To think that nursery/pre school isn’t always necessary ?

[progestermoan]

If one parent is at home and you go to a group or two/the park/do activities at home/play dates ?

Does it really matter if a child isn’t using their 3 y o funding or attending at a younger age?
My ds is only 18 months and I’m getting questions when will he go ? Why is t his name down ? I am lucky enough to be at home and don’t see that it’s necessary it’s personal choice after all?
We are considering home education for him when he’s older though maybe this is why I’m leaning towards this approach but I’m fed up of people asking me !

You may feel different by the time he's 3. He might be very obviously ready for that school-type environment. I hadn't planned to send mine to preschool as she's a summer baby and I thought she'd be too young to get much out of it. But having seen her at toddler group, always keen to explore and try new things, I changed my mind. She only went two mornings a week but she loved it and it did wonders for her confidence, and it made starting school very easy for her too.

Bebanjo - I find it quite strange, did she show no interest at all in reading before then?

My toddler is exposed to letters and numbers through stories etc & asks me to tell him what words say etc. He is a long way from reading but is starting to recognise some letters/sounds. I think a child who is totally disinterested in reading until 7 could be in the minority. While it may have suited your daughter, it's not unusual for children to show a lot of interest in reading much earlier, it's not always the best approach for every child to delay it.

No my DD did not show any interest in reading befor 7. And yes she was read to everyday. And we had visits from LEA and I told them what I’ve said here.
LEA is an ex head master, he said in his opinion many children are not ready to read at 4 and 5 years old.

Quite a lot of children show up in Reception already able to read, so obviously very many of them are interested enough to learn without being forced. To adopt it as a deliberate policy seems odd.

Definitely not necessary.

Unless needed for childcare of course.

Ok, I was giving my opinion and my experience, for the benefit of the op.

It's a digression from the subject of nursery, but for those of you who are curious about the idea of learning to read later than it's taught in school, here's a link which may interest you: www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedom-learn/201002/children-teach-themselves-read

The article isn't about home education in general, but rather focuses on a particular type of home education in which the children themselves drive the education process. They decide when they want to read and how they want to do it.

It's a summary of anecdotal accounts of how children learned to read, together with the author's own conclusions about it. For example, he observes that for children not at school parents report that there's no great disadvantage or lasting impact in learning to read later rather than earlier. Of course it's a totally different story at school: at school, the curriculum is increasingly delivered via the medium of reading and writing, so that an illiterate child will struggle to access pretty much the entire curriculum, and also illiterate children who spend much of their in an environment which prizes early reading skills are bound to feel like failures. But it's a mistake to generalise this and conclude that later reading is harmful per se. That certainly isn't what most home educating parents have found. Kids who have easy access to information and instruction in other formats can be educated quite adequately for a number of years even if they can't read. When they do take an interest in reading, they may pick it up remarkably fast.

Among my acquaintance, seven seems like the most popular age for home ed children to learn to read, but it varies widely. My eldest dabbled with the idea of reading on and off from the age of three but always gave up upon realising that it wasn't effortless. At 6.5 she decided to work properly at reading, but TBH now I think she still wasn't developmentally ready and was only doing it because of peer pressure. (She was quite a conformist and knew that schoolchildren read earlier, and her best friend had been reading fluently since toddlerhood.) She made very slow steady progress and I was never worried about her reading, but it was a hard slog for her, unlike many of her home ed peers who go from zero to Harry Potter in less than a year (not uncommon when kids learn to read under their own steam at seven or later). It all fell into place for her at last around her ninth birthday when she was finally able to read the chapter books she wanted to read. Since then it's been smooth sailing. She's just sat her English Language IGCSE with virtually no preparation, having got quite high marks in mocks.

So the experience of @bebanjo is not at all unusual in home ed circles. For us, there's less need for children to acquire specific skills at certain ages than there is for schoolchildren who are learning via large-group age-segregated instruction. We can afford to wait until they are very keen and definitely ready.

@Saracen I agree that learning to read later does not necessarily disadvantage children, although I think how late we mean does matter. But I take parents self reports with a pinch of salt as it is anecdotal and reported from self interest.
In the 70s for example many parents insisted that hitting their children did their children ho harm.

Nope not necessary at all. Starting school at four with no previous nursery experience is absolutely fine.

@jennymanara Sure, that's true. I agree that anecdotes aren't proof and that self-reporting is problematic. However, I have found that within the home ed community people are very eager to discuss their mistakes and regrets as well as their successes. (They might not share those thoughts with the wider world for fear of condemnation, but do want to help fellow home educating families avoid similar mistakes.) In a great many discussions, I don't recall ever hearing anyone say they wished they'd worked harder to encourage their children to read at an earlier age, though one person said she thought she'd missed a window of opportunity for writing by leaving it until her child was over ten to address his problems. An exception to the general consensus that home educated kids can learn to read at any age is when those children may go to school in the next few years. I wouldn't recommend sending a nonreading seven-year-old to school, where reading is such a necessary skill.

