My Kid's Too Smart and I'm Complaining

School is in session and we are in first grade this year. Six weeks into the new school year, I'm stressing. I don't think Oldest's teacher is challenging him enough. It's to the point that I woke up the other night at 4 am and tossed and turned about the situation until six am. Hubby said that one night while sleeping I started yelling out, "Who are you picking up from school!!!" He thought I was nuts but after I evaluated the situation, I believe my yelling is related to his teacher. I'm no dream analyzer but it made sense to me.

My anxiety really began about three weeks ago when I sent Oldest's teacher a very friendly email "inquiring" about suggestions for homework. For three weeks we were doing "silly work," as Oldest put it. At first I thought the teacher was still trying asses each child's strengths and weaknesses so I tried to be patient. But after three weeks of Oldest completing homework that resembled what he was doing the first week of the previous year, I was concerned. We are at the same school so I can't figure this all out.

For example, the goal of the math homework is to practice questions so that the student can complete 30 problems in three minutes by Thursday. He does all 30 on Monday in about 45 seconds. One time he was done in 32 seconds, no joke. The reading instructions are to first read the book to the child, second day, read every other page to the child, see if child can read the other pages, and Wednesday and Thursday the child should try to read the book alone with most words correct. He's reading the book from start to finish on Monday. I don't even bother to read the book past Monday because it's silly. Last year, his teacher had the children reading a series of books and each child moved on to the next book at his or her own pace. Oldest was done with the series for the entire year by March so his teacher moved him on to another series suitable for second graders. We were so proud. He didn't finish the series by the end of the year so the remaining books were on our summer reading list. We worked our booty's off to ensure that we finished the entire series by the end of the summer. This year, the entire class reads the same books. So now I've resorted to reading our own books at home.

Back to the email I sent the teacher, when I told her our situation and asked for tips on what to do, she said that she doesn't give separate homework to the children, but recommended some websites to do for "fun" and to read our own books that would challenge him more. Okay, I understand she doesn't want to custom fit homework for 20 children, however, how about she work on one program that allows the teacher to select different levels of work for various students? Why can't she by like last year's teacher?

So now what? I have no idea. But my kid better start coming home with homework he finds too difficult or else I'm going to have to send another email and I can't figure out how to make it sound nice.