I have a few thoughts on this too- first, let me start off by saying good for you and your husband for trying to figure out a way to make this work for your family! I think that is really cool
I love discussions like this because homeschooling our children means SO much to DH and me, and i wish it were an option for every single family.
I strongly agree with the pp who listed some realistic considerations. Children really DO need 11-12 hours per night of quality sleep to really focus well on learning. I thought my children would require less as they grew, but that isn't the case here. Now that they are no longer napping, and they are so active, they need their rest more than ever, and my oldest is almost 9.
My boys have always been homeschooled, but there have been instances when my oldest really wanted to go to school. The only reason was so he could be with friends. We did not send him, but I did step up his social activities during the day. I also point out to him that he is not inside doing homework while the neighborhood kids are home from school playing, and that he never has school work over the weekends, or has to go to tutoring, like many of his public school friends. This is a BIG consideration for him, and the main reason he now embraces homeschooling. He thinks it is awful that some of his friends have to stay inside and do school work over the weekends or late afternoon when he can be outside playing.
So, my point is I don't know if you are in a neighborhood with other schooled kids, but the option of homeschooling in the evenings and weekends would be torture for my son. It would not work for him at all.
And, like the pp said, hiring a nanny all day during the week will likely cost more than an alternative, independent private school (Waldorf, democratic, community learning, all come to mind here...have you explored private school options that offer an interesting, non-standardized testing form of education)?
One last thought...if you do decide to go the nanny route, have you considered hiring someone who is a native speaker of a different language? Personally, that would be a big benefit to me. I currently pay for my children to take Spanish homeschool classes with a native speaker but since it is only 1x per week, it is slow going and I don't expect my children to become fluent. Many schools now offer language immersion programs where children spend much of the day learning in a foreign language. I think that would be awesome! Personally, I would go for that and consider it far more valuable as a homeschooler than hiring a nanny with a teaching degree. Credential programs focus on teaching a large mass of children using standardized methods...not as useful to me as someone who could offer my two children individualized, creative instruction geared towards their own interests, and also not as useful to me as someone who could expose my children all day to a foreign language naturally.
Just my two cents!!
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