Just call me Mrs. Mommy

I'm going to be home schooling my youngest next year.

There, I said it.

Still petrified, but I said it.  lol

To try and keep this less than six billion pages, I'll sum the situation up by saying we know where we should be moving to next and we have a rough idea of when.  That area does not require kindergarten and enrolls by birth date when entering school for the first time.  Their kindergarten cut off is a full month later than it is here.

That means that if we lived there already, youngest would be starting kindergarten in Sept.  Here, he misses the cut off date by about two weeks.  It also means that if we get there when we think we will, they will enroll him in first grade because kindergarten isn't required.  Clear as mud, right?

I asked them to screen him for early admission for kindergarten (a whopping 10 days early for the cut off date) because I think he's ready and he would LOVE to be in school.  We are up there volunteering all the time and everyone has made comments on how he needs to be in school.  Well, they denied him.  They said he didn't test well enough but, IMO, their scoring was EXTREMELY harsh and unfair.

For instance:
On lower case letters he missed a few (r and k give him trouble).  They marked him as not being able to identify lower case letters.

They marked him as not being able to write his name because the lady thought it wasn't neat enough (and this REALLY ticks me off because everyone at church, the library, Scouts and others at the school can read it just fine) and he reversed his N.  So kindergarteners should have perfect hand writing and never mess up any letters?  My older kids were still doing that in second grade!

They marked him as not being able to pick out the numbers 1-10 because he mixed up 6 and 9.

On and on.

Pretty much they said he couldn't do anything.

Talk about make a Mama mad!

After talking to some of the teachers and staff, the truth, I think, is that the classes were getting full with kids who did meet the deadline, they weren't about to hire another teacher and so they denied the early entrance kids using this grading as their justification.  They should have just said that, though, not tried to make it out like these kids (I know of 3 others that were denied, too) have no skills or knowledge!

I won't let anyone enroll him in first grade right off, that's not fair to him and setting him up for failure.  So.  Home schooling it is.

I am terrified I'll mess up the foundation of his education, to be honest.  I have no idea how to teach a child to read!

I'm spending a lot of time researching right now.  I know it's supposedly easy once you get going, but from out here it sure looks complicated and hard.

My plan right now is to home school for just the one year, but I know enough to know not to say for sure because God has a plan and I'm excited to see it happen.  :)