With Sophia’s 5th birthday fast approaching I have been wondering what all the other people on this forum have been thinking about doing with your child’s schooling now they are of age to go to school?
As most of you know Sophia got accepted for early entry at her Montessori school and started school this year instead of next year under the new age rulings here in South Australia. It got me thinking that so many of you now have children of school age and I am just busting to know how many of you will continue on at home or will be sending your children to school?
My son will turn 5 this November. He went to a Montessori school. We got his report card and thanks to EL that we have done at home, everything is exceeding school’s expectations.
The Montessori tutition fees are expensive so we decided send him to a public Catholic school this September. He is going to school full time and I am considering sending him to a public French immersion school when he goes to Grade 1.
My son is an only child but very social. We can see that he wants friends and loves being around other children. School is the best for him and he is really excited about going to his new school.
We live in Canada.
I will teach him at home after school, though. I will choose my subjects to teach according to his school curriculum.
We are homeschooling. My kids will be in gymnastics, the local children’s choir, and go to story time at the library, as well as continuing to interact with our neighbors, and I think this is enough to meet their social needs. My oldest is actually 1st grade age, my second still in preschool. I think any benefit they would have going to public school would be social. I know my son especially would have been very bored in public school and I can see how that would potentially turn him into a “problem child”. My 4-year-old on the other hand would probably do well in public school. She would be bored with the materials, but she is so eager to please adults and is quite popular among the neighbor kids. I’m still going to homeschool her, but I can see with their different personalities that one would do well in the PS environment and the other most certainly would not. I just think if they aren’t going to learn anything academically, I don’t have any good reason to send them to public school.
I have lots of other philosophical, personal reasons for wanting to homeschool as well though. I come from a family where homeschooling is our culture, not public school. I want to freely use materials that don’t conflict with my religion. I don’t want to deal with vaccine exemption forms. I’m concerned about the Common Core and it’s resulting tracking and questionable materials being used in the USA. I homeschool because I love being with my kids and I enjoy watching them learn. Where they are “gifted”, their education has special considerations that the public schools can’t/won’t provide. Public school was designed to give the masses a basic education and I think it does that job very well. It wasn’t designed to produce the cream of the crop, which is why many rich families either send their children to private schools, or homeschool by way of hiring tutors.
Still, public school does offer the benefit of watching your children for you, and the kids do do a lot of fun things in Kindergarten, like painting and such. I am not trying to talk anyone out of going to public school, or make anyone feel guilty if it’s not a possibility or you simply don’t want to do it. These are simply our reasons for homeschooling.
We are homeschooling Ella. She turned 5 a few days ago so she should technically be starting kindergarten this September. We recently moved back to the USA and now live in an amazing city where the public school system is not quite so stellar. But, because my hubby is faculty at a major university hospital, we are entitled to a huge discount at its affiliated K-12 private school. The private school is exceptional, has been ranked repeatedly among the top five prep schools in the USA, curriculum and extra-curricular activities look awesome, the campus and facilities are spectacular, numerous well-known personalities among its alumni, etc etc. So, it was really a BIG struggle for us to decide between this private school and homeschooling. We decided to take homeschooling one year at a time. Next year, I will go tour the private school again and re-examine our decision.
In the meantime, Ella is thriving in our homeschool setting. She is a very social and vivacious little person, and we meet her need to be around other kids by enrolling in a lot of extra activities. We do school in the mornings and she goes to different classes in the afternoons each day of the week - kung fu, Suzuki violin, art/painting, Spanish, French, Yamaha musicland, abacus, and ballet. It sounds exhausting, but she is loving it! and is even asking to add Japanese lessons!
E. is also taking ballet classes from the Royal Academy of Ballet, she actually had her first performance in professional big stage ballet production a few weeks ago at 4.5 and did wonderfully. Both of our kids 4.5 and 3 yo, have advanced social skills and lots of friends. We travel a fair bit and they get a lot of world-schooling as well.
My DD will be 6 in September and depending which state she might have lived on could have missed the cut off and been in preK this year - however where we live schools run Jan-Dec so she is supposed to be halfway through K now. She is homeschooled as is my now 2 year old. As far as socialisation - she does dance class once a week and gymnastics once a week and we have a Moms and Tots groups for the 2 year old that she also attends (I do not expect her to take part - she can if she wants to as there are some 4 and 5 year olds there, but she can also read to herself or do sticker books if she chooses) and a homeschool group for children age 0-13 - all once a week. She has made friends at the homeschool group that we see for playdates during other times too. She also attends Sunday school on Sunday mornings.
