We pulled DS5.7 out of Kinder after Thanksgiving to homeschool. He is a mathy kid but his fine motor skills (writing) and reading skills were lacking behind and he was getting increasingly frustrated. Since we're homeschooling now, we took a laid back approach to the reading / writing thing and are waiting for it to click for him. In math we're just letting him run with it (using Dreambox learning). He too is the kid that needs phonics rules. He could figure out how to read the words based on the rules but once he'd hit a word that was an exception to the rule and read it wrong, he'd get very frustrated and just give up and shut down when it comes to reading. And school was very focused on sight words. I don't push him into reading for now, I do ask him to listen / follow in text 3 books on Reading Rainbow every day and when he's playing video games and wants me to read something, I have HIM read it to me. I love to see that spark in his face when he realizes HE CAN read most of those words. But we are still trying to get over that aversion towards reading he got in the first 3 months of Kindergarten. We are planning on homeschooling year round so we don't have to rush anything.
I saw your other post explaining the whole situation in Kindergarten. I'm just curious ... wouldn't taking it slow and forgetting about the whole being behind be an option too? He WILL catch up at some point (unless there's a real LD that would prevent him from it at any age), he's still very young and reading / writing just might be too much for him for now. I just keep thinking (in general ... not just your situation) ... why do schools push kids so hard to spend so much time and energy on something when they are 5 when there's a good chance they'll learn that same thing many times faster and easier when they are a year older?
Thank you for your experience. It's a great question we've been debating with. I would love to homeschool and we did briefly due to multiple moves at the beginning of the year. Our long term goal was always public school. I LOVED school as a student from day one until now and DH and I wanted that experience for our DC. Our HS was very unsuccessful, I think for many reasons. But now we are gun-shy to try again, though honestly I'd love to and think for a lot of students with asynchronous learning it's maybe the best option. I'm going to treat summer as more of a homeschool trial and see what happens. Regardless, I want him to be much more comfortable with the required reading/writing expected in the (likely) case he'll continue to the G/T program at public school.
The schools are competitive where we live. I think it's a mixed bag. I certainly don't want DS to burn out or dislike school. He used to hate it, but now his opinion is generally positive (as his reading has improved I think it's gotten easier for him). I'd also like him to have some challenges too. That's why I'm debating afterschool in general. For a subject he loves (all things science), we could do projects, read books, watch educational shows, etc all day long and I know DS would love it. And I'm hoping that's what I could focus on as far as afterschool, just science enrichment.
But if his reading is behind, we will do remediation. My other debate is if math in school is really not keeping up with his knowledge and he gets bored, do we do that as well?
ITA with reading at this young age and allowing them to mature, and the only reason we're playing this game with the school system is because I certainly don't want him held back (which was explained as a possibility in DS's case if his reading didn't improve). Because how would retention really help? I think it's part of the school testing domino effect. I think that spreading more advanced phonics over the summer DS will jump ahead or at least be a stronger reader and I'm hopeful we'll keep ahead of their requirements. I'm also thinking ahead of spelling as it seems like spelling seems to be left behind these days too.
