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First grade is much more rigorous in terms of behavioral expectations. In K they had areas in their room where they could kind of chillax. Not so this year. It’s definitely been a learning curve for us. Maybe they’re focusing more on that? Also, my daughters class has focused much more on math than literacy so far.

@hitchhiker: this post was so timely because my daughter came home crying today that first grade is SO boring and easy because all they are doing is review! What doesn’t help is her K class had a crazy year last year because of building and teacher issues, so I think a lot of the kids really do need the refresh and to make sure they are grasping all the K concepts before moving on. We don’t have parent conferences until December, so I told DD to be her own advocate and talk to the teacher about it (emphasizing she should do this quietly and privately, I don’t want her just raising her hand and saying she thinks it’s too easy in front of everyone else). Her class is super tiny so I’m hoping the teacher is receptive, I’m going to email her after DD tries to talk to her.

@QueensBee: Very good point about routines and expectations. I'm a teacher too, so I should have thought of that Hopefully things will be more challenging and/or differentiated soon.

We’ve only been in school for 1 month, but it definitely is not challenging at this point. We do some supplementing at home (it’s very haphazard and only when we have the time), but I recently started having DD read 1 page of a chapter book per night (just easy stuff like Magic tree House). The 1 page is more of a confidence booster than anything else, to prove to her she is capable of reading a chapter book, but then I finish the chapter so she’s interested and wants to keep going each night. We’ve blown through about 8 chapter books this month with that method.

For Math, my husband randomly gets a bee in his bonnet because he thinks American schools are severely lacking in math, so he has a whole stockpile of math work books, ranging from the bedtime math stories to an end-of-1st grade assessment he found online from Canada (why Canada you ask? Because DH pointed out they routinely score higher than US in global comparisons), etc. It’s all very willy-nilly and unorganized but they are currently doing easy double digit addition and subtraction.

Personally I’m not looking for any additional homework. Her teacher gives her 10 minutes each night and DD does think it’s easy, but I need a little easy because this is the first year I’ve allowed the kids to get involved in so much. DD1 is doing after school chess, soccer, theater, and Girl Scouts (and I want to start her on piano/voice lessons soon), and DD2 is doing dance, soccer, and gymnastics. So I’m kind of resenting even the 10 minutes right now.

TLDR: it does seem easy right now, but that’s okay with me. But I may change my mind in a few months.

DD is 7 weeks into 1st grade and we noticed that it has been a lot of review so far. I was surprised when the teacher described the expectations for 1st and it seemed like they had already covered most of it in K.

Having said that K was tough for us. My daughter has been a reluctant reader and I think she wasn't ready for a lot of the reading in Kindergarten. Now as I type this is voluntarily reading a book to her brother. She also seems to be learning a lot about listening and following instructions in class. I'm not sure exactly how that part is different than K but after a few days of 0/5 on her in class work she seems to have figured out that she needs to listen. I'm so glad there was time to review old material and build confidence.

One way that teachers may be pushing kids that won't be evident in either their homework on in what they tell you is pushing kids to understand the why behind the academics. For example, when they are doing double-digit subtraction with regrouping, do they know why on earth they cross off one number and add a one to the column to the right? Many don't. When they are working on science, they could be working on note taking and observation. All of these things, through the eye of a six year old, sound lame- "We did subtraction. I looked at a leaf."

The why is really important in math- it makes the problem solving that they will do later in school much easier. If you are looking for ways to challenge your kiddo at home, I would recommend finding ways to push for that problem solving and analysis work!

When we had our teacher orientation before the year started, our teacher told us that for some kids things will feel pretty easy for a while and that it's important that they feel that to build confidence as things do get tougher, which was really interesting to hear. We've been pushing my daughter to try things that are more challenging and she hasn't wanted to, but once I heard that, we stopped pushing and I've noticed in just the last few weeks that my daughter has shifted from reading early level readers that she can breeze through to chapter books without any prompting, and is saying how math is super easy for her and is doing really well with all the worksheets she brings home, and she's also seeking out other challenges on her own. To some extent I'm even glad that things aren't feeling hard because it does give her confidence, and I know it'll get hard pretty fast eventually and I'd like to maximize her excitement about school as long as possible, .