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sen10tious -> RE: At What age did you formally start school? (6/28/2008 11:25:29 AM)
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I have over twenty years invested in teaching/mentoring/facilitating homeschool and I STILL don’t know how to answer a question like this. Maybe we never did formal school at all?
If you are going to define formal school as seat work, I still don’t know how to answer. At three years old, my kids were doing drawings at least three mornings a week. That was done in a seat. Sometimes it was coloring books, sometimes blank paper, sometimes letter stencils… sometimes crayons, sometimes pencils, and if I was really into it, perhaps paint. But I never once thought of it as 'doing kindergarten.' I considered it as practicing coordination.
By the time my first child was 18 months, I’d slowed down on checking all the 'milestone charts' and by age two I’d about given them up completely.
When my older children were 3 & 5, I started keeping a weekly calendar. They were photo-copied sheets of a grid five blocks wide (for each weekday) and four blocks high for numbers, letters, drawing and story time. And I put a little clipart cornucopia up in the corner to make it look more 'professional.'[8|] Even then, my main motivation was not to 'do school' but to test myself—I wanted to see how hard it would be to keep records when the state's compulsory education laws would kick in. I found it was sort of fun to be able to see how much we accomplished!
At some point during that season of life, I heard Dr. Dobson on a radio interview with Dr. Raymond Moore discussing research supporting their contention that children are not psychologically ready for formal learning until age eight to ten. I also got copies of Ruth Beechick’s (then) newly published three-booklet series; (now combined and known as The Three R’s.) Her booklets were confirming things God was leading me to anyway. I never fussed about 'formal' schooling after that; except to meet state requirements beginning at age six.
At what age did my children formally start school? In their late teens when they entered college. (We did do/are doing formal high school graduation ceremonies though, which seemed/seems perfectly appropriate.)
I’m sorry about your standardized testing stress; when my kids were that age I’d use occasions like town hall meetings, 4th of July political rallies, and candidate debates to make sure the school board members, local & state representatives heard a homeschooler’s voice. A lot of public school teachers hate teaching to the tests too, so on an issue like that you wouldn’t even have to mention homeschooling. Even though it is very hard to change other’s minds, it is sometimes possible to create enough debate that they become reluctant to make things worse.
I don’t know if this would work in your state, but here I did not have to declare a child’s grade level, (their math & verbal were usually two different "years" anyway;) therefore I was able to choose the most appropriate testing level and not go by ages.
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