First, my dd has mild dyslexia and really struggles with reading the passages alone. She can do CTC fine and she reads fairly well but these small passages overwhelm her. So on the first day's assignment, I have to read the assignment to her. Plus, I am finding that the vocabulary in these books is very high level and I am having to explain what a lot of these sentences mean. I usually read it twice - first one time through and then line by line to help her get a better picture in her mind. This always take 20 -25 minutes and that is normal. Next is the grammar activity. Honestly, it is a great activity but I hate it! It takes FOR...EV...ER! I feel like we could easily spend 45 minutes on it. I have gotten to the point that we only work on it for 25 minutes and whatever we got done in 25 minutes is what we got done. The actual writing part is going fine but then this past assignment, she had to describe a place in which you appeal to the reader's sense. I guess we picked a hard one because we sat that the table for 40+ minutes brain storming the things asked of by the assignment. When we were done, we had a very large list and I think she is going to now have a long paper. I noticed in the assignment she gets 2 days to write the paper so I feel good about that at least.
But I guess I feel like I have to sit there with her the whole time for this item. I didn't anticipate that for this year! Last year in Preparing she did not struggle at all with the writing. But this year, she is struggling with using specific words so badly I am having to give her my undivided attention so that she can finish and not spend a lot of time redoing. For example, this writing assignment wants her to describe a place so well that a blind person could see it. So she picked the place we stayed in NC on the beach. But when she would describe things, she would use generic adjective, but not one that actually described. So for the house, she said it was beautiful. I told her beautiful doesn't tell me what it looks it. So then she came up with 3 stories and all of the house were many colors. She later listed that they were all on stilts as well. We talked about how to get to the beach. She said you walk outside and you are there. Uhm...no. If you walk outside, you are on the balcony

So I guess the questions is - is this normal? Did you all find you had invest this amount of time into your children's writing for this book? Are my expectations too great for a 9 year old (she will be 10 in 1 month)? I have come to terms that I am find investing this time. But I also realize that my descriptive abilities for this assignment will obviously exceed hers and I don't want to have unrealistic expectations for her. She doesn't usually seem "frustrated" when we are done. But it does seem like the assignment wears her out a bit because she has to think pretty hard. Again, she hasn't complained, this is just me noticing it in her.
Andy thoughts and advice would be great.