The more and more research I do, the more and more I feel that homeschooling is the right choice. It's actually a very exciting feeling. :)
One of my concerns is that I am not sure how to go about handling the learning level of one of my girls. They are currently both in the same grade at their public school (K) but while one child is ready to move on to first grade, I feel like my other daughter could use a brush up on everything...possibly even a "do-over" of her public school kindergarten education.
She is very smart but does take longer than her peers to understand new concepts. This is one of the reasons why I am hoping homeschooling will be a good thing for our family, with more individualized, focused, one-on-one attention she will be more capable of progressing right along with her sister.
My question is, should I have her completely start over with kindergarten...in a sense "hold her back"...or should I do something like a hybrid combination of both kindergarten & first grade: begining with a refresher on the kindergarten concepts and then when she is ready introduce the first grade material all in the same year?
What would you do?
The beauty of homeschool is you can work at the pace of the child. If you think the youngest needs more review, then do that. She might learn it more quickly since it would be more one on one, and can then progress onto first grade from there. Maybe over the summer do all the K review, and by the new "school year" she'll be ready for the first grade material. It doesn't have to be very long every day either... I did more play with my little guy for K, and we took a very slack year. Next year he is doing K/1st grade (he's only 5), so next year we're going to add in writing, science, history, etc, because I know he's ready for it. This year we only worked on reading, spelling, handwriting, and math. I think he took about an hr tops, and that was with procrastinating with his work usually... Next year I expect him to still need a lot of play to reinforce the book work we do, but as long as he's learning something I'm happy :)
The biggest thing I've recently finally gotten over too, is I don't really care what "grade level" the kids should be in. We very loosely follow what the PS kids are learning about, but I don't hold my kids back if the are more advanced, and I don't stress if its something they are struggling on, and are "behind". Eventually they'll catch up :)
We totally started over with 1st grade and were able to redo/review it AND do all of 2nd grade in a year. With homeschooling, the actual school day is for K-1st grade shouldnt need to be more than a couple of hours so we did a 4 hr day with 2 hrs in the morning, a long lunch and 2 hrs in the afternoon and plowed through.
Don't stress about grade level, I did and it got me nowhere. We pulled my son out of school mid way through k and we did k/1st for the remainder of this year, he is 5. My almost 4yo daughter did preschool this year, she breezed through it and even started doing some of my sons 1st grade work. Next year she will be doing an advanced k and he will be doing 1st grade.
I do agree with the above that homeschooling makes it so you can have more one on one time and maybe that will help her catch up. The big thing I have learned is grade level does not matter.
A lot of k/1 skills overlap so the beginning of first grade is a lot of kindergarten-like review. That may be enough to "catch up" with her sister. Does her report card/progress reports indicate what skills she is struggling in? Perhaps you can do a bit of kindergarten skill development during the summer?
Thank you for sharing! I definitely wouldn't want to have too many review materials that end up not being necessary. :)
Quoting Bluecalm: I started off this year going back over K with my son. By October he was ready for first grade. I had bought way too much K material that he never used. So my advice is don't invest too much in review resources.
I plan on giving her the two assessments from k5learning so I can figure out exactly where she is...And taking advance of the summer months before we start our school year is a great idea! Based on her report cards she's essentially behind in both math and spelling/reading. She just takes longer to learn new concepts and I don't think the teachers have the time to focus on her individually. I'm definitely excited to take over and take charge of her learning so she is able to succeed :)
Quoting Molimomma:A lot of k/1 skills overlap so the beginning of first grade is a lot of kindergarten-like review. That may be enough to "catch up" with her sister. Does her report card/progress reports indicate what skills she is struggling in? Perhaps you can do a bit of kindergarten skill development during the summer?
Quoting BellaRose17:I plan on giving her the two assessments from k5learning so I can figure out exactly where she is...And taking advance of the summer months before we start our school year is a great idea! Based on her report cards she's essentially behind in both math and spelling/reading. She just takes longer to learn new concepts and I don't think the teachers have the time to focus on her individually. I'm definitely excited to take over and take charge of her learning so she is able to succeed :)
Quoting Molimomma:
A lot of k/1 skills overlap so the beginning of first grade is a lot of kindergarten-like review. That may be enough to "catch up" with her sister. Does her report card/progress reports indicate what skills she is struggling in? Perhaps you can do a bit of kindergarten skill development during the summer?
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- BellaRose17
on May. 8, 2014 at 9:57 AM