huh. I was positive that I responded to this thread already.
anyways
We afterschooled our oldest from when he started preschool aged 3. Initially it was because he was missing the stuff he and I used to do at home before he started. I had no idea that it was such groundbreakingly different stuff to the gifted school he was in - it was a bit of kid friendly science, some fun reading games when he asked for them, a bit of fun writing games when he asked for it, art, gardening, stories, map fun activities etc.
so we did that stuff as he asked for it after school and on weekends. When he started waking me at 5am on saturday's to do maths or writing I started pre-preparing stuff that he could cheerfully do on his own while we slept. haha.
By age 5 he refused to do anything outside of school aside from throwing very angry tantrums - total loss of desire to learn. Of course we ended up out of school (K at that stage), into 9 months of therapy followed by homeschooling.
When I hear how much time and effort other parents here but into homework, extension work, extra lessons - I am so so grateful for the decision to homeschool. We do less time on formal learning than they do on homework! and we get to play so much more now.
I always say to parents who ask - if you afterschool because the school is lacking in something, then you may as well homeschool - cause you are already; you're just ALSO dealing with the stress of school and its incumbent issues
Thank you for your experience. I also feel this way sometimes about school. I wonder what they are really teaching if I have to go back and teach things I feel they should have there? Or maybe they're teaching a lot differently (for example I'm pretty sure I'm teaching phonics to read and they're teaching reading some other magical way). It's such a hard decision for us to know what's best.
