Day -21

There is no particular dogma associated with my decision to keep my son at home this year.  If I'm really really honest, a lot of it was financial.  Preschool is a helluva punch after not having any type of daycare costs for the last 3 years.  It just wasn't making sense when I didn't have an income and he was learning quite well at home anyway.

This lack of dogma is really nice in terms of flexibility and ability to blend from many approaches but it does make decision-making difficult!  My sister works for a private school whose curriculum is available as a homeschool program. Kindergarteners in the program consistently score in the top 1% of the nation. After several discussions about my son's current knowledge and abilities, she generously donated me most of their kindergarten curriculum mixed with a few jr. kindergarten elements.  We decided that I could cater the lessons to him, skipping parts he wouldn't be ready for, and taking our time to complete it, as he won't age into a public kindergarten for at least another 2 years.  I can go into more detail another time but it is a classical education model.

From there, I need some sort of calender structure.  The lesson plans are broken down into 33 weekly guides.  He will not be able to complete each week on time, as there will be significant portions that we'll have to skip or modify in order to keep him moving along.  My initial thought is to begin the first full week of August and follow the school year schedule, taking a break in the summer to reassess whether this is for us and consider a pre-K 4 program, which he will finally be old enough for.

The preschool programs that I was most interested in were 3 day a week from 9 am to 1 pm.  The kids won't be doing structured work the entire 12 hours.  I'm guessing that probably only about 1/3 of the time is productive "work" and the rest is socialization and breaks for food.  This, however, clashes with the kindergarten model, where children are usually at school 5 days a week, often for the full day.  I'll start then with more like a 1/2 day kindergarten model and if it is too much, I'll cut back.  So if he were to spend 20 hours at a kindergarten, and 1/3 of that was classroom work, I'm looking at 6.5 hours per week of this curriculum.

He already has a music class weekly for 30 minutes, so I'll subtract that out.  I'll also subtract out an hour for our weekly story-time at the library.  This leaves 5 hours a week.  1 hour a day monday - friday.  I can do that.  I can really do that.  All the other stuff is gravy because I've been doing it since he was born.  We go to the zoo and on hikes and he paints and plays play-dough.  He interacts with other children pretty much daily.  I read to him.

And it is late again and I am glad to have punched out the numbers but I have to sleep and come back again tomorrow with a daily schedule.