I live in South Africa and the state of our public education is abyssmal and private education is extremely expensive and also not at a wonderful level - well certainly not for what you are paying for it - there are some good, some average and some terrible private schools here though that applies to our public schools too - its just hard to get a spot in the better ones and you still have to pay about half of what the private schools cost each month then. I choose homeschooling because of answers to questions I had about what they would do with my DD who was already reading at an advanced level and whose math was beyond kindergarten level before she entered kindergarten - they said she would get extra work but have to take part in everything with the rest of the class - my DD is highly active and needs less work and more play and exercise. She would be diagnosed as ADHD in schools in this country and yet if appropriately challenged she does pay attention. So homeschooling it is and she is doing well with it.
My oldest was 4 in April and in the UK we start school the following September. So she will be starting reception class then. She will be attending our local village school within walking distance and with many local friends who attend the same nursery. We chose school because the school culture is important to us ( thank you Tamsyn for helping me to articulate this!) and also because I work part-time.
I was happy with the school when I visited last year and they seemed very open to working with a child at a more advanced level but I will keep a close check and monitor what happens. She has easily completed the reception year curriculum for maths and further for reading. I plan to afterschool as far as possible. This first year is part of an early years foundation curriculum that follows from preschool and is largely play based. I have no problem with this - I think she will have a lot of fun at school for this year and we can cover a lot of academic ground in small steps at home as we do now. I may start another thread for advice on after schooling! But actually I think most challenging work (maths!) will be best done in the morning before school and then leave general reading and piano for after school when she is tired and grumpy.
Lily will turn 5 late November. (Wow, time FLIES!) She misses the cut off for american kindergarten, but we are in the middle of moving to Japan anyway by October. When we get there, we will enroll her in Japanese kindergarten. I will still be afterschooling a limited amount to ensure she does not fall behind, especially if I should chose to put her in English school at some point. Same goes for Owen (3.5). We’ll be focusing on on math, reading, and music for the most part. For September/October, the family I am staying with is encouraging me to put one or both kids in the local preschool. I am not 100% sold on the idea. She has done preschool and has had fun, but it’s mostly just been having fun and giving me a break. It would be for such a short time, it seems like a waste. We’ll see.
Aangeles, how is Ella doing and what is she up to these days? I’ve been dying for an update on her, so if you don’t mind sharing one, would you? I’m particularly interested in how you are keeping her challenged and engaged in math, music and languages. How is her Spanish and French coming, seeing as how those languages aren’t spoken in the home?
Would you mind giving the BK community an update about Ella. (And Ella has a little sister now, right? How is she?)
My middle child is 5, and will turn 6 in the late fall/early winter. We are already established as a homeschooling family, and he hated the preschool experience due to the increasingly ridiculous regimentation and regulations, and finds peers in kids up to 6 years older than himself. We will be resuming involvement in the excellent all-homeschool choir an hour’s drive away led by a former music teacher who is now a homeschool mom.
I see a lot of comments on how social people’s kids are, and either that as a reason to school, or else a bunch of organized activities as how they will provide a social life despite homeschooling. It probably varies a lot by region, but in my state, there are enough homeschoolers that they have their own prom for those who want that, and having a positive social life is more often given as a reason NOT to send kids to schools. But I know there are people in isolated areas where they either can’t get along with the local homeschoolers (such as being the only ones who don’t disavow evolution, for instance) or else, there just aren’t any to speak of. And in that case, if school is the only way for a child to have friends, that would be another kettle of fish, although there are still such things as scouts, 4-H, and so on.
Since my son finds peers in boys several-to-many years older than himself, school would be a more socially isolating experience. As it is, by not going, he can enjoy friendships with other local homeschooled boys who are 4-6 years older than he is. That would be impossible if he went to school.
My daughter is the same…her best friends are girls several years older than herself, and that would be hard or impossible, in school. She just feels like girls her age are much, much younger, and I can see the difference when she is with girls her age. She’s nice to them of course, but it’s like playing with and being nice to a small child. Fine for a while, but after that, she needs girls who are her peers, regardless of age. And by homeschooling, she gets to have that.
