Helping Kids be Excited about Homeschooling

from two_girls_mom2007:
My ODD will be 6 in a couple weeks. We went through this really bad the year she was 4. She was so looking forward to school, and people started asking her if she was in school or when she was going etc. I did have to limit some of her T.V. cartoons that showed a lot of school for awhile. I also tried to not read books that showed kids going to school, just to try to keep her from thinking she was missing something.

She always seemed to be negotiating when she could go to "real school." She would tell me she would homeschool while she was 5, but she would start real school when she was 6. I made sure that the first day of K was a lot of fun for her. I made it very official, and we kind of played school. We do a formal calendar time to start the day, and keep things predictable during school time. We even call things recess, storytime, lunchtime, etc. using school words. She got her own new lunchbox for field trips, and backpack and supplies. Lots of new supplies like she kept seeing in the store. Dd loves dinosaurs, so I buried dinosaur bones in our sandbox for a dinosaur dig for Science the first day. We pretended we were paleontologists uncovering a fossil, and tried to figure out what kind of dino it was. The 2nd day of school we made a library visit, and I let her pick out books about animals she wanted to study. I made a mini unit on the ones she chose, and then later that week we visited the zoo to observe the animals we were studying. I just tried to really keep her involved, and I pointed out gently the whole time, that if she were in P.S. she wouldn't be on a field trip already.

I also got her involved with other kids that homeschool. That seems to be what finally did the trick. She knows now that she is not the only one out there. She has some friends that homeschool, and most don;t. She is now aware that most kids do not homeschool, but she does not ask not to anymore.

from nancymc:
I'm not sure if I'm just lucky or if I did something to help this along, but my kids have NEVER wanted to go to school. We've ridden buses places, they don't see any attraction in that, plus I always point out to them when we're out and about (usually coming home from some really fun cool place) how early the buses come and how late they drop off, so they understand how much time is spent on that bus. In our area the kids typically ride the bus for an hour or so, twice a day, I can't imagine how that would be fun!

It's a balance for me, I don't at all want to portray school as a bad thing, particularly since many of their friends are in school, I don't homeschool as a protest and I don't want my kids to think school is evil or anything....HOWEVER....I do point out to them the advantages we have, we often wave to the school as we go by on our way to whatever fun thing, we talk often about homework and how if they had any they wouldn't have time for the fun evening things we are doing, we often celebrate how lazy we are in our pj's at 10am, etc.

Basically I talk up the good points about homeschooling, and I make sure that they don't feel like they miss anything. Find out what your son wants from school and then work to duplicate it at home. Ride a bus somewhere....go back to school shopping (this is a fun one for us, we wait until all the supplies are on clearance and then we just go have fun, no list, just whatever they thing looks fun....new markers, cool folders, etc). Maybe this is mean, but I usually pick up the list that is there for the schools and look it over, we always laugh at how they have to buy things like kleenexes and a specific color of folder...it's not like the kids in school actually get to take the fun stuff to school anymore! So I let them pick out whatever within reason, usually on clearance for a song. I buy them each a new pair of pj's each year for their first day back to school, lol, but I also let them pick out a new shirt and some nicer shorts for the classes they take outside the home.

My son went to school, so that helps immensely as well, he very well knows he has it good at home. He remembers homework, he remembers getting up really early, he remembers how little time he had to actually play and pursue his passions.

from treddlesewingmachine:
Last year my son was supposed to go to kinder, but they put him in with the worst teacher, whom I requested to NOT have. (And here they don't tell you the teacher until 2 days before school starts...) So we had to quickly change gears when my husband and I decided to keep him home (with his older sister who is home schooling and younger brother.)

The bus stops outside our door too, at least for the first week until they realize there are no kids getting on here! We talked about how he gets to eat his breakfasts (yes, he usually eats more than one!) how it doesn't matter when he gets dressed (was very hard for him to do that last year) how he can have snack when ever he wants, how he gets to watch the "good" shows on PBS (the ones actually for beginning readers are on after the school bus comes) and how he could play on the computer if he wanted, or play his bugle. The bus comes at 7:20 here, one of the last stops, but still pretty early. I told him he could sleep in if he wanted (a laugh, he gets up with my husband at 5:30!) We also talked about how we could go to the park whenever we want, go for bike rides, and not have to do homework after school like the other kids we meet in the park after school (usually our second trip to the park for the day!) Kinder kids have homework here, probably most schools nowadays. One of the reasons I dislike public schools.

