Reading and Schooling

Princess is 4 1/2 and reads fluently. She started reading just before she turned 4 and her fluency has steadily improved since then. Now she has moved beyond easy readers and will read just about anything. She reads books to herself, to her brother, to anyone who will listen. It is wonderful and amazing to listen to her. She adores reading and books and it thrills me to see my love of books and reading embodied in my little girl.

The downside to all of this? She is 100% ready for kindergarten...and yet she is not ALLOWED to go until the fall of 2009. That is more than a year away! This is ridiculous. Unfortunately we cannot find a school anywhere around here who will allow her to attend this fall.

I know kindergarten is about more than reading, but trust me, she is READY. She has two years of academic preschool under her belt and knows how to behave in a classroom setting. She does basic math problems, she uses scissors well, she does phonetic spelling. The child is more ready for kindergarten than many students in school now.

Frustrated doesn't even begin to describe my feelings at this point. To add to my frustration, we don't know where to send her to school. Our local public school is okay but not great. The local Christian school is good but expensive--plus since we're Catholic, eventually we will have to deal with things such as the portrayal of Catholics vs Martin Luther in the curriculum plus we're not too enthused about aspects of the science curriculum. The Catholic schools are an option. One school is twenty minutes away and is relatively new. We went to an open house at this school and were not very impressed by the kindergarten teacher or the curriculum. The other Catholic school is thirty minutes away and we're going on a tour there on Monday. It is a more established school and is the least expensive school of all the options. Oh, and of course we have to add in commuting costs in addition to tuition amounts.

The only other school options are so expensive that we can't even consider them. We can barely consider these options as it is. Homeschooling keeps flitting in and out of my mind, but I really don't think I'm cut out for it. I'm not social enough and fear that I would keep my children at home too much. Plus I think successful homeschoolers are 100% committed to homeschooling and that just doesn't describe me.

Ack. Where is the manual on parenting when you need it?