The title says it all. Are you currently homeschooling your DC(s), or have you in the past? What is your family's level of satisfaction with homeschooling?

I'll start: I'm unofficially homeschooling DS3, and will begin "officially" homeschooling him for kindergarten when he turns 4 in the autumn. In practice, homeschooling currently involves borrowing and reading oodles of library books, visiting museums and local attractions, spending lots of time playing outside, travel, play dates, science experiments, concerts, and free play. In practice, next year probably won't be much different, but will be a logical continuation of a child-led approach in an enriched environment at a higher level of complexity and difficulty.

DS is an extremely energetic child, which requires extensive parental energy, but our satisfaction with our current arrangement is very high. DS' cognitive needs would not be met in a traditional brick and mortar school at this age, as he satisfies his curiosity by carrying on a one-on-one running conversation with me through much of the day. We both tremendously enjoy spending our time together.

My DD10 has been in a home/public school pendulum.

K - Public school for a couple months, was a disaster, homeschooled the rest of the year.
1st - Public school GT offerings increased, still not good, DD managed to make it through the year.
2nd - Public school got worse, yanked her out after a few months of failed advocacy, homeschooled through the rest of the 2nd curriculum and 3rd grade as well.
4th - After grade skip, 4th in public school went rather well. It was the only school year in public school that could be considered a successful fit.
5th - DD is complaining about learning nothing again, but still sticking it out in public.

We're openly considering homeschooling with K12 for 6th grade, and trying again with public in 7th, which is when her middle school would begin.

We did. PreK through, er-- well, I guess since we entered the school system when DD was in 3rd grade, that would be K through 3, although-- not really, since it was only a solid 18 months or so of what I consider active homeschooling, from when DD was just 4 until she was 6.

Successes:
Love of reading, literature, and word play
Love of science-- authentically so (as in, the process and making observations/hypotheses)
Love of numeracy (we used Singapore Math Primary Maths-- 1a through 3b, and have never again been so happy with a math curriculum)

Failures:
Written expression-- it was simply too easy for her to avoid doing this, and the activation energy required was too high to MAKE her do what she didn't want to. This is a personality issue as much as anything else.

At 6yo, the resistance on the latter front became positively eye-watering for us, and we were increasingly concerned that she was oupacing her written output to such an alarming degree (it was 6-8 grades and widening in reading comprehension and social studies, for example, and about 4-5 grades in science) that it was going to be disastrous to leave it underdeveloped much longer-- the arc of development had her into collegiate level materials before she could possibly cope with the written output, and what would we do then??

And no, this wasn't hypothetical or in the very distant future, by any means-- we weren't worried at first, and figured that it would "all even out" at some point. It wasn't until we started looking at what the arc was shaping up to be in various domains that we got concerned. She'd gone from what seemed to be fairly typical if bright 3yo to a 5yo who could read faster than many adults we know (and, um-- we know a lot of people with terminal degrees), and absorbed whatever she read with such breathtaking speed that she'd gone from more-or-less typical through elementary school content across MANY domains in about a year, maybe a touch more.

We weren't pushing her. She was just reading that avidly.

She could write her name more or less legibly, but otherwise, a single sentence was her limit in terms of written expression.

So, we entered her in the highest grade that her written output could conceivably support (3rd) and opted to strenuously hothouse that written output, which we did for the following 6 years before she "caught up" to grade level.

We saw that as a race against time-- we were providing drag on the other skills so that this one would be college-ready. She made that mark with about 18 months to spare, by the way-- her written output is clearly about 90th percentile, maybe better on a good day, among other high-performing college freshmen. (whew!)

Our satisfaction?

I can't say that I'm unhappy that we homeschooled her. I do wish that her personality had been amenable to that hothousing without the introduction of the cyberschool, because I think that placing her commensurate with her weaknesses taught her to give in to her perfectionistic demons.

She probably SHOULD have been placed at 6th grade upon entry-- if not for the organizational challenges and the writing, I mean. She was ready in most other respects, and it would have been far more suitable for far longer. We did do an additional acceleration, but it should have been two. Maybe three.

Then again, that would have put her into college before her writing and executive skills were ready for it, and would have required a LOT more parental input/oversight.

I don't know, honestly.

I love that homeschooling developed critical thinking skills gently-- through tons of open time to just explore, and to read and dream.

On the flip side of that, however, it didn't do a lot to prepare her to live by the rules of the world at large, and because of her LOG, she had to be ready for that a LOT sooner than most children.

I also can't envision anything but eclectic homeschooling really working for kids at high LOG; their burn rate on curriculum is truly eye-watering.