Here's a reference to various research comparing children taught to read at school aged five versus seven, indicating no difference in outcomes: www.otago.ac.nz/news/news/otago006408.html

Most people who are adults now didn't go to nursery. Do you feel you missed out? If you do activities at home, read books, chat and go out and about like you're doing I really don't think it's necessary. As for "coming on leaps and bounds " at nursery, children do that at home as well. It's hard to compare as we can't rewind time and try both approaches!

@Saracen I agree with five versus seven. But it does matter how late reading is left to. Because it does prevent the child accessing other materials that require reading.

Mine went to nursery full time from six months and moved over to preschool when they were three. It’s not essential obviously but mine loved seeing their friends each day and they learnt how to follow instructions, sit down where and when they are told, how to share and the activities they did in arts and crafts were ones I would never have thought of, or had the patience!

My dd didn't go to nursery, she goes to playgroup once a week and she does a club activity every weekend for a couple of hours. She starts school in September. She has had 2 settling in afternoons. She has made friends and the teacher says that she was fine, and she wasnt bothered about me leaving her. Obv this might be different come September who knows.
We moved house in the winter after she turned 3 and she couldn't get a place in the school nursery. (We live in wales so the childcare options are different here). I have been told by a few friends that I was doing her a disservice, that she wouldn't cope etc. It made me feel terrible for a time but I just couldn't afford to put her in nursery while I was pregnant with her brother. Luckily my mum who was a nursery nurse, told me that realistically she wouldn't gain much until she was 3 anyway.
She is potty trained, can use cutlery, put her coat on, get dressed etc. She is starting to read and write and do basic maths.
What I am trying to say I suppose is that you should just do what you think best at the time for your child.

@jennymanara absolutely! which is why motivation is not a problem. Sooner or later the kid starts wanting to get at the more interesting features of their video game, or read a book without waiting for someone else to read it to them, or catch a train or bus or navigate an unfamiliar area, or text friends. That's when they will work on learning to read.

The reason this phenomenon is unfamiliar outside of home ed circles is because schoolchildren are being made to learn things they aren't necessarily engaged with yet. If you don't have the luxury of waiting for kids to discover the immense usefulness of literacy for themselves in their own time, you might conclude that a significant proportion of children must be forced to learn reading.

But of course reading is hugely important in our society, and for that very reason children eventually want to master that skill.

And what if a child is not motivated to learn until 14?

I am over 60 and went to nursery, in fact it was pretty formal and we sat at desks but I have great memories of it and met one of my dearest friends there, now both in our 60s but we are meeting up to go wild swimming this week.

I don’t think it is essential but my DS (an only child) loved every minute of nursery and I asked for a special arrangement to let him start early as he was so Looking forward to it,meeting other children, having different experiences, learning social skills of being in groups, receiving instructions from adults other than his parents, I am a great believer in the ‘it takes a village’ approach.

"And what if a child is not motivated to learn until 14?"

Then they learn in other ways until they are 14, start reading at 14, and live happily ever after. It's rare for the interest to take hold so late, as there are usually reasons for a child to want to read before then, but I don't see buy the notion that learning to read at that age is a disaster, provided they aren't in school.

The only child I can think of who learned to read as late as that had been turned off to reading by her experiences at school. She left school unable to read her own name at the age of 13, I think it was. Her parents quickly discovered that even gentle encouragement to read was counterproductive as she became distraught and switched off entirely. So they left it alone, assuming that some serious intervention would be needed in her late teens or that she might never learn to read at all. With the pressure off, she spontaneously began reading the following year.

I realise it is a difficult concept to grasp. Nearly all of us went to school and we've absorbed the idea that reading must be taught to children whether they like it or not, preferably when they are still quite young, and that irreparable damage will be done if this is neglected. But there is no evidence that that is the case.

However, I certainly know many examples like that of the child above (though less extreme) of children whose enthusiasm and self-confidence took a big hit at school by being forced to tackle reading when they were unready or unwilling. They think they're stupid, they think they can't do it. It can take years for them to recover and be ready to learn. There is definitely a risk there which is generally overlooked.

I watched a documentary which compared children in some EU countries where they learn to read at 7 with children in the UK. They found the 7 years took one term to reach the standards of the UK children.

Back to the op. I tried preschool with my eldest and he hated it, so I took him out. Might not bother with the younger one.

Totally up to you.

Where I live there isn’t any public provision for preschool so mine won’t be going unless I start work, what with it being $250 a week. There is a part time provision run by the churches with huge waiting lists for $250/mth so I’ll have to find the money for that I think within the next year.