Wow, Fillyjonk, that really is a tough situation to be in! How does your son feel about trying the school? It does sound like a lot of hours, for sure. I grew up in Belgium, and I remember elementary school went from 8:30 am until 3:45 pm, but we had a little more than an hour lunch break. We also did have quite a bit of homework every night, even in elementary school, for sure a lot more than my DD9 comes home with from public school here in AZ. At least once a week she has no homework at all, and very often it's 2 days during the week, plus she hardly ever has homework during the weekend! I think by 4th grade I had homework and study to do for 3 to 4 subjects every single night, plus extra during the weekend, not less. And yes, in this case I do feel like the education I got there was by far superior than what they're learning here in public school. What they do in junior colleges here (as far as math and language arts goes) we for sure had covered in high school.
Also, what I really find odd is that here there is all this crazy stressing about tests happening constantly, and it seems like all the teachers care about, or have time for, is to try and prepare the kids for all those tests. We didn't really have that much in the way of big, official tests, at least not in elementary school. We did have one at the end of 6th grade, but nobody made it such a big deal. We were just told to review as much as we could of everything we had learned over the last 6 years, and do the best we could at the test. There were more exams starting in middle school, 3 times a year. Starting in middle school we also had longer school days, from 8 until 4:15, but again, more than an hour lunch break.
Anyway, seems like March is going to be our experiment with unschooling here. DS9 is thoroughly enjoying his new freedom so far. This afternoon he asked if we could do it this way forever! I told him that I wasn't sure, that we'll just enjoy being relaxed about school at least this month, and maybe (part of) next month, while I'm preparing for surgery, and then recovering from surgery. Once that's behind us, we can evaluate and see what's next. So far, it's been a lot of music, practicing and playing his cello, and also listening to cello music on CDs and on youtube, trying to find new pieces he wants to start learning. He's working hard on 2 pieces in particular (Saint-Saens concerto no. 1 and Kol Nidrei), because he wants to make a video to try to get on the public radio show "From The Top". He also got his wish and DH agreed to let him go to a string music camp in Wichita, KS this summer. The camp is 2 weeks, but you can do just one week, and that's all DH will let us go for. I'm going with of course. He also wants to the concerto competition that they organize, so we'll go the second week. So he'll be working on that Saint-Saens concerto for some time to come. I bought him a CD that has the orchestra accompaniment (without the cello solo part), and he's been having lots of fun playing with it!
He's also really interested in photography, he has a digital camera and takes some decent pictures actually. I might see if I can find a photography class for his age group, if he's interested. He's also doing gymnastics and enjoying that. Interestingly enough he didn't want to go to our weekly homeschool play group this morning, which he normally loves. But previously it gave him a break from our structured schedule, which we now don't have anymore. This morning he said he was having too much fun to stop what he was doing to go.
Suddenly he's also reading a ton every day, whereas before it was much more of a struggle to get him to read every day. But I was trying to follow the book suggestions from our curriculum, as well as the reading in the science and history/geography textbooks. Now he's been reading about planes, World War II, Anne Frank, and Kansas (where his music camp will be), and eating it all up. He must have read at least 3 hours today!
So that's our story for now. And I'm in a much better place for it, taking it one day at a time, and not worrying if he just doesn't end up doing anything in any of his workbooks, even if it just a temporary thing. But who knows, maybe we'll both enjoy our time together so much, and maybe it will become obvious that he IS in fact learning, just in a less structured way, and we'll continue on this road.