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Hey 2J - do you know of any homeschoolers that began late with their home schooling...and how did the kids handle it. Ive been trying to slowly break it to my daughter that there is a good chance we will decide to at least pull her out or the private school she is in, but she isnt taking it too well.

I am so thoroughly bummed right now. I feel like I am the only one in my narrow little universe who thinks homeschooling is the right idea.

Alkhin - I've known lots and lots. Almost always they adjust within months and do just as well as us K-12 homeschooled types.

Do things to ease the transition. Find out who her best friends are, and arrange plenty of play dates, even if that means you have to do extra running around. Let her concentrate mostly on subjects she loves for the first while, and keep the school days as short as possible. If her friends get snow days, you can give her one, too.

Homeschooling is about flexibility. It can also be about togetherness - doing things like starting the day reading aloud a chapter from a book you love.

If there's anything I can do to help you, let me know. Any questions, however... weird, ask them, please!

I don't remember how old your daughter is...but I didn't start into homeschooling until I was in fourth grade. It was a bit different for me since I was really a loner even back then and much preferred the company of my siblings, so I was overjoyed to be outta there...but I also had other friends who started homeschooling late. Most made the adjustment pretty quickly, especially once they realized that you could still do plenty of stuff with friends - especially homeschooled friends as you have a lot of flexibility where schedule is concerned.

We didn't start h/sing until Joseph was in 5th and Clare in 8th grade. There is so much stuff out there for h/sers, you can choose a curriculum, or put things together yourself. I used the ideas from the book "The Well Trained Mind" to guide me, though I'm now using a curriculum called TRISMS which follows the idea of WTM, studying everything by starting at the beginning and coming up through time. The TRISMS program covers all of the academic disciplines except the middle and high school Math and hard sciences. There are programs for teaching those at home, as well, or you could find a tutor or a co-op program for them.

The programs I use are secular ones, and I add on the Catholic education with books I've chosen myself.

If your daughter has some good friends now, just keep her meeting up with them after school when possible or on the weekends. They don't have that much time to visit during school hours anyway; most don't even have lunch together because of the way they schedule groups in school nowadays. You might also find a local homeschool group and let her visit with some of those kids before beginning as well. That way she can see that there are kids her age doing this, and she'd likely have some fun! Check your state homeschool message board; Google a search for homeschooling and your state, and you'll find something. Dittos on the letting her just get used to being at home first. You don't need to push the academics right away; let her do some reading or do some activities that she's always wanted to try, but never had the chance to with her school schedule. When you do get down to doing the actual work, you might find that it takes her a LOT less time than that in a normal school day to do the work.

You can pull her in the middle of the school year, if you feel it's necessary, or you can just spend the remainder of this year getting all your duckies in a row. It might be fun, though, for her to help you with the planning, if she's willing, and not having to go off to school every day gives y'all lots of time to do that! ;o)