited he was to have homework.