At a Loss

I'm trying to muddle thru 1st grade with the kids and homework with them, adding new grey hairs daily. Which reminds me to color my hair tonight...

Anywho when it comes to homework my son has more. He has 15 or so spelling words each week and I have him get his writing tablet out and have him write the words across the line then then next word next line and so on til he's done. He gets a handwriting grade so to me this is practice for writing and spelling. Two Birds one stone right? Well he stalls...and stalls and stalls. Last night took him 2 whole hours to write the 15 or so words across the line, depended on the length of the word some might have been 6 times and others 10. Other times I ask him to write them 4 to 6 times each.

He has trouble with "a" he does a circle with a line that looks like a "c" so it lookes like oc not a. So I ask him to redo those so he gets practice so his teacher don't count off, because oc instead of a could make it a whole nother word right?

Back to Stalling: Its anything from, he's cold, his legs hurt, he's bored, he's tired, he's hungry (and just ate) then the sniffles and tears come, then the heavy erasing of paper where tears are thus tearing the paper up.

It was pretty outside so I let them both ride there bikes before homework, then let them play nintendo ds for a minute to wind down. And told them both after both had home work done we would play Wii. We never made it to Wii or even turned the TV on last night because he stalled for 2 hours. Then it was bed time.

I love my kids and want them to learn all they can. He says he wants to go back to preschool where they don't do work. Son if it could only be SO easy. We've tried to explain that everything he does or wants to be in life you have to know how to spell and read. No way around it.

Any suggestions on homework, Other than do the work 1st before playing. Because looks like we won't be playing til Summer break if this keeps happening. And its been happening since September, just getting worse.