Age gap between my own child and daycare kids

[Starshine]

I am hoping some of you can give me some suggestions.

I homeschool my son--he is 6 1/2, essentially finishing up grade one right now. Because of the age gap between him and the majority of kids in my care, he is feeling excluded. I have two kids here under 2 years, so they require a lot of supervision/guidance. My son is wonderful with the other kids, he adores them, and plays with them, but it is still hard.

I try to spend time with him when the young ones are napping, so we have that together and he gets one-on-one time with me. And he has some sit-down school work that he does that keeps him busy/challenged for a while. But he needs more things to do during the day that challenge him. He is bored (and very smart). He has also said recently that he doesn't like going to the park because there are no big kids like him to play with. (I realize this will be different in summer, but for other times?)

I am trying to find a child to care for in September that is in school part-time, so he will have someone here closer to his age.

Any advice would be welcome.

[playfelt]

Have you been able to connect with any other homeschooling families. Many of them will also have both age groups of children. That would give him the older kids to play with and sometimes families share in the sense of one takes the little ones while the other one takes the older kids and does a science experiment or something more age appropriate.

With summer break starting in a week the issue will resolve itself which gives you the summer to sort out the social aspects for next school year but linking to homeschool groups is probably your best resource.

You might also hire an older student that could do something with your son when their school is out and for a hire school student that would be mid afternoon. A university student would have some daytime hours to come and do something one on one special for one of his subjects of interest - or one you prefer not to teach then it is win for both of you.

[sunnydays]

I second what Playfelt said about homeschool groups. Every Friday I have the pleasure of chatting with a bunch of homeschooling moms at my local park as they get to gether to have the kids play baseball and then some of the moms take the little ones to the playground while the older ones play. They are a wonderful group of ladies and I enjoy talking to them. If you could hook up with a group like this, your son would have opportunities to spend time with kids his age and as a bonus, you'd have some likeminded moms to chat with

[Crayola kiddies]

I have my own 7 yr old son and although he is not hone schooled he is off for the summer after tomorrow, the other school age boy that I had all year is not coming this summer so all the kids will be 2/3 yr olds and we live in the country so can't just go to a friends for part of the day .... So what I did was "hire" my son.... I am going to pay him to help me organize cleanup time, help to put on shoes and zip zippers for outside time, help with puzzles and read stories. That way he doesn't feel like he's in daycare cause he's not and when the kids are napping he will get to watch tv in my room or play hockey in the garage or what ever he wants to do that's quiet. He is very excited about it and he's already dreaming of all the money he's going to have at the end of summer

[Starshine]

Thank you for the replies. We do meet up with other homeschooling families, which is great, but not every day--and it's the every day stuff that I need help with. Ideas for what he can be doing while I'm interacting with the littles ones, etc.

[playfelt]

Make sure that his "school" schedule is such that he is doing a fun thing while you are busy with the little ones and save his pencil type work for when they are having freeplay and then he doesn't feel like he has been banished - punished instead of having fun.

Build some of his lessons into play rather than being alone and he won't even know such as felt letters on feltboard to create spelling words - great for rhyming families as you can physically move the letters. Make him some coloured bins of "his" freeplay activities with a checklist of what he has done. He then does his schooling in the midst of freeplay - ie each child is working at their level.