I have two kids, one HG+ and the other HGish with dyslexia. I homeschooled the older one (with dyslexia) from grade 2-10. He went to a private high school from grade 10.5 to grade 11.5 and then he went back to homeschooling (officially) but was dual enrolled full time at the community college. He graduated last June with a homeschool diploma/transcript and was accepted at his first choice college.

I homeschooled the other one from K-4. He then skipped 5th, did 6th at a private school, skipped 7th, and did 8th at the same private school. We decided to homeschool again this year for 9th.

Our experience is that the skips increased the executive skills demand without very much increase in cognitive demand--which made things doubly frustrating.

I'm still trying to figure out when and how to attempt entry into "real" school again.

Homeschooling was the best decision for us. Grade accelerations seem to work for about half the year and then my DD was back at the same level of boredom. We started with the younger DD earlier and for motivated kids, it works out great. We are able to work at the level that they need for different subjects and allow them to explore a lot more options. If we mistakenly move to fast, we just stop and review for a week. Much easier to do when you are already working over a year ahead anyway.

We plan to homeschool until High School. The good thing if you start early is that you can figure out whenever you want if you want to officially grade accelerate or not. We are waiting until High School because high school is more flexible with what a student can take in a certain grade level and there is always AP and Dual Enrollment.

Howler, with the benefit of hindsight, assume your DD was compliant in being hothoused on written output. Would your DD have been successful with a 6th grade + curriculum if she had a parent to scaffold the written output and shifted the majority of her course output to oral work?

I homeschooled my 2e older son 1st-3rd grade and half day 4th for half a year and then full day back in public school the second half. He is now in public high school. He did fine in public middle school. I kept expecting to need to pull him and homeschool him a bit in middle school but the school was just accommodating enough not to be forced to do that.

My younger son has been in public school K-5 with one grade skip. We are waiting to see about acceptance into 6th grade program we want him in. If he doesn't get in then we will homeschool 6-8th and put him back in public school for high school.

Oh yes-- definitely. We did just that as enrichment on the side, aquinas.

Unfortunately, it also meant that the material that she saw in honors/AP coursework in later on in high school was largely a rehash of stuff she had done at 7-11 yo.

She is amazing in Socratic/oral settings. Too bad that college isn't set up that way, let me just add, because she can't take written exams worth a darn (relative to her grasp of material, I mean).

Thanks Howler. I recently came to appreciate what you mean by eye-watering burn rate through curriculum.

A while back, I bought the Singapore Math essential kindergarten A and B math books out of curiosity about what the method involved, with no intention of using them with DS until next year. He pulled one off the shelf the other day, decided it was a "scientist's book", and wanted to do some of the exercises. It took less than 20 minutes for him to do one or two representative activities orally from each unit with 100% accuracy for the first of 2 K books. Granted, the material was REALLY easy, but at this rate, he'll be done a year of work in under an hour. Is that burn rate what I have to look forward to for the grade 1 material as well?! It's not like grade 1 math is meaty.

I'm thinking of holding off on purchasing the first grade book until the fall unless he asks for more books in the interim. I'm in no rush to be tethered to "school".

We haven't has as much success with homeschooling as others have. The academics are great and she makes great leaps and bounds, but then she just gets lonely and sad and unmotivated. She loves the classroom settings, the teachers and note taking and discussion but only with other motivated kids where there's actually a challenge.

We're doing a mix of things (external classes and online school) but it's definitely a least-worst kind of situation. We're also (and frankly always) on the hunt for better options.

If her temperament were different, homeschooling would work better and I think it would be a great option for kids with a high LOG.

Oh dear.

Yes, yes it does.

Yes you need to join a community where you can buy (used) and sell homeschool books.

And never write in a workbook (do the problems on a white board). If you want to keep something like a unit test or end of year test for a portfolio out of a consumable book photocopy that one test for use so you can keep it. Then you can sell the work book. It isn't fair that you spend much money on something that you have to force the kid not to do the whole thing in one or two sittings.

Grades K-1, full time public school
Grades 2-3 (first half of 3), part time public school
Grade 3 (second half of 3), sweet, sweet full time homeschooling

We transitioned from part time to full time homeschooling just a few months ago. It has been glorious in almost every way. DS is so darn happy, I keep asking myself, "Why didn't we do this earlier?" (But the answer is, "DS wasn't ready" - I can live with that.) He is all over the place with grade levels, like any highly asynchronous child. He works on his passions and strengths with delight (and some days I have to restrict his hours on these topics, otherwise he will work until he passes out at midnight). He works on the stuff he hates too. I get very little resistance though because it is just that much better to do those subjects at home.

