Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Homeschooling kindergarten - did you do it?

Hi seablue!

We didn't homeschool early; but by the time we started homeschooling kindergarten when Harpo was 5, we weren't doing kindergarten stuff. I don't think one is allowed formally to register children as homeschoolers here before they are 5 (and not particularly sure I'd want to, in any case), but there's nothing stopping you from teaching them things. I don't know what the registration regulations are where you are--checking out the relevant legislation might be a good place to start?

I'd been thinking about homeschooling for a while, but Frenchie wasn't sure if he liked the idea, so we agreed to try it for kindergarten, since kindergarten is not mandatory in our province, and nothing would be lost by having an experimental year. (We had never used daycare or preschool.) I dutifully looked over the provincial learning outcome objectives for kindergarten, and noted that children were to learn to count to ten and recognise upper-case letters and various other things; at this point, Harpo had been reading for three years, so I decided just to do our own thing (homeschoolers here are only required to register their children, and agree to provide them with an appropriate course of study; parents have a great deal of freedom, for which I am truly grateful).

I didn't use much in the way of curriculum that year, but we did lots of field trips, he spent a lot of time with the atlas and the encyclopedia, he read tons of books, and we did quite a bit of math, one way and another (played with the Don Cohen books, read the TY Crowell Young Math books, The Number Devil, played with pattern blocks, pentominoes, tangrams and geoboards, lots of logic puzzles, etc. etc.), did lots of nature walks with field guides, art projects, music listening, and so on. He had a well-developed obsession with totem poles that year, so we did a sort of unit study of West Coast First Nations that was the primary focus of our year.

Groucho is in kindergarten this year; we are having a somewhat more formal K year for him (at his request) than we did with Harpo. He's doing Miquon math, working on the Royal Fireworks Aesop workbooks, and doing Latin and French with Harpo. Apart from that, he spends a lot of time doing physical stuff, and making up plots for his endless cycle of operettas! Not sure where he is on the gifted scale of things--Harpo seemed reasonably clearcut to me, but I can't figure out Groucho yet--he has a photographic memory, an enormous vocabulary and an extremely ready wit, but he's just now starting to read, and he's not as pattern-obsessed as Harpo, though his arithmetic skills are pretty good.

I don't suppose I've answered any of your questions! I guess for us, I'm glad things have worked out this way--homeschooling is not a perfect option, but for our family it works well--the kids get to see their dad, which would be difficult otherwise (he works shifts), they're enjoying what they're learning (a lot of stuff!), and they seem pretty happy. What the future will bring, who knows, but for right now, this is pretty good. Hope you find something similarly right for you and your family, whatever that may be!

peace
minnie