October Birthday and when to start?

[Harmony08]

nak

i know i am ahead of myself here but i have been wondering this a lot lately. my ds has an oct b-day. if he was going to school i would hold him until the next year so he would start kindergarten and turn 6 a month later. I think that the rule in many states is that you have to be 5 when you enter kindergarten. but if it isn't he rule in the state i end up in...should i still hold him or go ahead with it because he is home so it is different than going off to school at 4. sorry if i am being confusing.

what do you do?

thanks!

[mysticmomma]

i may start but not register. one less paperwork year.

[ohiomommy1122]

my oldest DS id oct 11th and we started when he was 4 that August and then he turned 5 after 3 months into school I didnt notify until the following year because they wouldnt accept him as a kinder until he was 5 at the START of the year

[Whistler]

We have the same problem with all 3 kids. (GRRRRR)

Part of our decision to homeschool. The school system here is adament that you observe the cutoff date of September 1st. So we're learning at home on our schedule instead of waiting a year and a half to follow theirs.

I'm not pushing her either, rather, trying desperately to keep up!

[MyLittleWonders]

We have to file paperwork in CA if they are 6 before the cut-off date (Dec. 5, IIRC). Ds#2 is 6 one week before the cut-off. If we were putting him in school, he'd be enrolled in Kindergarten, but since he is legally of age for school according to my state, and I know from a hs'ing point of view, registering Kindergartners is discouraged, I registered him as a 1st grader. It does not affect him at all (except he'll be a very young high school graduate) unless we were ever to put the boys in school (which we don't ever plan on doing).

[elizawill]

my dd's b-day is oct 9th & the cut-off date here is sept 1, so we weren't *officially* homeschooling the year she turned 5. we decided to use that as a transition year (we had just moved from the west coast to the east coast). we joined a co-op, homeschool PE class, and did a lot of field trips. the following year (when she was almost 6) is when i registered her for kindergarten. we used K curricula and moved at her own pace. she's now 8 & this is our 3rd "official" year. we love it, and i'm glad we did it this way. it's worked well for her.

[pigpokey]

I started her the year she was turning 5 (cutoff is 9/1 in my state for public), but did not push hard. For example we did not math in earnest until January of K -- but I found out that the first semester book was too easy anyway and sent it back. She is now in 1st by our reckoning; our state does not have home schoolers declare a grade.

We do much less writing and writing practice than I think they do in the schools, but she is at or ahead of 1st in math and reading.

[Marimami]

We are in a weird situation here because the public school cutoff just changed this year when DD was due to start K. She was in private school for pre-K and if we had kept her in school, she would be in K in the private school. She's "performing" above K requirements already so I don't really go by them anyway.

DD's birthdate is 9/6
Old cutoff was 10/16
New cutoff is 8/31 (as of this year)
Homeschool declaration is 7 years of age by 6/1

We are basically started homeschooling this year so I guess it's technically K. But, with the cutoff dates, we won't have to notify the state until the summer before she starts 3rd grade! They actually won't let you submit it early either.

Holli

[moominmamma]

Depending on your child and the way you evolve in your homeschooling, there may be no start date at all. It may be a total non-issue. My kids were learning all the time as toddlers and preschoolers, and gradually their learning involved more requests for direct help from me, and more begging for creative activities exploring areas of interest, more books, more paper, more projects. Eventually at some point I realized that we had already "covered" most of KG and 1st grade despite the fact that we weren't doing anything overly formal and hadn't really got around to 'starting' a real curriculum.

We began officially homeschooling the day we legally declared so -- their first-grade year by age. But they'd been learning at home for a long time already, and nothing else changed on that day. They were already well beyond a first grade level.

I highly recommend this organic 'sliding into homeschooling' approach, because it allows you to support without imposing unnecessarily, to respond to readiness without pushing, and to ease a bit at a time into things so that if some part of it doesn't work well you can easily tell which part.

Miranda

[Harmony08]

Fascinating info! Thanks everyone. It seems like there are several factors that will influence the outcome. So I will see what happens. I don't know what stae I will be in at that time so I can't look up the rules. I am all about the organic sliding into it that Miranda discussed. Organic sliding is my natural mode of operation. So much so that without a little structure I slide right way