"Wait until your kids are a bit older and a pyjama day helping with the laundry no longer keeps them interested!
DS1 is in reception. He has had a busy half-term, visit to grandparents, outings, meal out, birthday party. He is so ready to go back to school!"
Alibaba raises an interesting point. For many children, the transition back and forth between the highly structured school day and unstructured time at home is not quick or easy. This leaves children complaining of boredom and parents tearing their hair out trying to keep them occupied.
Home educating families have found that given enough time, kids do make the adjustment. After coming out of school, children may go through a phase of rattling round the house being bored. At this point, parents may wonder whether the whole home ed idea is doomed, and need reassurance from those who have been there before. But eventually the kids do get past that. They start finding things to do. They take up hobbies, rediscover old interests and toys, and have a greater ability to enjoy stretches of time which they need to fill for themselves. My 13 year old is never short of things to do. This includes helping with the laundry (not that she finds it as riveting as when she was a toddler!!), drawing, playing guitar, writing, doing sports, making a tableau out of clay, gossiping with friends on the internet and by text, playing computer games, watching documentaries and going shopping. (I do notice that if she has done something highly structured such as a week-long drama workshop or a sports camp, then she has a bit more "boredom" afterward before she adjusts.)
The trouble for schoolchildren is that this transition can take more than six weeks. Such children never do have enough time off school to learn to occupy themselves. Their parents quite reasonably conclude that their children will always need entertaining during the school holidays.
In the context of school holidays, I don't know what the answer is. Perhaps these children need longer holidays rather than more of them, so they would have time to get past the boredom?
Some schoolchildren always find the transition from school structure easy, and are happy to chill out every half term. Their parents sometimes don't sympathise with other parents whose children find that switch hard.
Anyway pixi, given how much you love time with your kids at home, you might give some more thought to whether and how you could make home education work. Perhaps if you found what your son likes most about preschool you could find other ways to provide that to him. Or maybe you can just wait, making it clear to him that he is welcome to leave school if and when he wants. Some children like preschool but find school a different kettle of fish, when the hours are longer and the expectations are different. Some like preschool at first but then become disenchanted with it once the novelty wears off. If you get in touch with a home education group near you, it might provide some potential friends and activities for your children so they understand that it can be a realistic option. If you lived in our area, for example, you could get together with other people for home ed ice skating, park play, nature walks, athletics sessions, science projects and museum trips. My very sociable older daughter didn't see any reason to bother with school when she realised just how much she would have to give up in order to attend school!