I was home-schooled along with my two older brothers, older sister, and two younger sisters. 6 of us altogether.
Our day looked like this: we all had school work assigned to us for the day, and at some point during the day, at a time of our choosing, we were supposed to do the work. Additionally, we had assigned chores, and with the exception of washing dishes or cooking, we had free reign over when to do the work. On the weekends, if we had done all of the work assigned to us over the week, we could play video games all day long. We went to church regularly, but other than that, outings were rare.
We had our toys and each other to play with, books to read, and computer and television time during the late afternoon and evenings if we had completed all of our assigned work for the day. When I was younger, I remember we used to go to a lot of parks, but after the youngest turned 5, my mother immersed herself in trying to build a career as a doula and childbirth educator, so we mostly stayed home all the time.
She did make sure we took regular trips to the library, and that we always had plenty to read, of our own choosing.
She was not always diligent about checking our school work. For example, there were multiple consecutive years during which I was not completing my work, and she did not make me. I was, however, reading voraciously on my own and developing my mathematical abilities on my own, specifically to improve my strategies in the computer games I was playing, and so by the time I enrolled in public high school, after four years of working through workbooks on my own and then four years of no directed education whatsoever, I rapidly rose to the top of every class, and received special permission to take advanced courses without completing their prerequisites.
The less you let "curriculum" get in the way of your kids' learning, the more they are going to learn, and the better they are going to get at thinking and reasoning.
I am just starting to home-school my kids now. My daughter is 6, and we've just gotten through the second half of second grade math. Meanwhile, she has finished the Harry Potter series... the 8th time through. She is reading adult non-fiction dog care books, because she is interested in caring for our dog, and she spends her computer time researching dog care and watching dog videos. I allow her basically free control over what she looks up videos about online, and so far she has demonstrated a remarkable capacity to learn from her own research, and explain what she has learned to me.
I try to be very hands-off, although I do enforce certain basic skills like arithmetic and handwriting. Mostly, she spends he day as she chooses, with similar restrictions on screen time that I had growing up. So far, she is a year ahead in some subjects and several years ahead in some subjects. She would just be in 1st grade right now in a public school, being taught with 1st grade books.
As I get my s**t together, I will curate a set of computer games that I believe will foster key skills I want to encourage, and I will make those games freely available to my kids throughout the day. Additionally, I am looking for extra classes that I can sign them up for, to encourage a level of socialization that I did not have growing up, and to provide them with a wider range of activities and teachers. I just moved, and now I'm looking for a homeschooling group to provide yet more socialization.
To this day, I'm a bit of a homebody, and I think that's one of the pitfalls of home schooling. But, it doesn't have to be that way, and I'm taking deliberate steps to ensure that my kids' experience is a little more social than mine was, because otherwise my experience was pretty ideal.
Thank you for taking the time to answer all my questions!! This is definitely a lot to consider. I think what I'm going to do is start homeschooling/unschooling over summer break as a trial run, and if it goes well, I will continue to school them when public school starts.
A little consolation: you might be a little bit isolated, and a homebody. I was "socialized" in public school and am a homebody too. Socialization made no difference on me. It's okay to be an introvert. 😉 Thanks for your support!!