The teacher thing I did have to explain - my daughter had her so I knew how she was. (Had to be careful her, my daughter loved her, but I hated her!) I explained that the teacher wanted kids who could sit still and not go explore stuff. My son already knew that she didn't like hugs, which he loves. I also had to tell my daughter that while the teacher was ok for her, there were kids that she had problems with and would yell at constantly and I didn't want her brother to be one of those kids. (I gave her an example of one boy that constantly was in trouble and she tried to squish the life out of.) My son has a hard time following directions, sitting still and has a lot of curiosity about things. Honestly sometimes he drives me to distraction, but I couldn't let him be with that woman! Oh, and this woman told a boy in my daughter's class, with similar speech issues, "Don't talk like a baby!" (In front of the class and mom, no less!) I never heard the boy talk the rest of the year. Ah, so many stories, but not pertinent to what you are asking...

Can you go camping or to an amusement park the first week of school? A great fun way to show how you have it better!

from hbbk20:
You can arrange for a bus ride somewhere so your kid can ride a bus. You can also have a pretend bus that you decorate with markers and things from a cardboard box and then play a game of ride the bus and ...now we go to school ect....so make it an event that you express thru artistic things like making a box bus, pack a lunch to eat at the table that you do school at and things like that. Make being home fun, and remind them of the benes of not going away.

from bugsmomct:
You can't "get" someone's feelings to change. *However* your 4 year old has only had one set of inputs - that "big boys" go to school.Yeah, all those 'fun things' at home you've been talking about are nice, but that's nothing new really (you're probably already doing lots of fun things). Find out what stuff is really exciting (like riding a bus) and go do it - find someplace where you can take a bus ride. If back to school clothes commercials are exciting, go take advantage of the sales and get sneakers, jeans, backpack, etc. Pack a lunch a couple times per week and go have a picnic.

I'd strongly suggest you find (or make) a local homeschool support group so he can see that not all "big boys" go to school, some learn at home with mom and dad and their siblings. We got involved with our first support group when DS was 3 - mostly just did park days, beach days, and parent support evenings (while DS visited with Grandma). As he got older, we did visits to the firehouse, the newspaper (he loved the big printing and folding machines), a sole proprietor candy shop (made cool chocolate treats - bacon and eggs - melt some white chocolate; lay out 3 thin pretzel sticks on some waxed paper; pour a bit of the white chocolate over the central area of the pretzel sticks; put a few yellow M&Ms together in the middle of the chocolate and voila - bacon and eggs on the sweet side!). The school bus stops next door and across the street from us but he's never asked to go to school - he knows lots of people don't go to school from little ones up to teenagers. And, he's experienced things like driving home with us after spending a day at a hs group park day and sitting behind a school bus full of kids who spent the whole gorgeous late spring day sitting in a classroom while he spent the day running free in a park and playing with friends. He does get frustrated sometimes when we're trying to plan things like a sleep over with favorite cousins because they can only do things at certain times because of school. He loves taking vacations when things are totally uncrowded; we love getting the off season prices.

from momwifefriendedie:
I think for us we have let dd do some of those same things like buying a new colorful notebook to be her "school" journal, buying fun stickers to reward with just like school, buying new markers and crayons, and letting her decorate her own study area on a tri folder. We also take her picture in a new outfit on our first official. We also plan a special fun art project for that first day. You just can't beat playing with paint.

from pailani:
I have a friend who starts the first day of homeschool kindergarten by teaching the child to obey instructions - by making cookies! She tells the child "get me the flour," "now go get me the sugar," while she mixes and makes the cookies. So each of her children's first day of kindergarten was helping Mommy make cookies I always thought that was a fun idea.