DS5, our only child, is finishing his 2nd year of PT private preschool. We sent him starting at 3 because that's what everybody did around here. In retrospect, one year would have been plenty.

Because we have just the one child, we are fairly new in the town we live in, and DS was never in day care, one of the biggest benefits for DS was exposure to other kids. He is not really making any great friends at this point, and I don't know if it's age-related or personality-related. He is certainly friendly with all the kids, but I think he's just too young to be making good friends. Another benefit is that he learned how to listen to, behave for, and follow the rules of another adult (besides his parents/grandparents). The other benefit was that I could do some freelance work while DS was in school.

Next year we plan to send DS to public kindergarten, with differentiation. The benefits include my going back to work (hopefully!). With luck, other benefits will include DS learning how to write/spell, which he resists at home, and continuing to learn all kinds of new things. We hope that he likes school. We shall have to wait and see. The major "con" i can see so far is that there are not kids at DS's level in town, and so a lot of the time he will probably be the only one learning a particular topic. But that is how it would be if he were homeschooled too, so I guess it's not really a con if just comparing school to homeschool.

We know that we may have to make several adjustments to our school plan as time goes on, so our overall plan is just to remain flexible.