This post is part of my series, “Kickin’ It Old Skool: Why and How We Are Old-Fashioned” or KIOS for short.  If you’re new to the series, please read my disclaimer before continuing on.  I’m keeping a table of contents to this series here so you can see what I’ve already written about and what more there is to come. 

The majority of the posts in this series have applied more to the “baby/toddler” stage of parenting than to older kids, which is understandable considering that we only have one baby and she’s just 19 months old!  This post and my last post are reaching more into the “as our child matures” realm and so will consequently be shorter on real-world experience and longer on theory and “we think this is what we’re going to do.” 

Nik only went to public school and I attended public school for most of my schooling.  Nik and I are both certified public school teachers.  Although I’m not currently teaching, Nik is a full-time high school teacher.

We see the irony in the fact that we’re planning on homeschooling Ellie.

Here’s why we’re planning on homeschooling her, in a nutshell:

1.  We don’t want Ellie to attend academic kindergarten. (If the public schools around here did play-based K, we might consider sending her but K in our public schools is really academically-focused.)

2. Having worked in an elementary school for a year (the year I was pregnant with Ellie) and consequently getting to observe K education first-hand, we don’t want Ellie to have to sit through all the wasted time that is inherent in educating 20+ little kids at the same time (regardless of how good the teacher is).

3.  We want the freedom to pick and choose the methods that Ellie will learn through. (So maybe Waldorf, maybe Montessori, maybe classical, who knows – we’ll wait and see until Ellie gets a little older and starts to show us her true colors when it comes to learning.)

As of right now, we’re committed to no preschool and homeschooling for kindergarten.  Each year, we’ll reevaluate and see what’s working and what’s not and make changes as necessary.  And of course, Ellie is only 19 months old.  So there’s lots of time between now and age 5 for us to reconsider as necessary.

In the meantime though, I’m not worrying about Ellie learning the alphabet just yet!

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• A bit more about why we don’t like academic kindergarten: Killing Kindergarten.
• If you do plan to send your child to preschool, here’s a great list of: 10 Signs of a Great Preschool
• A couple blogs that I like for their homeschooling perspective:  Simple Homeschool and FIMBY: Fun In My Back Yard
• Two books that were instrumental in freeing us from feeling like we needed to send Ellie to preschool (or kindergarten):
  Einstein Never Used Flash Cards: How Our Children Really Learn– And Why They Need to Play More and Memorize Less by Kathy Hirsh-Pasek , Roberta Michnick Golinkoff ,  and Diane Eyer
  NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman