Gifted or just a flying start and curriculum advice

[Gabrielsyme]

Hi, we've been homeschooling for two years and I've been a lurker but never posted. Wondering if anyone a little further down the road than I am could offer insight. My DD is 5 and this year (K-ish) she's working three grades ahead in science and math and reading at a 3rd grade level. She's bright and motivated but has plenty of typical five year old personality traits as well. My husband doesn't think she's "gifted" as he and his siblings demonstrated similar abilities at the same age. I'm not terribly concerned about labeling her (or her very precocious 3 year old brother) gifted but I do want to challenge my children appropriately and plan well for her "first" grade year. 

 

Sometimes I wonder if my kids are average and we've just fostered learning particularly well in the early years. In this case they should naturally slow down and align more with their age groups as they get older. Has anyone had kids who got a flying start in the primary years but slowed down and worked at grade level later on?

 

With this in mind I'm having a tough time picking curriculum for next year. Specifically history. Will she still be so far ahead in the fall? I really like the idea of American History because both older kids (I have a baby who will just be along for the ride) are fascinated by it right now and it would be great to take advantage of a natural interest. However, I've noticed that most curriculum covers American history in 4-5th grade or so. I've really only begun to look but I'd love it if anyone could point me in the right direction. Looking for something that I can do with a six year old (not too dry) and a similarly-abled 3.5 year old (I know but he can multiply for heaven's sake) without boring their energetic little selves to tears. Maybe Sonlight Core D? Is that going to be way to hard for them to follow? DD just finished reading The Little Prince out loud to herself so that's about her current level though she's gone from Little Bear to that in about a month. Hard to predict where she'll plateau. 

 

 

[Starr]

I would use the Story of the World by Susan Wise Bauer . Get the activity book as well and adjust as needed. Everyone loves ancient history! Read the Well Trained Mind if you haven't. Enjoy!

[kubie]

My Fathers World and Hearts of Dakota both have american history for 1st grade. Both are literature based so you could add reading at there level.

[Dmmetler]

I'd look at the Complete book of US History, plus read-alouds. The SL readalouds set for core 3/4 (I think that's C/D now) is pretty good, but the Landmark book was very dry and tedious for DD at age 6. I also liked the VP history cards, but I know a lot of people have trouble with VP and would prefer not to give them money, but DD really liked them at age 5-7 or so. 

 

In general, I've found that history (and lit, to a lesser extent) are the areas where she needs to stay closest to her age/grade level. In Science and math, she can soar ahead, but starting once she reached the "young adult" level of materials, a lot of the content stuff was just too intense for her (she's now, at 10, starting to make inroads into those 5th-7th grade reading level books that were simply too much for her at age 5-7, even though she can, at the same time, read graduate level science texts without issue). I know some kids don't face those issues, but I want to state them so you'll be aware that it really can happen at about 5th grade level and higher materials for young kids. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Gabrielsyme]

Yes, dmmetler. I've wondered about the content more than the reading level of the books in Core D. She's fairly "global" in her abilities and doesn't lean toward math/science that I can see but I'm still not sure if she has the emotional maturity to understand characters written for 9 and 10 year olds. She might. Maybe we should try a couple of the books this year and see how it goes. I DON'T want the work to be dry or tedious but I do wan't to challenge them.

 

[lamppost]

I really like the idea of American History because both older kids (I have a baby who will just be along for the ride) are fascinated by it right now and it would be great to take advantage of a natural interest. However, I've noticed that most curriculum covers American history in 4-5th grade or so.  Maybe Sonlight Core D? Is that going to be way to hard for them to follow?

 

Definitely follow their interest in American History, but I wouldn't recommend buying curriculum. Do you have a good library? We have the Sonlight American History and personally I hate many of the books included, so we're mostly using one of the spines as a guideline for topics and choosing good books and videos from the library to go along with it. Keep an eye out for hands-on activities in your area like "Colonial Days" events or things of that nature.

 

[Gabrielsyme]

lamppost- I've thought about doing that. I could use the themes covered in Core D but choose my own books. I have a close friend whose mother used Sonlight with her children and she LOVED it so I was taking her word for it about some of the books. I don't know if they're the ones I would pick though so it might work well to use the library and choose my own novels.

[Dmmetler]

Also, get the Liberty Kids videos. The entire series is really cheap on Amazon, and they are a great introduction and springboard for US history. I actually subscribed to the Discovery Education service when my DD was 5-6 for that reason, at a much higher cost.

 

 

[kbutton]

If you are at all a unit study person, you can put together your own topical studies with books or magazines geared toward their interests. If you use the library a lot, this might be cheaper until you figure out what you like to do. 

 

Cricket has some magazines that deal with history. I am sure they hit things topically rather than linearly, but my kids like the science mags they offer. I have not actually used the history magazines, but we get ads for them with the science magazines. Cobblestone for ages 9-14 is specific to US history. Appleseeds is for ages 6-9, but it's a broader range of topics (US and world).

[Little Women]

I would call being 3 or more years ahead in just about every subject "gifted."    It's common for it to go in families, too, so it doesn't seem unusual, and it's very common for kids to still act their own age in many ways.  It's also common to be both gifted in some areas and have a learning disability in others!    But it's not very common for kids to be 3 years ahead, even if they've gotten solid nurturing along the way.   Their minds have to also be ready to take in the information, and that's a lot less common.

