Homeschool World Forum

My 5 y/o son is almost completed Kindergarten curriculum in a homeschool program. My 3 y/o daughter will be doing some sort of homeschool when he starts his 1st grade program. They both have Oct birthdays, so they will be 6 and 4, respectively. She "reads" all the time, and followed many of his lessons. I am debating, with myself, whether to begin her in a Preschool program, or go on into Kindergarten. Any advice, experiences, or information/guidance would be appreciated. Thanks.

Formal preschool is unnecessary, imho. It's basically just numbers, letters, and shapes, all of which are covered again in kindergarten at a slightly faster pace. Mom went straight to kindergarten / phonics with all of us, and I like to think that we ended up reasonably literate

My advice, for what it's worth, is to advance your daughter to kindergarten. It sounds like she's ready, and the closer your children are to one another academically, the easier it will be to teach both at once (or to have them check each other's work, later on).

My two oldest are 13 months apart and I didn't want them doing the exact same things at the same time because the younger one is quicker than the older. I didn't want my older child to feel bad because his younger sister got ahead of him. So I've always kept him part of a grade ahead of her. I don't feel any need to keep any of my kids on a Sept-May schedule, so he started Kindergarten in January and she started the following November. They are now in 11th grade. He started that last September and she started it in May. They've always done some things together and some things separately. I was unable to keep her from teaching herself to read before she turned 5, but I still made her go through all the same reading books he had used--8 months after he used them.

If my kids were equally quick or the older one were quicker, I'd probably have had them do everything together.

Ramona