Homeschooling- Florida- 4 1/2 Yr Old Start School Now or Next Year?

You're child is 4 1/2 yrs old.
You have no idea if he'll be athletically inclined or even like team sports.
With regard to athletic scholarships:
"The odds of winning a NCAA sports scholarship are miniscule. Only about 2 percent of high school athletes win sports scholarships every year at NCAA colleges and universities. Yes, the odds are that dismal. For those who do snag one, the average scholarship is less than $11,000.".
I realize you probably aren't even thinking about that but I put it out there because the hype around athletic scholarships is right up there with winning a big Power-ball lottery.
You have a better shot at being struck by lighting 17 times before you win either.

So - let's put the cart back behind the horse and think.
He's 4 1/2 only once.
He's got a lifetime of sitting in a classroom/job in front of a computer.
Let your boy play and enjoy being a child till he's closer to 6 yrs old.

Learning to read and write come a lot easier when you are mature enough to sit still enough to pay attention - and for a lot of kids 6 yrs old is just a better age for it.

Learning is something we all do our whole lives - but right now your son will learn best at the playground or by stacking blocks, playing with Duplo, etc.
For his language skills - you read with him as long as you can as often as you can.
Blink twice and he'll be off to college before you know it.

i cannot for the life of me figure out why i hear this so much- 'we're going to send our little one to school for socialization even though we want to homeschool and plan to homeschool and will homeschool after we've done the socialization in public school thing.'

you do understand that if you're homeschooling to its fullest potential your child will be *socialized*, right? you're not supposed to homeschool in a vacuum.

as for fearing the future, IF you decide that your teenager needs public school after a childhood spent homeschooling (another common trope that baffles me) then your child will be tested and put into the grade most appropriate. and if that's the route you're planning to follow, you have to plan for it all through your homeschool. instead of focusing on your own individual child's strengths to be nurtured and weak spots to shore up, you'll need to keep a close eye on whatever the public schools are doing so you can do the same thing.

the notion that there are no gaps in any educational system is not realistic. no one can learn everything. if you've been focused on human development from the mesopotamian river cultures and the local public schoolers have been studying the american civil rights movement, your child will be 'behind' no matter how brilliant he is.

for me, that defeats the purpose of homeschooling.

you might as well just put him in public school right now and leave him there. what's the point of pulling him out just for the middle bits? what is the actual purpose of that?
khairete
S.

I am a homeschooling mom. Successfully graduated my daughter who went to Kinder and then HS from first through 12th grade. She's in the Navy. My son is in 8th and HS from the beginning. I am happy to help you along your journey.

First, if you homeschool and then place your child in high school, they will test him to make sure he's where they think he should be. Someone I know casually tried to enroll her daughter in high school who was a junior and they were going to put her back in 9th grade. You need to check on your state's requirements for homeschooling which can be found at www.hslda.org.

Please don't buy into the socialization issue with homeschool kids. I know that applies in some situations, but for the majority of us, it's insulting and inaccurate. My kids have been complimented a lot because they're able to have intelligent conversation with adults as comfortably as having teen conversations with their friends. My goal has been for them to have friends of many different ages and backgrounds. I believe education and socialization is a parent responsibility, not the school's. Teachers partner with parents to educate the kids, but the responsibility lies with the parent. There are lots of homeschooling groups out there that do co-ops for classes and have field trips, etc. If you're really in Orlando there are several groups there.

Everyone used to ask me how long I planned to homeschool. When I started, I had no idea I would graduate my daughter. If you had asked me in first grade if I were going to do that, I would've thought you were crazy. My best advice is to plan a year at a time. You have no idea what the future holds.

I highly recommend Cathy Duffy's Top 100 homeschool curriculum. It will give you some insight on the different learning styles and an overview on lots of curriculum. My daughter and son learn completely differently. What worked for her does not work for him. My goal in homeschooling is to create a love of learning. If you do, you have a lifelong learner, which in my opinion, is so important.

My son is a late September birthday. He started K at 6 and will turn 18 in September of his senior year. I am glad I started him when I did. I started my daughter at 5 in public school kindergarten. The only issue she had was she was not used to the kids being physical. She was kicked and pushed a lot the first couple of weeks in school and didn't know how to cope because she had never experienced that kind of behavior. As far as academically she did great.

My children have never been to school (4th, 2nd and preschool).

What sort of socialization are you seeking for your child? The ability to keep quiet and stand in line, or the ability to negotiate conflict with another kid? Technically socialization means being socialized into the rules of society. Schools are designed to do this, and the younger years focus a lot on teaching the norms of the classroom.

If you want your child to have a good social life with other children, then you should skip school and find other HSers to play with. It sometimes takes time to find friends in the HS community, and I truly believe you need a strong community to HS successfully. So if you do want to HS, then I recommend focusing on building a life outside of school.

I know that many kids can be resilient when their school situations change. Due to my dh's unusual military assignments, when my ds graduated from high school, he had attended 9 different school systems on 2 different continents plus one remote island. He attended both private and public schools, large and small, plus there was a homeschooling stint for awhile.

So it's possible that your son might do well switching from homeschooling to public school at various times.

But, I'm not convinced that your plans are solidly thought out yet.

First, not all kids can handle going back and forth between school situations, and don't handle change well. My ds was (and still is) one of those people who, from a very early age, could handle anything that got thrown at him. He now works in a very demanding job that is technically challenging and requires that he be able to figure things out in a split second. My dd is the opposite.

Your son is a pre-schooler now. You don't know how he'll handle friendships, structure, school, learning, etc. He might fare better in a quiet home setting and prefer just a light socialization situation, with a friend or two. Or he might thrive in a busy school situation and be the life of the party, so to speak. You might move. I never in a million years imagined that my dh would be assigned to a remote island and my son would attend 10th and 11th grades in a small private school where English was not the first language.

