I don't have a "what worked well" story, but I'll tell you my "what I wish I'd done" story.
If I could go back, I'd probably homeschool until 3rd grade when the gifted pull-out program started.
The kids I see who were homeschooled in the younger years just seem so confident and self-assured. It kind of makes me wonder if we don't put them in school too young.
Also, I think that K, 1st, and 2nd were the hardest grades in terms of accommodation because so much effort was put into the non-readers.
Funny because that is just what I did for my older son homeschooled 1-3 and part of 4. Worked great for him. He doesn't really learn faster, just is really serious and a deep thinker. 6-8th grade he has been in a special program that is a academy within a bigger school and that has worked for him.
What worked for my younger son was being a pretty easy going kid k-1st and having just the right 2nd grade teachers (he had two who team taught) and differentiated (not just lip service) reading/language arts and accelerated his math (just walked over to the third grade storage room and grabbed a text book, work book and test booklet and taught him third grade math during 2nd grade). His rate of learning is very fast and we did a grade skip after second grade. That worked for this year. Next year we are going to just try to survive 5th grade with differentiation and then homeschool 6-8th.