Honestly, DS is like a different kid, in a lot of ways since we started the full time hsing. I'm surprised myself with the change I see in him. Was he really stifled that much in public school - even just attending part time? I think, yes. He has put those intellectual wings up high in the air and spread them waaaaayyyy out. He even gets along so much better with his siblings.

So, we are definitely sticking with this for now and will do this as long as it works for all involved. I'm beyond grateful that we can do this for him.

Another very happy homeschooler here. DD is 6, nominally in 2nd grade, and we've been homeschooling for about 4 months. She and I love the freedom to focus on whatever we want. Here's just one in-depth example:

We started on Story of the World, but I was unimpressed by the early chapters on prehistory. So I read her The Cartoon History of the World: The Stick and Stone Age, verbally supplemented by my own knowledge of human evolution. Then I started googling the neolithic revolution (agriculture, animal domestication, and, as a result, permanent cities) and created a quick powerpoint slide-show about Mehrgarh, precursor to the Indus Valley Civilization. You should have seen DD's eye's light up: "Is that for ME? You're making a lecture for ME?" I plan on doing the same for other first settlements in other parts of the world. (Note to self, what are the theories about why this started happening all over the world at around the same time? Is it an ice-age or end-of-ice-age thing? Must google . . .) Oh, and we're also reading The History of Money, the first two chapters deal with prehistory, so that ties in. Eventually we'll get back to Story of the World. Nobody's rushing us on a timeline.

And that's just history. We're also doing Science, Spanish, music, literature, and math. And amazingly, we're doing it all in just an hour or two a day. The rest of the time DD gets to run around like a crazy person. She goes to a "forest school" one day a week, and she has a ton of friends in the neighborhood (incl. one family of homeschoolers). I've noticed that the quality of her play has become deeper and richer. That could just be maturational, but it really feels like her mind has the freedom to breathe now.

This is my second year homeschooling. 3rd and 4th grade for DS9, 2nd grade for DD7 (she started this fall).

I am so glad we are homeschooling. Our local public school was a terrible fit for DS, and there are no nearby private schools that would have worked, either. I only wish we had pulled him out earlier, as he is still recovering from his bad school experiences. It was much easier to start homeschooling DD this year.

I do not love every minute of homeschooling. My kids are intense and emotional and introverted, as am I, and being around each other can sometimes drive us all nuts. Luckily, they are both excellent at finding stuff to do, so we can all go off to our own corners of the house for part of the day. I worry that I am not covering enough in our day (music? social skills? speech?). Am I doing enough to help them achieve their future goals? It was much easier to complain that their school wasn't doing enough, now it's all on me!

However, having them home all day beats getting calls from the principal and dealing with the daily afterschool meltdowns. I will never miss those!

We currently have no plans to send the kids back to school; we assess the situation year by year.

I homeschool my DS-just7 and DD-almost 5 and have since the beginning. It is a lifestyle that suits us well. I love the fact that our 4 core subjects are Piano, Math, Foreign Langauge, and Morning Pages, which I make up for the kids each day and include a smattering of everything else. They fill the rest of their days with play, art, programming, poetry, story writing, puzzles, building, biking, and so much more. It isn't without its challenges, but I suspect they pale in comparison to those we would face advocating for them in the schools. I left a tenure track academic job for this life and I have no plans to leave it

Hi Aquinas,

Count us in the homeschooling camp too. As you know, my son is almost exactly a year older than yours. However, where we live, he is legally ineligible to start kindergarten until he is almost 6 due to a late birthday (so that would be a year from September).

We have some curriculum, because he likes it, but really just read a lot, take field trips, and watch shows like Nova from PBS. I don't make him do anything academic at any time, but over a week, it evens out to a lot of coverage of material. Sometimes we "play school", but usually learning is just blended into everyday life, like fractions in cooking.

We do a great deal of outdoor play and I work hard to get him play time with other kids who are a good fit by setting up playdates at the park and driving when necessary. I had to overcome my own introvert tendencies and I now get the contact information of any family who seems a good fit when I see my son click with someone out.

Speaking of curriculum burn... On a whim, I bought the Singapore Math Primary Mathematics 1A textbook this week for fun. He was so excited. He did every problem (there are not many in the textbook) and finished it in 2 days (& actually very few hours). I bought 1B from Amazon but it hasn't arrived yet. These are pretty cheap in "Used-like new" condition. I bought 1A for under $7 including shipping. At this stage, I'm only buying the textbook because he doesn't need or like repetition. I knew from our conversational math throughout the day that he was above this when I bought it, but still thought he might like it. I think he'll blow through 1B in a similar timeframe. We are going to try Art of Problem Solving Beast Academy once we hit that level because I think it will be a good fit for him.

