My 3 year old’s first homework assignment and what I learned about myself

The school year just started and Max is loving his new class. When he came home with his first homework assignment, cleverly disguised as “home learning fun”, I was excited. I envisioned us sitting at the table, surrounded by colorful art supplies, working together to complete the assignment. Nothing about that actually happened, here is the reality:

The Assignment: Kindness Collage

Instructions: Use magazines or the internet to find pictures of people being kind and glue them onto a blank piece of paper. We will show our collages to our class on Friday!!

There was a second assignment, but it didn’t say “We will show to our class on Friday!!”, so that was immediately cast as lower priority (did not get done). Don’t get me wrong, Aaron and I love school work, but I didn’t anticipate the challenges associated with getting Max excited about it. Before we started Max said,

Mommy, I know you can do it yourself. I’m going to play trucks. Or you can play trucks with me. It’s up to you.

The first issue was who has paper magazines anymore? Not us. I know we could use the internet, but what are your ink levels like? Luckily, I noticed this earlier in the day and grabbed a few free magazines at the grocery store. If I would have flipped through any of them, I would have known there were no obvious acts of kindness. Not really at least. I finally managed to get Max to sit down by luring him with scissors. Yes, I realize how absolutely crazy, and slightly threatening that sounds. But if you live with a 3 year old you get it. We found a picture of kid’s helping each other and another one of kids supporting each other. Well, I found the pictures, and carefully guided Max to “finding them”.

Once the novelty of the scissors wore off (~1 minute later), I broke out the glue stick. Five minutes later I took away the glue stick after he was running it down the side of the wall.  But we managed to finish the assignment!

Ta da! Max’s first homework assignment!

What I learned is it takes a whole lot of patience to teach and work with little kids. Something that I could probably work on. But to all the amazing teachers out there, thank you for all that you do and all the patience and dedication you show to our kids.

What was your kid’s first homework assignment?