Regarding the bullying the school was useless: first, they kept ringing me saying 'your son keeps going out of bounds' -yep, that was because he was escaping from bullies, but HE got into trouble; secondly, they didn't notice the bullying or help him in any way until he was severely attacked, then they made excuses, such as, 'one of the yr 6 boys has a troubled past' - blah; thirdly, he wasn't telling me about it because the boys had threatened him and his friend with severely violent threats should they tell. So overall I feel the school handled it badly, the teacher once asked me if 'you even bother setting rules for your children?' - because he wanted to visit the library to read during recess - which was against the rules.

Regarding your comment: 'Right now he has a natural love of learning and I just KNOW that would be ripped out of him within weeks of entering school and that just breaks my heart.'
Going to school has permanantly altered the way my son views education - before school he saw it as exciting and he was proud of his acheivement, after school anything that could be neatly recognised as 'school work' he just hates - he still loves learning at 15, reading and playing guitar and he stays up late having in depth conversations re books we have both read/are reading, film, politics, spirituality, etc - but pull out text books and he switches off! Which is very sad - I wish he'd never gone! My younger two children will never go to school - it teaches children that learning is dull! When he went to school for a while in yr 6 he was 'identified as gifted and talented' which was the worst thing they could have done - everyone is g&t in some way and for him it just switched him off from formal learning all the more, like , 'i'm already smart, so why bother'

I have never used a set curriculum but I do use some textbooks sometimes - I'm happy to email you a copy of my 7 yr olds curriculum if you are interested!

Have a nice day!