I started looking into homeschool this summer. My 7yo dd has gone to public K and 1st. It's a high performing school and as the kids get older there is an increasing amount of pressure on the kids (and teachers, and parents) to well...perform. By the time 1st grade was over she was so frustrated and overwhelmed that she just kind of gave up on herself. Which is why I started looking into homeschool. I think hs would be a good fit for her and she's all for it. My 5yo son on the other hand does not want to homeschool at all. He spent the last two years going with me to drop his sister off and school and see her come home with all of the fun crafts, make friends, go on field trips, etc. So he really wants to go to "regular school." He would be in the same class as my daughter was in, we know the teachers and they work really hard to make things fun for the kids despite the pressure from the administration and the district. My son is also naturally academically inclined, so he wouldn't struggle with that as much as my daughter did. As much as I think homeschool would be better for him in the long run, I think letting him go to public school for K would be fine. It was a good year for my daughter despite the high expectations for academics. I've seen other people mention not homeschooling all of their kids (I can't seem to find the threads though..). I'm not sure I have a question here. I guess I'm just thinking out loud. I'd love to get some feedback about this though. Thanks, Nancy
I have a friend who has one child in ps and one in hs. It works well for both kids the respond to each choice for each child better.
There isn't a right or wrong answer to this, really... A year of public school kindergarten is unlikely to hurt your son - on the contrary, he'd probably think it was fun! And it would be easier in a lot of ways to work your way into homeschooling with only one poppet around. If you know it's a good school, and your son wants to go, that's completely up to you and your husband.
The one thing we learned above all else is to do what's right for the child. Different children have different needs and personalities. What works for one might not for another. We've used all three options - public school, private school, and homeschooling - and for some of the time all three at once. If we could do it over again, I wouldn't change anything.
Homeschooling allows us to meet the unique needs of each one of our children. If one child is doing great in school and another is doing great at home then you have made the best choice for each child. Have fun homeschooling!
I have never homeschooled all my children at once. I think my oldest would have been way better off if he had homeschooled during this time. BUT, that being said, I am glad he went off to school in the early years. I started homeschooling the year he was in 3rd grade. Kindergarten really is not much seat time and I am more of a seat work kind of mom. I am also in to child led learning and do not want to spend hours trying to interact with a small child that would rather be with other children. I have a 5 and 7 yr old now and I find myself sort of hoping that the 5 yr old will go to kinder this fall. Kinder is just such a hard age to me. I am not at all worried about bringing him back home later. Most children by around 7 or so want to homeschool as far as I can tell. And since they already did the public school thing, they are not sitting at home wondering what is going on up at that school.
I have a 5 yr old as well, and when we started thinking about homeschooling she didn't want to, she wanted to go to K. Well over the last few weeks my daughters (10 and 8) and I have been talking about homeschooling and meeting up with our homeschool group, we even took a field trip with them, and now my 5 yr old wants to homeschool. She wanted to go to school, just like yours, for the kids, crafts and field trips, but when she realized we would be playing with kids in our co-op group and taking field trips with them, she changed her mind. But, on the other hand, if she never changed her mind and wanted to go to school for K I would have sent her. K and 1st seemed to go well for my older 2, even though i'm sure one year of watching the older 2 stay home and learn and her having to get up and go to school everyday she would have changed her mind then anyway. Just do what you feel you should and now that you can always change your mind.
Our two older kids will be at different places this year. DS6 will be homeschooled for 1st Grade (private school for two years of preschool, public for K) and DD4 will do her second year of preschool at the same school DS attended. I am absolutely with the poster who said K is hard for her. I feel like there is such a foundation being set at that age (and in our kids' cases, the two years before), and that I am not capable of setting it myself. I know that's probably just a lack of confidence on my part, but I do not regret sending DS to public school -- even if it was a total repeat from pre-K. In fact, we intend to send DD to public school for Kindergarten. (That reminds me. DS mentioned to his K teacher that he wanted to be homeschooled just a few months after the start of the school year. Teacher "confronted" us at the conferences a few weeks later, telling DS that he "wouldn't get to play with [his] friends and [he'd] be really lonely if [he] homeschooled!" :roll It's so cliche, but I believe a child's success at public school depends highly on their personality. I think DD would do really well at public school beyond just K, because she is fairly complacent, agreeable, a "pleaser," makes friends easily. DS is not quite the way. He is an absolute joy to be around, but is not very confident in himself socially, is easily distractable, and just generally a typical, NORMAL 6-year-old. The main reason we probably will NOT keep DD in public school beyond K is because of the "outside influence." While DS had a lot of fun, made some great friends, and enjoyed his time at school, he picked up things from classmates that made me wonder! It might actually work in your favor to have DS at school so that you can focus on DD's first year at home. Good luck!
