Reina and homework

In the last 2 1/2 weeks, I have done a lot of homework with Reinita.  She is 11 and in the 2nd grade.  She went to Kindergarten twice and 1st grade twice, but according to Honduran law, she cannot stay in a grade for more than two years.  She has learned her letters and numbers really well, but when it comes to putting the letters into words, she is lost. 

The school that the kids go to gives a lot of really stupid busy work.  Last week, one night that had to find 20 words with AC, 20 with EC, 20 with OC, and 20 with UC along with 20 with AD, 20 with OD, and 20 with UD.  On top of that they had to write a sentence with every single word.  This would have taken any second grader a long time, but it took Reina about 15 hours to finish it over the course of the weekend.  That was the Thursday night homework, Friday night's homework was equally as dumb, but not quite as extensive.  I started working with her after chores were done on Saturday morning, and we worked until bedtime Sunday night. 

Sometimes Reina couldn't even copy the words correctly.  She would copy half a word from one line and half from another.  On one set of her sentences, she would write until the end of the line and then start the next sentence.  It didn't matter to her that she had not finished the entire sentence.  I'm not even sure if she realized it.  My paitience is stretched sometimes when I work on homework with her, but I am so proud of her when she actually finishes something.

Last night, I was once again helping her on homework.  She had to have 10 words written in cursive for every letter of the alphabet.  She really got tickled when I didn't know how to write my capital letters in cursive.  I always hated cursive, and I'm not sure if I ever really learned to write the capital letters in it.  I wish you could have heard Reina laugh when I was trying to make her to her homework and even I didn't know how to make my cursive letters right.  I guess it is time that I go back to second grade.