Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Dual enrollment experiences?

Has anyone had experience with this in elementary school? We are considering homeschooling for ds8, who will be a fourth grader next year and a sixth grader in math and language arts if he stays at his current private school. Just heard that dual enrollment is an option if we put him in the local elementary school. It sounds interesting but am wondering if it can be practical!

Dual enrollment? I've only heard of that for high school kids.

Does this mean taking some classes at the middle school while still in elementary? If so, that is quite common in math. As long as the elementary, middle and high schools have staggered start times, they just make math first period and the student gets on the middle school bus in the morning (then they shuttle him back to elementary).

I haven't seen shuttling kids to middle school for language arts because it is easier to work with kids at different levels in language arts.

In our state, it means enrollment part-time in a public school and being homeschooled otherwise. Seems to be that often it is for the "special" classes -- i.e., arts, gym, that they go to the public school, but not always.

I've known people who have done this and it seems to work best when the kids move to the separate-teachers-for-each-class format of middle school. In elementary school, the problem is that the otherwise homeschooled kid is not a part of the group at any time other than when he/she is there. But when they mix up the groups for each class, it's less obvious that the homeschooled kid is different.

It always sounded great to me but in NZDs7 subjects are integrated and taught by one teacher until high school so it probably wouldn't work

Do you mean dual enrollment as in part homeschooling, part elementary school, or part elementary, part middle school?
I have experience with the latter, though in that case it was middle/high school.
The main issues are transportation, which for us was OK because the schools in question were very close, and scheduling - which might not be a big issue with elementary because of not having blocks/periods, unless a special class like music or gym is at the same time.
There's some minor issues and conflicts but you really just have to take those as they come. But it seems like they're fairly cooperative, which is very helpful.
Although field trips are just....ugh. The scheduling is horrendous sometimes.

We did partial homeschooling with one of ours for a couple of years, with some success. Mostly specials. A couple of my sibs did cross registration in elementary and secondary. They were both in situations where the campuses were adjacent to each other. Oh, and I did middle/high, again on connected campuses. All of those experiences were net positive, but I think outcomes are highly dependent on the child, and the administrators and teachers involved.

This would be elementary and homeschool. He'd be in sixth grade math next year, but I think that would be a home school (i.e. tutor or online) subject given that's something that's not moving fast enough at school.

I'm starting to think that logistically, it might be a nightmare and that it might make him too much the odd kid out. Was hoping it would provide the social contacts he craves.