EXT month Clara Degallier, 5, will go to kindergarten. There will be 25 children in her class, but she will not be joining them for circle time, recess or any other activities.

Clara, who lives in Fountain City, Wis., will attend the Wisconsin Connections Academy, an online and print-based charter school for kindergarten through eighth grade. It is one of several dozen online schools meant to appeal to families who are home schooling their children but who also want some help with lessons and assessment. Along with the tambourine that comes with one program and the slide whistle packaged with another, there are free computers, too. (Because charter schools are public schools, the state picks up the tab for everything.)

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The cyberkindergartners will not spend much time in front of computers, but their parents will go online to pick up lesson plans, get teaching tips and keep track of a child's progress with online assessment tools. Online charter schools have real teachers, but they generally chat with students by phone. Parents check in by e-mail and in chat rooms.

According to the Center for Education Reform, an advocacy group in Washington, there are 30 online charter schools in 11 states. Twenty-three offer kindergarten programs that they say meet state standards. The Wisconsin Connections Academy is a subsidiary of Sylvan Ventures, a company based in Baltimore that provides venture capital for educational projects.

Experts in early childhood education say that such programs lack one critical kindergarten lesson: developing emotional intelligence.

"This is pushing home-schooled kids even further into noninteraction with other people because it's all on a Web site," said Edward F. Zigler, a psychology professor at Yale. "You abide by it like it's a script and lose teachable moments."

"If a child asks a question not in the program, what are you supposed to do?" he added. "Life isn't just reading and numeracy — it's being able to function with your peers."