Smart Cookies

We are a secular homeschool family.  Meaning, I am not doing it for religious reasons, so don't get afraid I might offend your sensibilities with my version of godliness.

My husband (public school) and I (private school) chose to homeschool 100% based on our oldest daughters desire to learn and her being too young to start school.  Gingerbread was learning to read at 3.  Considering the fact that Kinder is where most kids learn to read, we felt she'd be bored.

Ginger just finished her first semester of homeschool kindergarten.  Which looks almost nothing like kinder on paper.

She is 1 lesson shy of finishing 1st grade math.
She reads at a 3rd grade reading level but still prefers books with more pictures than words.
She writes all of her letters legibly and only gets a few numbers backwards.
She is 18 of 24 in her first level of spelling.

We recently finished our first 'semester' of Co-op.  (Homeschool families learning together as a group.) I HATED it.  Ginger was the oldest child at 5 and I didn't feel she was engaged in learning anything.  The main objective for Ginger and Sugar was to finish their stations as quick as possible and go play with the toys.

I don't want our education to be... hurry through school so I can do something fun.  I want school to be the fun part.  And in almost every aspect of our homeschool it is this way.  Ginger begs for school some days.  But Co-op was not a good fit for us.  Co-op was not school, co-op was busy work.  I don't know about you guys, but I did not like busy work in school.

I was on the fence about continuing Co-op, but reserved my spot because things were changing for the better.  Until our recently fixation, anyway.  Co-op has become drama. Like I said, my kid was  the oldest, she should be in Kinder.  Most of the children will be kinder age next fall.  So I really don't get the current situation.  The hard-core homeschoolers vs the homeschooling for now. Personally, I'm a take it at my child's pace.  If she ever wants to try school, then we will discuss it, as a family.

But I absolutely will NOT tolerate discrimination.  Race, religion, color, education style.  I don't care as long as you are a nice person and try your best in a given situation.

So, now I am back on the fence about this Co-op.  I do not want my children to learn that some people don't deserve to be a part of a group because of x, y or z.