To homeschool or not

Louise

Avalinette said:

My oldest is due to start school this coming January so we have some decisions to make. She will still only be 4 (nearly 5) so I'm a little conflicted about whether kids that young should be in institutionalised education at all. Regardless, we have some decisions to make. We've been carving out a bit of time the last few months to do a bit of homeschooling to see how we go with that. She loves it and will often ask to do homeschool (it's the maths and handwriting worksheets she loves best). I'm struggling to find the energy to keep it up though and with a new baby on the way, it'll be even harder to keep up next year.

We've got no worries on the academic side of things: she's really motivated and is already nearly a year ahead on literacy and numeracy. She's a lot less good at other things: she's not quite independent with dressing, toileting etc; she doesn't like participating in group activities (eg. she's 'tired' and lies down during singing time) and suffers from separation anxiety. So, she certainly doesn't want to go to school and maybe it will be a bad fit for her/she needs some more maturity first, but maybe she'll learn these skills/ mature in a school environment.

If we decide to keep her home, legally we can and don't have to do anything: it's only when she turns 6 that we're legally expected to register as a homeschooling family and let a government official see what curriculum we're using etc.

One possibly downside though is that if we keep her home and then want to send her to first grade when she's 5 turning 6, she'll be in school with kids who are used to the school routine and she might be even more of a non-conformist than she is now making it harder to fit in.

Another difficulty with homeschooling is that it'll be harder for her to find friends (though she's not nearly as interested in people as in things). Our church is a bit sparse on kids her age group and there don't seem to be homeschooling groups/co ops in our local area (we may have to drive 1/2 - 1 hour). We've really struggled to make connections to local kids her age partly because most of them are already in daycare/preschool from 2-3 years old.

So, what do you guys think? I'd especially like to hear from homeschoolers.

my personal experience is that they are usually happy at school when very young - it's later they run into problems.   I would start them off in school and see how it goes.  you can always take them out later if they start to hate it, which is what we did.

Avalinette

Thanks @Louise . I guess that kind of is what we're planning.

Avalinette

I see, @Louise that you're in England. My hubby will need to move for work in 2018 and one of the possibilities is that we'll end up in the UK. What's homeschooling in the UK like from your perspective?