My children missed school for 5 days for Disney trip along with missing a few days for a death in the family and sickness throughout the whole school year and the next thing I know is I get a phone call from the police saying there are considered truant. I regret taking them to Disney now with all the trouble that it has caused. I thought because they are in the first grade five days would not make a big difference but I guess the teachers and the principal thought differently.I also had to sit down and explain why they missed the days they missed and now the teachers are holding them back in the first grade as a result.
I'm so sorry this happened to you, and it's a good warning to research your district's rules before taking your child out of school.
That said, if I was in your shoes and someone was threatening to hold my child back in first grade, we would opt to homeschool. Advancement in grade should be based on the child's achievement and readiness for the next year, not on whether or not mum and dad ensured they had their butt glued to a seat the minimum required number of days.
(Mind you, in my district, grade is tied to age until they get to high school. No one gets held back, ever.)
As a retired first grade teacher I too am bothered by the attitude that "real" school doesn't begin until 6th grade. I spent 36 years teaching children to read and I considered that "kind of important".
I also disagree that it is easier to take an older child out of school. When a first grader misses school they are missing 6 hours of instruction everyday. In both reading and math, that is a big deal!
Parents would always ask me to "just send the worksheets" and they figured the children would stay caught up. Children don't learn from worksheets. A worksheet is review and reinforcement of a concept that they learned from teacher instruction. When kids miss the instruction they can't do the worksheet.
I had many kids who missed school for
Disney vacations and when they returned I often had to do one on one work with them to help them catch up. That was taking time away from the rest of the class!
So please don't think that because it's first grade it's not important.
It depends on the child, on the parents and on the school. First grade is very important for some kids, if they aren't already receiving any instruction at home.
In our case, however, all of elementary was a bit beside the point, as my children had already passed all the provincial benchmarks well before September of every year before middle school. I didn't do it on purpose. Somehow the educational ball started rolling when they were toddlers, and didn't stop.
For us "real school" definitely didn't start until at least sixth grade. Maybe later. My daughter (who will be going to university next year), was regularly entertained by coming across concepts I'd taught her during a short stint of homeschooling (3rd and 4th grade), right up into 11th grade math.
Sorry for the parents who made you feel that way about elementary school. from my perspective, it is real school BUT, I feel competent to provide instruction for a dew missed days for the first few years. I can pretty much handle teaching my daughter single digit addition. But once they get to 5th grade, I am no longer competent to fill in for the teacher. I am, in fact, NOT smarter than a 5th grader.
I feel much the same way, especially as a former homeschooling parent. My experience teaching my own children has even led to work tutoring other people's kid, specializing to some extent in teaching dyslexic kids to read.
I'm also well aware, however, that you and I don't represent the majority of parents. Many, many parents hesitate to teach their children anything even remotely academic. They claim they can't. They say their kids won't listen to them or learn from them. Sometimes I think, between work and home, they just don't have the time or energy to do more than help with homework and read a bedtime story at night.
For most families, school is where their kids learn their academics, not home. And I have immense respect for the work classroom teachers do! It's incredibly hard to corral 20 to 30 young minds and get them all working and learning together. Teaching just one or two, especially ones whose learning style you understand intimately, is an entirely different thing, and much, much easier.
I'm sorry to take this thread down a different lane.. but I really am bugged about this statement.... and feel the need to address this way of thinking, concerning children with learning disabilities. (I am strictly speaking of learning disabilities, not physical disabilities.)
Kids that have a LD deserve every right to go on any vacation, just as much as a child that does not have a LD. You see, as a mother of a child with a LD, I see how VERY hard she has to work just to get a bad grade on a test. Yes I wrote that correctly, hard work at getting a poor grade. So some of you may think, well duh, if you take your kid on a vacation, they will have to work even harder at catching back up.... (and sometimes that may be the case, and sometimes not...)
But I will tell you this, my child is only a child for so long... Education will come, albeit slowly in some cases.... but sometimes a kid, will benefit from taking a break, more than any benefit of knowing how to do a specific math problem, science experiment, and even spelling test. Call it a sanity vacation.
I see the effort my child displays, occasional tears, time spent on explaining classwork, time spent on explaining homework, time re-explaining those things again, stress or tension in the home to complete projects or studying for exams., ect.. It's heartbreaking to see a child, any child at that matter, struggle with wanting to do well in class, and not be able to, no matter what they do. Why wouldn't that child have the same right of going on a vacation, as the child that learns easily?
My daughter, as well as most kids that have a LD, know they have a learning discrepancy. Kids will react differently towards that, some acting out, some dealing with it head on and working twice or more as hard... but regardless of what their LD is or how they respond to it, don't they deserve a break just as much as a child that excels in classes...
Why should my daughter, or any LD child, be penalized from enjoying a vacation, in spite of their LD? They shouldn't. Certainly the OP could not have possibly meant that...
Please don't throw any Easter eggs at me...I'm not trying to troll the thread. I'm not mad at the OP or ruffle their feathers... I tried to as respectfully as possible, point out how absurd it was to say what was said. I understand the OP had the best of intentions, but wish #3 would have been more thoughtfully written.
Thank you SO much for this!
My son is dyslexic. I pulled him out of school to homeschool in Kindergarten, because I could provide more learning support and therapy at home, than the school could give us (with their limited budgets and waiting lists). For my son, the hours spent in school were nothing but stressful, wasted time that we could spend working on his specific issues instead.
We travelled a lot during his homeschooling years, especially once his sister joined us for a couple years in elementary.
When he went back to public school in Grade 5 (his request), we were nervous about taking him out for family vacations. But the school has been unfailingly supportive of him and us.
In fact, in middle school, when he was under considerable stress (to the point of breaking out in hives), his educational support teacher actually asked if we had a vacation planned soon. When we said we did (a few days to a nearby city to visit the zoo), he then told us that he felt our son needed these regular "mental health breaks". And he was glad we were finding time in our lives to arrange them!
It was ultimately our son who decided, on his own in Grade 9, that he would not be taking any more family vacations during the school year. And we've respected that decision.
He's incredibly hard working and responsible, and deserves a vacation every much as the next kid!
In my little bit of experience as a substitute teacher I have found that understanding the material is only half the battle. I may understand the material but explaining it in a way for the kids, especially the really young ones, understand it is another kettle of fish entirely.
Very true. One of the biggest challenges of teaching is finding a way to help each student progress, taking into account their unique styles of learning and educational needs.
Some parents are quite capable of explaining the material to their own kids, however. It doesn't necessarily require a teaching degree, as is evidenced by the few children who start school every year already knowing the curriculum inside out and backward. (Which was something that really irritated my daughter's kindergarten teacher, whose response to my kiddo showing her the book she was reading on their first meeting was, "Well, I can see YOU're going to be trouble!"
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on't assume that it will be excused. Clear it with administration and follow up. Letters from the DA are initially form letters but they still freak innocent parents out when they get them.
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, and I also believe that as a parent you know your child better than anyone else does. Unfortunately there are many out there that think they know what is better for a child than their own parents. 
