I would not be quick to assume that school will be "a disaster," unless the idea is that you want to homeschool anyway. Your child might like school and there might be more options locally than you know about. In a relatively educated area, you will find other kids (one to five per classroom) who enter K with some advanced abilities. "How advanced?" is the question of note. Personality is also obviously a factor.
I agree with ultra. There were kids with a huge range of reading and writing ability in our K-2 grade classrooms because of simple differences in when those individual children were developmentally ready to read/write. This includes significant differences among gifted children too
If I was in your situation, I would probably try school next year since your dh wants to. If it doesn't work out, then you'll both be able to see the challenges and issues first-hand, rather than assuming there will be challenges.
or example, when I look at a kindergarten workbook and a first-grade workbook, I don't notice a huge difference.
What type of workbooks are you looking at? I wouldn't put too much weight into the typical grade level workbooks you find at bookstores etc - in early grades in particular the work level can be all over the place, what is "2nd grade" in one book might be "K" in another. If you want to use workbooks, I'd take recommendations from homeschool parents - either ask online or friends you know or at a local homeschool bookstore if there's one near you.
One thing I like about using Aleks is that it will show you what your child has mastered as measured against your individual state standards (other programs/software/etc) may do this as well. That gave us a really good way of understanding (and proving to others) what grade level our children were working at.
He's not yet reading, and I'm suspecting dyslexia (which is a whole different beast), but now thinking this, I'm starting to adjust my approach to reading with him.
If you suspect dyslexia, that *might* be a very good reason to actually put him into public school next year - to have the opportunity to have an experienced teacher give you input on his reading ability, to have him evaluated and possibly to have access to resources that will help him learn to read. You can request the eval even though you're homeschooling, but in some areas you might not have access to as many resources through the school district for remediation etc. Public school was ultimately not the best solution for my own 2e kids, but fwiw, it was really helpful for me to have had them in public school for awhile both for evaluation purposes and for learning about what their needs are. If you are committed to the idea of homeschooling but think that at some later point in time you are going to have to give public school a try (for your dh), I'd personally try it now while your ds is younger and while you're trying to get a handle on what's up with reading.
Best wishes,
polarbear
