Should it be done just because they can?

[Night Elf]

Based on personal experience with my children, I'd rather let them choose whatever they want to do than force them to work in grade-level materials forced on them by age. It dulls the brain, IMHO. I've been dealing with this issue with dd12 for the past 2 year and I regret not letting her just take off.

 

Of course with your dd's age, you might not even have an issue. Just because she's a grade level ahead right now, doesn't mean she will always stay ahead. Dd12, ready to start high school, hit many walls. She'd fly through a math book and then get to a lesson and stop cold. We would have to wait a month or two before she was ready to move on, and then she flew through more. It's like I was able to literally see her developmental changes over the years. One day she absolutely has no understanding and then some time later, boom!, it's like she was always doing it. It's rather cool actually. :)

 

You're obviously getting all kinds of advice. Read through it, take what makes you feel comfortable and toss the rest. What is right for our family isn't right for everyone, no matter what personal experience a person has.

[abbeyej]

I tried to spend age-appropriate amounts of time on ability-appropriate education. If one of my sons was capable of third grade maths in first grade, then that's what he did. I did not expect him to spend more time on it, however, than a first grader should. This balance seemed to work - offering challenge without pushing.

 

This. Appropriate *time* for the age, but work that's always "just a little bit hard", regardless of grade level. So a six year old would do school for a couple of hours a day. Whether that time is spent learning letter sounds or reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, practicing printing or writing a story, adding with the help of manipulatives or solving for X. Whatever is "just a little bit hard" for that particular child. Whatever keeps them moving forward.

 

I want my children to be used to working. I don't want all of their schoolwork to be easy. I want them, occasionally, to face the possibility of failure, but within a framework of safety and support. I want them to meet success with the knowledge that they put forth effort and achieved something.

 

But at five and six (and beyond) I want them to have lots of free time for exploring, building, creating, staring, singing, discovering, dreaming, climbing, running, leaping, chattering...

 

This is one of the great benefits that I see to home schooling in the early years: meeting kids wherever they need to be academically, and giving them lots and lots of TIME as well.