Now What?

I love to read and learn. I have been so excited, looking forward to Kate's first day of kindergarten. She's been a bit hesitant, but the other night when she was up crying, I pulled her into my lap and whispered sweet nothings about dress up corner, drawing in shaving cream on the table, and circle time.

Then I went to the parent orientation.

Evidently gone are the happy little kindergarten days where children learn to play, share, and oh yeah learn to read along the way. The schedule itself disappointed me--an hour of math, 90 minutes of reading, another unit of language arts in the afternoon, they get a grand total of 30 minutes to do both social studies and science (of course the chemist loves this one). The only free play was during a 20 minute recess.

Then I get the list of skills she will learn. As I look through it, I see that she already does three-fourths of the list. And I wasn't trying. And it sure didn't take 7 hours a day.

Next up the teacher informs us that there will be homework. In KINDERGARTEN! Not occasionally, but weekly packets. And they will have a thirty minute rest time, right before they come home. As the year wears on and they are less tired, she'll pop in a movie. What?! Isn't everyone screaming to turn off the TV? You'll let her watch TV at school (using up her allotment, so I feel guilty about turning it on if I want to while I cook dinner), and send home homework for her to do in her few minutes of free time.

I have Kate reading already. The only thing she has left to do on the language arts is learn some words on sight (rather than sounding them out) and write a 3 word sentence. I was a teacher and I'm pretty sure we can be there at Christmas with half an hour (not 2 hours) a day. That leaves a lot of extra time for math, science, social studies, art, music, and time to live in the world of being four. We have a little more to do in math, but she's still about halfway through that list too.

We had decided to go ahead and try it, but as the night wore on (Kate woke up upset about school again.) and we prayed about it. I'm really considering yanking her before school starts. Part of me wants to try it, so we can say we gave it a shot, but my gut is saying un-enroll her and run for it. Justin is behind home school 110%. Financially, it stinks--I could go back to teaching here and make a nice salary, but I want my kids to love learning and to, well, actually learn something. Besides, teaching other peoples' kids really stressed me out! I was always afraid I'd make a mistake and mess someone up--goodness knows I've already messed up with my kids, so another mistake or two along the way won't ruin us.

So today will likely be decision day, as to whether we try the first grading term or just start learning (which is totally not true, since we've been teaching her since she was born) at home from the beginning. Teacher that I am, I have on hand lots of resources from when I was a classroom teacher, so wish me luck today as I try a sample day. Then we'll have more information to base our decision on.

Also in play is that we moved to Timbuktu to be in a nice school system for Kate, so if we can take that out of the equation it will be easier to find a house close to work for Justin when we're ready to buy. And it will have a home school room. Definitely not a deciding factor in our choice, but a side benefit.

I'm praying to make the best choice for this sweet little girl.

I bet we can put all sorts of cool things in that backpack here too. Not to mention her cute little head.