Is it just me, or is Kindergarten hard these days?

If there is one thing I love, it's mommy homework. Um, or not. With four kids we do get our fair share of homework around here. For the most part they can get their work done on their own, except for a project here or there. We don't get into the parent doing kid's project routine so our kid's projects end up looking like, well, looking like they did it themselves. We have kid who is a hand holder that requires, well, just that. Enter Kindergarten and our 4th student beginning the process. Suddenly it's like I am homeschooling. Daily. After she has spent a half day being schooled. The amount of homework is ridiculous. I am not new to the over achieving teacher, but they are the kind I want to avoid more than any other. But this teacher has a ridiculous amount of homework that requires my participation ... I mean, hello, it's Kindergarten. We have to sign off on a weekly list of things we are done with how much time we spent on it... new sight words, baggie books, flashcards, reading, etc. If I miss checking off anything, I get a frowny face or question mark alerting me to the error of my ways. Seriously! This is of course on top of the daily homework ... those worksheets where they copy letters, write words, etc. I do not remember any of my other kids having any sight words this early in Kindergarten. (Perhaps Pennsylvania is a more relaxed place as far as Kindergarten goes... that is where all 3 of our other kids started school?). Bonus for us is that last week they also added spelling words to the weekly chore list. Spelling words. I think I am on the bad list for slacker moms, as I get reminders that I need to be quizzing Ava more and more and more ... she must be falling behind since she doesn't know all her sight words yet. If I wanted to homeschool, don't you think I would be homeschooling? Oh, and so Ava has missed the last two days of school. She has been miserable with a fever. Then today I got an email reminder that she has two days for every missed day to get her missed work turned in. Sigh. Oh the joys.