He might need extra resources in case it turns out that he has difficulty in a particular subject area or with a particular skill (reading, or math, for example). In that case, maybe a public school might be better. Only time will tell.

Also, homeschooling can provide a lot of socialization possibilities. There are homeschool groups that get the kids together for art or field trips or classes. Socialization is not the ideal reason to send a child to a public school. Now, if you live on a farm that's far away from other kids and if your son literally doesn't have any kids to play with, and you don't have a church group or nearby friends, for example, maybe public school might provide your son with the chance to make friends and play at recess. But if your son sees friends or cousins, and if you have a homeschooling support group, sending him to public school primarily for socialization might not be the best reason.

My suggestion is to think through why you want to homeschool your son. Religious reasons, lack of a good public school nearby, interest in certain subject areas, personal desire to teach and watch your son learn ... there are lots of reasons.

Don't start planning his high school years yet. He might hate sports, or he might excel in a sport that most high schools don't offer, like fencing or martial arts. He might need something that either homeschooling or public school can provide. To decide his kindergarten choice based on how old he'll be in his freshman year of high school might mean that you're going to overlook something important, and you might lose the focus necessary to start a child out on the right foot in the early years of school.

I suggest that you really evaluate why you want to homeschool, that you really consider your son's temperament and strengths and weaknesses, that you take a good look at what his opportunities for socializing with other kids are right now, and that you decide, based on his current needs and your ability to teach him, what is best for him right now. And go with that. Down the road, he may ask to attend public school. Or he might love his homeschool support group and love the creativity that homeschool can provide, and he might be thriving better than you ever imagined. Or you might find out that you don't love teaching him, and that he's so far ahead in math (or so far behind) that a different school situation is necessary. Focus on the here and now and decide what your son needs now, and what you can provide, and start there.

If you know you're not going to move from the town you live in you can just call the school district and ask about their requirements and procedures. The answers you get here are pretty useless because every state, city and district is unique.
Though I think you are WAY overthinking this. Especially the sports thing. Even if he IS interested in playing, high school athletics are very competitive so he would actually have to try out and make the team. You can't really plan your child's academic experience around an extracirricular activity that may or may not happen.

my son is a summer bday. i started him as youngest in class. he is bright and near the top of the class. i do not regret starting him when i did.
there is other boys in his class that should of been started the year before. they are the oldest, and are bored in class ( second grade now) they are usually disruptive and are often being sent to third grade for further instruction.
when you transfer schools you are typically given a placement test. you are then placed in the grade based on the test scores. start your child in august and don't worry about highschool. so many things can change between kindergarten and highschool.

I don't think it's wise to base your decision off from sports. If you do what you're thinking and have him repeat a grade so that he'll be the oldest in the class, you're going to have bigger issues because he's going to be incredibly bored repeating the same coursework.

I think the only question you should be asking yourself at this point is 'is he mature enough to be able to handle school?' And that's a very individual question. My son has a May birthday, so redshirting him wasn't an option for us. However he started kindergarten with kids that were 10 months older than him. It was difficult the first few months because he was more impulsive and some of the older kids. But by the end of the year it evened out. And that's kind of the point of kindergarten, to bring all kids up to the same level.

You need to check the laws on homeschool in your state. Different states have different laws. Some states regulate homeschool almost like public school and others don't. I thought would be that if you choose to put him in public school they would test him to see if he's at grade lvl and if he's not would put him in lower grade. Some states even allow homeschool kids to participate in public school sports and others don't. Unfortunately where I live they do not. Mine wanted to do color guard this fall but was not able to as it has not yet passed in Texas. We are homeschooling our 15 year old he went to public school through 6th grade.

This is just our personal experience.

Our kids always showed huge leaps in development from preschool on whenever they moved up a level to be around older kids. It's the same when they are playing with older kids on sports teams, etc.

I personally find it motivates them. When they're the best or they're at the top, they're not really learning from anyone - other than the teacher/coach. So we like that our kids are not the best/top in the class or on a team. Ours do better. So some of ours have been the youngest in their class at school and they've done very well.

One year, the teacher felt that my kid (very shy) would benefit from being in a split class with younger kids. She felt it would bring out the leader in her to be around younger children. It actually backfired. She regressed. I actually don't like when teachers interfere too much. We knew she wouldn't be challenged and she wasn't.

I think looking ahead to high school and sports is just too far in the distance, and I personally would just not concern myself with that at this point.

Not sure that answered anything for you, but that's been our experience. Good suggestions below from the homeschooling moms :)

Take him to the guidance counselor and ask for a school readiness test. She will be honest with you about whether or not he is school ready. Go by this. If you send him too early, he won't learn what he needs and your whole reason for sending him will be for naught. Children who should be in preschool because they're too young or they are too immature aren't really successful in kindergarten. And they don't socialize well or learn what they need to learn.

I'm not going to talk about 9th grade. That's too far in the future when you don't yet know what his temperment or personality will be like as he grows.

Being with younger kids will make him act and think like a younger kid. Being with older kids makes kids settle down and act like the older kids too.

Kids learn where they are. You could even start them early and they'd learn exactly what they are taught.

They're going to put him in the grade his age group is. Mostly. They will require he take a placement test to make sure he's up to the level he's supposed to be then they'll admit him to his peer grade. Kids should be together with kids their own age.

The point of getting kids in school when they are fully 5 years old is so they turn 17-18 their senior year.

What if your child turns 18 their junior year and says "I'm going to go get a job now, nice living here, bye"? You hope that doesn't happen but the day they turn 18 they can legally walk out and not come home.

Send him to school next fall. Let him be with kids his own age so that he can learn and thrive with his peers. Don't put him in kindergarten as a redshirted kid who'll be with little kids.