Okay, so I'm no expert (I'm less than a month into my first year of homeschooling my kids). However, I was homeschooled 12 grades, and I have followed homeschool blogs and listened to various people hash out different philosophies about homeschooling, and here is my take on the subject:
In a nutshell, I don't see why we have to follow the world's way of educating, in any way, really. Sure, our kids need to learn about the 3 R's, and in most states, they are required to learn certain things by a certain age, and there's no reason to keep them from learning those things. However, the whole grade thing is rather arbitrary. Have you ever read the Little House on the Prairie series? Children were placed when they entered school at the level they had achieved. And they didn't have a certain number of school days. Planting and harvesting often interrupted school--at least for individuals, and often for the whole school. School ended earlier and started later than it does today. But today, kids don't have a farm to help out on; they aren't an asset to the family (unless you are Amish, of course--which you probably aren't if you are on this board!).
So far, I think MFW is a great program. I'm doing K with my oldest, who turned six last October. She's loving it. We started right after the New Year, and we're going pretty fast (we're half way through Unit 3 already). However, today she's sick, so I'm guessing we probably won't get anything done today. That's fine. There's always tomorrow or next week!
But as I try to figure out how we're going to do things, I think I'm not going to worry about grade levels too much. For the sake of the school district and anyone else who asks, we'll put a label on their education level (I say they because I have 3 kids so far, though the other two aren't ready for school yet). But as far as I'm concerned, we'll just do what we can do and let the rest slide. I kind of figure we'll just do 1 or 2 lessons whenever we can until we finish, whether that's in May or August or whenever. Then we'll start first grade and do the same thing. Once we get to the family cycle, I'll just do the combined curriculum together, and then do the other things like math and such at whatever level they are comfortable with and as fast as they want or as slow as they need. I don't see a reason to keep all subjects at the same grade level. And if a child is bright and wants to skip a grade, we'll actually consider it. Because when I was in school (homeschooled), I started at 7.5 (birthday's in December) and graduated at 19.5. That was just too old to be finishing high school! My husband started school a younger than I did, did one grade during the summer (3rd or 4th), and graduated at age 17.
I mean, if they aren't in a one-grade classroom, then there's not such an issue with whether they are the same age as the other classmates, is there?
I guess the point of all that is to just relax and do what you can do. If you think you can get it done without losing your sanity, go for it. But if you find yourself getting stressed, skip some things, or just don't worry about it.
