Colouring Homework

I hate it when the kids bring back homework with colouring in it. This is because colouring takes up a lot of time. So much time that there is not enough time to do the rest of the homework. So I usually suggest that they do their colouring last of all.

For example, the little one may have a counting exercise. Lets say counting to 20. On one page, he would have to count the numbers 16,17,18,19,20. There would be little people or items to count and he'd have to colour in each of the little item. Whoa!

Usually he wants to make them beautiful, so he'd colour each little person with a different colour. They'd have different colour tops, bottoms, shoes, bags etc. That means he has to colour 16+17+18+19+20 = 90 little people! Can you imagine how long that takes especially for someone whose fine motor skills are still developing?

Recently, he had a lot of homework in one day plus his 90 people to colour. Bad mommy killed his creativity by suggesting that he colour them all in one colour. "Look sweetie, why don't you colour the face first, all peach, then the hair, all black, and then make them all wear the same coloured clothes. Choose your favourite colour. Blue? Ok, lets colour all the clothes blue ok?" He did this and was finished in record time. Heheh. Bad mommy.

The girl is the same. Whenever any colouring is included in the homework, you can be sure it will take up a lot of extra time till there is not enough time to finish the rest of the homework. I really do wish that they'd limit colouring to art classes! At the moment, colouring is included in just about any homework there is, science, maths, the 3 languages, moral ..... Aarrrgh!