The other real curriculum I have is Bernard Nebel's Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding. I highly recommend it. My son loves to watch Nova and my husband finds all sorts of interesting science videos on YouTube. He knows more on certain science subjects than I covered in college classes.

Like you, we spend a lot of time at the library. We go through close to 400-500 pages a day of me reading to him, when he is in the mood. Other days, it is only bedtime stories (Max Axiom, super scientist). My son loves loves the Max Axiom series at bedtime. We go through 1 book a week and he asks to be read each one multiple times a day.

His handwriting is typical of an early writer and he still insists on writing with both hands. He writes with the right until it gets tired and then switches to the left. If he doesn't feel like writing, I'll scribe or just do whatever he is interested in orally. He likes to write notes for his dad. Some days I pull out some hieroglyphic stamps and leave him secret messages to decode (practice handwriting), because he is really excited by secret agents and codes right now.

We aren't really doing a formal language arts program yet. We talk about grammar and the parts of speech. He loves Mad Libs type stories where we ask for a series of nouns, adjectives, etc and then put his words into a silly story. When he is older and his writing output is stronger, we may try the Michael Clay Thompson series.

On some days, he honestly just watches PBS Kids and we play with his toys all day. I really just let him make the call of what to do, unless we have a scheduled commitment or I need to run errands, buy groceries, etc. (I absolutely police content though. Some books and shows are off limits at this age due to behavior I don't want to see at home.)

I was talking to a mom today with a son older than mine in public preschool two days a week. She was complaining about all of the standardized test prep he is doing. Apparently, they had tests in the fall and are prepping for a second set before school ends. I had no idea there were standardized tests in preschool. She was frustrated because her son's teachers were upset that he had done poorly on the how to open a book section. A child is supposed to take an upside down book, turn it right side up, and then open it. Her son likes to take the book, open it, and then turn it right side up. He has been forced to practice this each day in school for a significant amount of time and the teachers have asked them to practice at home. When asked why it mattered, she said the teachers insisted that it was essential to passing the test for him to do it the right way and that there would be dire consequences if he didn't do well. If true, this seems really strange to me. It was also clear from the conversation that the kids in the class are not reading yet and are not doing the typical arts/crafts/play activities I had expected. With the emphasis on circle time and specific rule following (without any explanation of why said rule is necessary), it really wouldn't be a good fit for our family.

I have another friend with a 6 year-old daughter in an expensive private school here with a good reputation. She was frustrated because her daughter started the kindergarten year already knowing how to do long division. She told the teachers this at the beginning of the year (& at several points throughout the year). Even though the year is almost over, her daughter is still bringing home math worksheets and homework with simple addition problems.

I apologize for the length of this message but thought it might be helpful because our sons are close in age. We are taking it year by year.

To directly answer your question... Current level of satisfaction is high (some days are better than others). We are taking it year by year, but for right now do not see a better option at this age and stage for our family.

We've homeschooled DD9 one from the beginning, other than preschool. We had her privately tested when she was almost 7, hoping to advocate for a grade skip, along with some adjustment issues. The private tester (who specializes in gifted kiddos) told us that the two worst things we could do were 1. put her in a regular classroom, or 2. "unschool" her.

We really already knew our local schools wouldn't meet her needs because she is the youngest of four, and we spent an enormous amount of time advocating for the first three.

This is our 5th year of official homeschooling. THIS WEEK is the first week we've felt like we've hit our stride. I really wish there was a private school that would meet her needs, but there is not. Even if there were, she never would have discovered her love of languages (she does 2) or her love of recreational math.

If I had it to do over again, I would have worried much less until she was about 6 or so. At that point you can placement test into whatever curriculum you decide to use.

I've been homeschooling DS 9 for two years.

K and 2/3 of 1st - private school (with grade acceleration in 1st - complete disaster)

Last 1/3 of 1st, 2nd and 3rd homeschooling

Overall it has been going really well. We live in a highly populated homeschool area so there are so many learning opportunities for DS to take advantage of. Fortunately there are also many gifted homeschoolers in the area too so there are many advanced courses he can take with live teachers and students--we haven't found the need to do any online classes.

