5 yr old wants to be at home not school.

He sounds very similar to my DS!

I think kids can suffer from some degree of seperation anxiety at any age

hi ladybird, how do you find it , i mean do they ever have days when they dont want to or refuse to do any work?
i'd be worried about that & also that i would find other things to do instead of lessons , im a bit chaotic & un-organised!

Yep, they often don't want to do "work", but tbh we're pretty autonomous and I don't think they need to actually sit down and do written work anyway. Why do they have to spend hours writing stuff down? It's not as if they're going to go back and look at it if they forget it. It's just how we've been conditioned to think they should learn. I am absolutely astounded at how much the boys learn through play, cds, dvds, books, etc. without any guidance at all. Ocean is 4, would be in reception now, but can tell me more about the Romans and Normans than I could him. I think it's more about guiding them to find opportunities that interest them and they learn from those. And it's also an extension of being at home before school if you think about it - how much do our children learn from us?! And why would I want someone else to teach my children, be it other adults or their peers in the playground? A lot of the "bad" behaviour only started when my eldest started school and picked stuff up in the playground. If they ask about anything then we look it up, we use the internet for worksheets, colouring pages, fact finding, etc, etc. Today we're having pirate day, sounds like fun and it is. They've been colouring and decorating shoe box treasure chests, while listening to a cd. Later we'll be learning about pirates throughout history and from different parts of the world as well. We've got a huge map of the world, I've got lots of information so we'll combine history and geography, amongst other skills. It can be a lot of fun for me as well! And I don't insist of them working every day, if they're tired, etc. We don't have school holidays after all. And if you take a school day and omit the unnecessary stuff (for home at least ) - assembly, registration, time spent telling the "unruly" children off, etc, etc, etc, then the school work is only about 3hrs of the day anyway. Add to that that most children get very, very little one-to-one adult time and I can give lots of that here and they can learn what they would do at school a lot quicker, have it explained individually to them, etc.
With all 3 being nuts about history lately, we've booked our annual holiday to Rome this year, so we can tie up what they are learning about and are interested in and actually SEE it too!

I agree with Shadow.

School is not a natural way for children to learn to socialise. Large groups of same age children spending lots of time together actually encourages anti-social behaviour and bullying. Children learn to socialise by spending time in the community with children of all ages and adults who they share a common interest with (rather than a year of birth).

It's a myth that home educated children don't socialise. Actually the opposite is true. They are more sociable than their schooled educated peers:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/200 ... t-problem/

My kids have more friends and socialise much more being HE than they ever did at school. They like spending time with people who share the same ideas and interests as them. It's a natural rather than forced socialisation. We get invited to so many activities with other HE families that we can't go to them all. They also attend clubs, swimming, music and dance lessons and mix with school educated children too.

HE children are also more effective learners because they can follow their own interests at their own pace using their own learning styles. Education is actually more effective when it's not formal classroom learning. Many HE families are autonomous learners. Children are self-organising, self-motivated and self-disciplined and are able to teach themselves. You are there to be their facilitator not their teacher. Even children from poor backgrounds and the children of poorly educated parents typically do better than school educated children of middle class, professional, well educated parents.

It sounds to me like you have a very intelligent child who has already worked out that school is not meeting his needs and his desire to be at home instead is actually a very sensible solution to the problem. It's common for school children to be bullied, bored, turned off learning etc. but it doesn't make it acceptable or something you have to just get used to.

Why not try it and see? You/your son can always change your mind.

wow, thanks Shadow & Nappynutter,
youve realy given me something to think about.
i hadnt actualy considered the amount of time they spend doing actual learning - 3 hours isnt that much isit?
he is a naturally inquisitve little chap so i he probably wouldnt find it that odd, i just had in my mind a set curriculum & lesson guides to follow etc,etc.
i dont realy remember much about my HE time ( was 18 yrs ago!) but i can say that school has killed my creative streak, i have trouble thinking how to do things differently -so used to 10 yrs of being told how to do something a set way, that even now i think oops thats not how i learnt to do it.
could you recomend a good site for me to have a look on about it?

i hadnt actualy considered the amount of time they spend doing actual learning - 3 hours isnt that much isit?
he is a naturally inquisitve little chap so i he probably wouldnt find it that odd, i just had in my mind a set curriculum & lesson guides to follow etc,etc.
i dont realy remember much about my HE time ( was 18 yrs ago!) but i can say that school has killed my creative streak, i have trouble thinking how to do things differently -so used to 10 yrs of being told how to do something a set way, that even now i think oops thats not how i learnt to do it.
could you recomend a good site for me to have a look on about it?

If a child can't attend school because of medical/others reasons and the LA provide a tutor at home instead, they only get 1 hour (formal one-one tutoring) a day as that is considered equivalent to a whole day at school.

For more local info, you might like to start with this site:

http://www.iwlearningzone.co.uk/

And yes, many education experts believe that school kills creativity in children.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/ken_r ... ivity.html