Not-for-credit homework is the way to go IMO. Kids that don't have stable home lives shouldn't be punished with work they are unlikely to be able to complete. Not to mention that it's good to normalize the work day being over when you're off the clock. 
this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2024
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chapotraphouse
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For real! My heart broke a bit last year when a kid told me "I read the [thing] to my cat because no one else wanted to listen to me."
And on the other hand there was this one kid who was a god at Qu'uran recitation (he would do it as a distraction strategy is how I know) but he needed to work on his phonics skills a lot who would memorize our little readers that we would send home by having his mom read it to him so he wouldn't have to develop his decoding skills in class. So happy for mans but we had to ban him from supplemental work because it was harming his growth.
Then give those parents homework.
Love giving reinforcement “assignments.” It’s great when you find a game that they prefer to play over Fortnite for a week or so.
I had a lot of success with take-home Zentangle activities for lower elementary.
I'm jealous.
I was pressured to give out homework by the standardized bullshit plague that infested CA that was enforced by the principal. I'd have enjoyed if it was just 
being assholes and wanting to drain all the joy out of their kids' childhoods.
My pet theory is that this stems from the cultural rot that demands to see performance “metrics”. If the suits can’t see numbers on a sheet of paper you might as well not have been doing anything.
I haven’t had a single job without some petty tyrant with a Caesar complex fucking things up for the sake of it and demanding that everyone do meaningless shit so they can be quantifiably “doing something”.
Yeah, my immediate superiors were busybody shitheads just like that, even visiting the classroom just to feel important and try to find things "out of place."
No wonder so many lanyard liberals call people "meat computers:" *that's what they expect when they have control over others.
They just want their kids to ask them questions so they can feel smarter than a fifth grader.
Let them complain. Unless you can justify a pedagogical reason to give homework at that age, don't do it.
As someone sort of in education and also sort of a parent (both long stories) I liked it when homework came along because I knew what was being worked on and was able to reinforce it at home with examples of everyday tasks that require say, geometry or fractions.
What is the socialist approach to homework? Because it's more or less necessary in high school and definitely required in college, but how do you prepare for that without causing undue stress?
Graded homework is a great way to reinforce and expand classroom learning when the material conditions at home allow for academic success.
If a child doesn’t have a learning environment at home then homework is just going to be a burden. OP is doing a great thing by giving their students nongraded homework. It’s good practice for the students to find a place/time at home to do a fun, low stakes activity at home.
Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest
Eight hours for what we will;
Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest
Eight hours for what we will.
The beasts that graze the hillside,
And the birds that wander free,
In the life that God has meted,
Have a better life than we.
Oh, hands and hearts are weary,
And homes are heavy with dole;
If our life's to be filled with drudg'ry,
What need of a human soul?
Shout, shout the lusty rally,
From shipyard, shop, and mill.
Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest
Eight hours for what we will;
Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest
Eight hours for what we will.
If sixteen years of in-class education isn't enough for people to learn everything they need to know, just keep adding years.
(I don't think that is likely to actually be needed, kids can learn way faster than they are now by making sure they have better home lives, reducing classroom sizes, and improving teachers' conditions.)
It is sad that some parents still have that mindset SMH
I think your idea of going the not for grade credit is spot on. You are taking care of your students even beyond the classroom while keeping the parents and school system "happy". I wish the whole system was different so we wouldn't have to worry about petty stuff like this. Petty coming from school authorities, not petty coming from you.
You're spot on with the reinforcement idea. For early elementary kids, maybe 10 min worth of work. Don't grade it. It's a practice activity, not a test.