Because I worked f/t back then, both my boys were in private school, the oldest til the middle of 3rd grade, the younger through the end of pre-K4. The oldest was pulled out due to lots of reasons...really, I think lots of bad things fell into place so that I'd finally obey the nudgings of God to homeschool the poor child! By then, my job had ended and for the remainder of that year we had one at home and one in school. Personally, I hated how I wanted the freedom of homeschooling but still had to structure all our time around the school's schedule. I think my 2nd DS would thrive in any environment. He really enjoyed school, and he's done well with HS. The only trouble I still encounter at times is that when the work gets "tough" here at home (and really, I'm not all that tough!) he says he wants to go back to school. His older brother and I remind him that his only memories of school is that it's basically playtime...but it isn't like that anymore for a kid his age. (Starting 2nd grade this year). DS1 was in school long enough to find out it's not all fun and games; while DS2 still has only the fondest memories of playing all day. Sometimes I think it would be good for him to go back to school to see what it's really like, but our local PS's aren't very good and we can't afford private. So I just have to let him have his fun with our HS group, etc.
Nancy, I have one that I will be homeschooling this year and one I'm sending off to public school. We started homeschooling our son due to a bad public school kindergarten experience. The school staff, principal, the pressures of kindergarten and our son's personality were some reasons why we decided to homeschool. There were bullying issues at the school too (including the staff and principal in my opinion). The school basically forced us to do something that the district handbook stated otherwise. The Child Study Team meetings that we had to attend and those types of things irked us. Our son was having a hard time getting used to learning in a large group of noisy children and he had difficulty with his fine motor skills, which caused him frustration and anxiety. At the kindergarten age my son was the quiet anxious sensitive crying type of kid. The school psychologist suggested social skills class once a week for my son. I must admit that did give him some tools to use to deal with things. The social skills class also made my son wonder if he was a bad kid because he was put in a special class with the kids who were bullies to him. The pressures that they put on little kindergartners though I thought were ridiculous! Our son at home (in a fairly quiet environment) was a completely different kid. He could be himself at home. He also could show me what he knew at home, but in school the teacher couldn't see it sometimes (either he was too anxious to show her or she just didn't have time to notice with 22 other kindergarten students). Also, the little students at the school had only 20 minutes of lunch (actually about 14 or 15 minutes by the time they sat down) and had to stuff their faces fast. They had a mandatory no talking time the last 10 minutes too. My son was sooo anxious at lunch he just shoved food in his face and wouldn't talk to anyone (not even hubby and I when we went to visit/volunteer). I asked him why and he said he didn't want to get into trouble for talking besides, "lunch is for eating, not for talking". The students would lose stickers on their grade level sticker chart if they talked during no talking time. Also, half of the small cafeteria's lights would go out to quiet the kids down. Another thing was that the hot lunch and cold lunch kids couldn't sit together to save on seating and eating time. Anyway, we've homeschooled our son for 1st and 2nd and are about to start 3rd grade. We have had great days and we've had our bad days, but overall it's been soooo much better than his public school experience! My daughter is about to start public school kindergarten this fall at a different school and in a different district. I'm hoping it is much better than our last experience with a public school. Currently, dd attends summer school there and everything is going well. I've been treated much better at this district and this school than the place my son attended. No one has yelled at me, no one has told me "to let go now" and no one has made me feel like a bad parent (yet anyway). DD also has a very different personality than my son too. She seems to be rather outgoing especially with other children. My son does better with adults and has a more difficult time with large groups of children. He does fine with one-on-one or up to 5 other kids. My hubby and I decided that our daughter could try kindergarten at this different school (8 minutes away by car instead of son's former school that was 2 minutes away). If this particular school doesn't work out we might be able to homeschool our dd too. If we fall in love with this particular school, we are possibly thinking our son could go to the school in 2010/11. Another reason we signed dd up for school (and actually our ds too, but we withdrew him already) was because we thought hubby was going to lose his job this past April and that I would have to find work for financial reasons. The same day my kids were accepted to the school we found out dh wasn't going to lose his job (at least until the end of January now), so we decided to keep our son out and our dd in. There are a few other factors that we considered as well.
I have one in ps and hs the other. My oldest started off in ps and then we hsled for a while then he decided he wanted to go back to ps. My youngest has never went to ps and he doesn't want to, well not yet any ways.
We homeschool two of ours and one is in PS. This works for now but we will monitor the PS child (starting HS) and see how things go.
Thank you all so much for replying. I feel soooo much better about this decision now. I still have to run it past my husband, who is on the fence about homeschooling anyway. I think looking at each choice as what is best for each of our kids at whatever particular time they are at in their lives might help him to be more open to the idea of homeschooling in general. Nancy
In our first year of Homeschooling I only HS ds#1...both dd(who was a Sr. and ds#2 went to public school) Now, with just the boys at home I am going to do both boys. I don't want to be too tied to the public school schedule. That being said, I have some reservations about HS the younger one. (he doesn't struggle like ds#1 but he argues about everything...and then pouts.) We will see how it goes. I enjoyed just having one boy home...we really got to know each other better than ever and that one on one time, well no one will be able to take that away from us ever. Do what your children need.
