When is a good age to start Homeschooling? When do they begin to learn?

Question : Age 
At what age do I begin homeschooling my child? When do they begin to learn?

Ummibaps: 8 sons, 1 daughter / 2yrs to 18yrs

Homeschooling is considered a choice of a family's lifestyle.  As such the parents decide when to best begin homeschooling their children depending on a family's situation and needs.Some families send their children to school for a while then homeschool when they reach higher grades. Others do the opposite.  Some families chose not to send their children to school at all. 

Atika : 2 kids, Daughter 4.7 years, son 1 year

When my daughter was 1.6 years old I put some interactive and fun books in her toy basket. This made her familiar with books. They were short story books with textures and sounds (easily available at weekly bazaars). She learnt to turn pages this way. We began socialising with homeschooling veterans simultaneously and learnt how reflecting into little things matters for little children. Children learn through play. You can teach colors, textures, numbers and alphabets all through playing with them. You can start as soon as you feel like your child is ready.

I wanted a very structured approach for my daughter and made a curriculum when she was 2. But I realised she was not ready to sit down and learn formally. So we took off with unschooling. Since then that's what has worked for us. She still likes to do things spontaneously. I go by her demands. She comes up to me when she wants to do an work book or any other activity. I don't like to force anything on her. She knows much less compared to what kids her age know but I am not in a hurry. We play and learn. I have put a lot of things (art materials and books) within her reach and we work through them the whole day. With a baby now, its even more flexible.

Ummibaps: 8 sons, 1 daughter / 2yrs to 18yrs Alhumdulillah

Age:
As parents we begin teaching our children as soon as we see them....repeating their names to them,  reciting and singing to them,  talking to them when they are babies...then guiding them into sitting up, talking, recognising objects......next moving into names of colours ,  identifying people and how to talk to them....etc

So parents who consciously teach their children about the world around them are already educating them....regardless of when they decide to send them to school or not...

Academics like textbook work etc for homeschoolers  is more a matter of the child's maturity and ability to comprehend and grasp what is being taught. ...so they're children who begin reading at 4 and some at 7 and some even at 9....

My elder children went to school. ..and we later took them out and they continued to learn as homeschoolers. ....my younger ones have never been to school....so for us homeschooling and learning are not age related.

SAA:

Islam teaches us responsibility for upbringing our children at a very early age when we are 7 and start praying and we pray
That Allah will make us and our offspring the establishers of Salah

The objective of homeschooling is the enhanced effort of tarbyah
You start at the first time you see them the way you keep eye contact with them hug cuddle and hold them
It can be divided into
The child
The objective
The environment 

Child's Age observation and cognitive capacity curiosity reasoning and asking questions all influence his growth
If you provide rich experiences and engage the child on multiple levels to that experience he will always score high on cognitive and affective domains
If the child is provided with books and stories of lovely engaging illustrations he would automatically be curious about the squiggly lines and words that means so much
More
There are studies how children as young as 1.6 yrs who are linguistic and spatial smart can learn to read
But it doesn't mean every child should
Engaging children to what the words might mean gives them the positive incentives for reading
As far as you can give them rich artistic or scientific or philosophical experience
Show them masterpiece art or rich vibrant creations or amazing structure

Show them the inner workings of appliance car objects even organism
Give them reference books to build multiple association
Describe process of everything carefully
The children love it
Look at the sky
Do you know how many tons of water is in that little cloud
As much as three trucks or our own tank
How does it stay up
Teach them to ask the right questions
Cause that is knowing half the solution
You succeed if you help the child to be curious ponderous contemplating reflecting and considerate

And age is no limit for this to happen
While I was typing this answer my 12 year old bought me tea and a question
He asked
How is something mind blowing
I knew he know the meaning
So had to give him the answer with the question and search of understanding
I said
Anything that we observe which defies conventional understanding
Or it behaves in completely different way then we expect it to
Then I ask him when do these happen
I gave him different example
He considered and then said if we add something new to the environment
Changing it thus
The principal is
Nothing is impossible
Then he smiled and said it also means
That mind blowing is directly proportional to a person ignorance
I asked if he thinks this state of amazement is good or bad
And he considered
And said
Being ignorant is wrong when you do not wish to change that state
And being inspired is incredible
Learning for children and us can happen all the time and in the best possible way too .......

Sorry one more thing to add
These discussions are never smooth
The child may give up halfway
But you need to persist give more examples
Explain these examples and ask the child to repeat the phrase which he understood using the right terms

 (Note: The above is a copy of a Whatsapp conversation,   partly edited for clarity)