The drawbacks are that we run around a lot and I feel drained a lot of the time and don't have a lot of "me time." That is probably a choice I am making but I want him to have the best and there are just so many great classes and field trips and programs to participate in. In all honesty, participating in all the classes also serves to not to have to devise a curriculum because I mostly just piggyback on what he is learning in his classes and we spend a lot of home time doing the assigned homework. As we've been going along, I am finding more curricula that I am interested in using so if we homeschool next year I already have a language arts and math curriculum that I want to use. I think we will do more at home next year as I'm exhausted! :-) Currently though, we are looking into a Montessori school and a county gifted center for 4th and 5th. We may look into the math/science middle school magnet for 6-8th but who knows! I agree with a PP that it is more work to advocate for my child than I care to involve myself in. That is MUCH more exhausting than homeschooling will ever be. Wish he could have a solid (gifted) peer group though.

We are homeschooling ds14 and did homeschool dd8 until about a month ago. Ds14's issue with school was unusually poor academic fit - needing more challenge in some subjects and fewer timed tasks in some (gee, try to get that sorted out with a school admin or teacher!)

Dd's issue seemed to be that she was turning into a tv character (and not one of the nice ones!). In addition to no more disney teen channel, among others, we pulled her out of school to see if this would help with an attitude adjustment. In some ways it has, however she became pretty frustrated with lack of social interaction in general. She wasn't always a girly girl, however she does need much more human contact than the rest of the family, and we mutually were driving each other crazy.
(There is actually a question of adhd which we are working on figuring out).

Curriculum-wise, I have always been able to find great books to work on with ds, however dd was usually bucking whatever I found for her after about a week or so. She would grudgingly proceed through whatever we'd selected. Last fall I finally found a science-reading book for her, and mostly we work on that, math and regular book reading (h. potter, etc.) We allowed her free rein in the last few months on minecraft and she has become quite an expert, reading a lot regarding building, etc. Previously she had a fairly severe tracking issue which appears to be 99% resolved (still wears the glasses prescribed).

Ds will be going back to the high school in the fall, as they have a stem program, one path combines design (he is huge into animation and drawing) and programming so it seems to be ideal in some ways. Removing him from the middle school grind was a very very good choice, I think.
The main reason I am hopeful about the high school is that his older friends that are already there express a good level of satisfaction with the high school - some of them having had real issues when in middle school.

Homeschool has been a wonderful thing for both the kids - refreshing their attitudes and self esteem.

*fingers crossed*

Ivy, Is she involved in other activities. My kids are so busy in the evenings that they are thankful for the calmer pace of homeschooling during the day. They also are glad not to have schoolwork to do in the evening.

We've been un/homeschooling ds9 for three years now. I have one of those energetic, high maintenance, sensory kids too. Yes, it's exhausting some days. Yes, been quite a rough ride some days. No, I did not plan on homeschooling. We had exhausted our options. Homeschooling is definitely the least-worst option for us.

There are ZERO g/t services in our district and I've been told that ds would get nothing from the public schools - except probably a front row seat in the principal's office every day due to his behavior (which would be due to extreme boredom).

Pre-K (NYC and MA) - 1st year - public school, integrated special needs program - as a special needs student. NYC, they do not red shirt kids based on late birthdays; in MA, they do.

Pre-K (MA) - 2nd year - ditto, plus private gifted school #1 (traditional, structured) and private gifted school #2 (Montessori-type, unstructured)

K - nearly full year at private gifted school #2 before ds completely melted and we had withdraw him from the school

1-3 grades - un/homeschooled - 1st year - loosely followed general curriculum series (based on an expert's advice); 3rd yr - ds has been taking courses online

Chana, she does have stuff, but I don't think it's a question of pace. She just likes learning in a group.

Hi!
We have been homeschooling or ds8 since we pulled him out of school part way through first grade. He is 2e and we were setting serious regression with his signs of autism. Funny thing, when I stopped sending him to school I got to joyfully cancel all his appointments I had made trying to get him back into therapy, because he recovered almost immediately. The stress of school was causing the regression. I am pretty comfortable most of the time with unschooling, however my husband is less so. We do some more formal activities because of that, and I like having my son participate in summer science day camps and such. It takes a little of the burden off of me.

He is doing well. Sometimes I wish he would make different choices in terms of his current interests... (I have tired of Minecraft by now) but I try to support him while encouraging and sometimes coercing him too branch out. In terms of academics, he is above grade level in everything but written expression anyway. I do enjoy our lifestyle nowadays. I can't fathom going back to public school life although sometimes I fantasize about a program where I could send him just for a couple hours a few days a week that was interesting and fulfilling and where he could be with other kids that he has more in common with. He is the odd man out a lot.