 

What to do with it is a harder question.    I found with my kids that working orally was better than writing a lot. They usually got the concepts quickly but their fine motor skills were one thing that lagged.   Doing things orally meant that they could tell me the long story and have me write it down, learn 14 vocabulary words in a day, and retain the science or history we were covering.    (You can call me slow if you want, but this was brought forcibly to mind when my oldest was in 1st grade, and I found myself writing down grammar rules for her notebook, according to the method in the 1st edition of WTM--not sure if that's changed in later editions, because she wasn't ready to do that much writing herself, but she ALREADY KNEW the grammar concept!  :)    I can laugh at myself now, but at the time, it was hard to know what to do.  I finally figured out that if I told her the rule, she would learn it and not forget, and we dropped the writing it all out part.)   

 

Sonlight is a GREAT program, especially for gifted kids.  They have a level of questions I haven't seen anywhere else, with the possible exception of Tapestry of Grace, especially in the older years.   They also have books that really draw you in to the history you are learning.   However, that said, I would not try to do core D with a child younger than 7, even a gifted one.   There is a lot to process in SL's cores (eg, what was Columbus's true motive?  how did the British colonies treat slaves compared to the Spanish colonies? or was it even legal for them to write the Constitution?)    Because of the way SL has parents read things to the kids, they use books considerably harder than most programs use.   Eg, the books in their preK program are labeled by the publisher as being for 4-8yos or for 6-10yos.  Most of the books in cores A-C are labeled by the publishers as being for 8-12yos.   By core D, many are for 10-14yos, and one was even written by a historian for adults!    Because of this, their cores tend to really push kids, and are hard to use for kids below the lowest levels they recommend.  A lot of people, even parents of gifted kids, choose to use cores near the top of the age range instead of the bottom.    There are a few people who do them far ahead with gifted kids, but they are very few and far between.   I have found with my own gifted kids that the lower age given is a very good fit.  I wouldn't do core D with a child under 8yo, and for a non-gifted child, I'd wait until 9 or 10.  

 

I know you are looking at US history, but if you like the Sonlight idea, you might look into starting with their world history, such as core A--it's very good.

[Dory]

My youngest has been tested and is gifted, but is emotionally immature and acts like a typical 8yo in some ways and younger in others. Gifted doesn't always mean more mature, it just means they are able to absorb information differently. 3 grade levels ahead would make me think gifted and it usually runs in families so it's silly to discount her as being gifted simply because it feels and looks like familiar behaviour and skills.

[Tsuga]

In our family, most of us tested into gifted programs at one time or another. Either very early speakers, calculators, and generally voracious readers, reading about 3-4 grade levels ahead consistently, easily, without tutoring, even from poor, working class families. I am always stunned about what some considered "gifted" when I'd consider it par for the course.

 

So what seems normal to us, and even to the people around us, would be called "gifted" by others.

 

And yet, to get into a "gifted" program here, I'd have to test and re-test my kids, because they require "giftedness" in every area, no asynchrony. But we are math-gifted, language just a few years ahead.

 

This is because "gifted" is not a well-defined term. Many sub-sets are convinced that their term is the correct term and that's it, everyone else is just wrong. I have to question whether those individuals are, themselves, gifted, because it's such a self-centered, unquestioning viewpoint. "Gifted" is not clear--it is re-defined by every school district. Moreover, intelligence, in spite of what many say, is malleable, and moreover, performance doesn't always depend on intelligence, and most importantly of all... it's not a binary or a categorical variable. It's a continuous variable. So where is that cutoff? Why is the cutoff there and not a point above, or below?

 

I looked into this a lot and thought a LOT about gifted education, what it meant to me, and what the label meant, and why I needed it for myself (I didn't) or my own kids (I don't--not any more). And we public school, so this was a big deal. This is the difference between learning after school and learning at school. Between learning patience and learning you shouldn't have to wait for others. Between reading under the table and losing points for that, and not. At first I thought they couldn't do honors high school without the gifted program, but our district change and now it's effort-based. Anyone can get in if they put in the effort. This is a huge change. Effort trumps an IQ test.

 

What I have learned from a lifetime in gifted education, halfway-done assessments (on myself) and my kids' own gifted testing and assessments, is that the label means jack patootie. The label can be crippling for some, empowering for some, but it's hard to know who will benefit from it. Research has been done both ways, but all research shows now that gifted education helps most in science (for whatever reason--probably because traditional science curricula are just so incredibly awful) and almost not at all for any other group of kids. PM me for links if you wish.

 

So here's my 2 cents which will get me REAMED on a gifted board--don't sweat the label. Anyone who needs a label needs a better portfolio of accomplishments.

 

Encourage your kids to learn no matter where they are, keep them searching, keep them asking. Do not worry about gifted. Challenge them and encourage them to continue growing and not to slack no matter what. If they are starting two years behind or ten years ahead--

 

What difference does the label make? Nobody on a job application, or a college application, or on a dating site, wants to know your label. They want to know what you love and what you do and what you've done. That's it. You're homeschooling so it doesn't change the curriculum.

 

So the answer to your question:

 

 

 

 In this case they should naturally slow down and align more with their age groups as they get older.

 

Don't try to predict the future. Just keep challenging them and who cares what "should" be. They are individuals--bell curves need not apply. :)

[Dmmetler]

"Gifted" matters when it's a question of being able to access programs or services not available otherwise. In my experience, it's a bell curve. For very young kids, there's nothing available anyway, so the label doesn't matter, except for reassuring the parent that they're not going crazy and that it's OK to give in to their child's demands for more, more, more! Somewhere in early/middle elementary it peaks, and those scores become all-important, but it ends up being whether you have the score needed for program X, and it is definitely a sliding scale (in my urban, low performing district "gifted" is really more like "will get a good score on the state test, so let's send them to pull-out so the teachers can work with the kids who need help"). Once you get up to about middle school age/grade level, the IQ score doesn't matter-what matters are grades, credentials, and SAT/ACT scores. By the time you get through college/grad school, all that matters is what school you graduated from and professional credentials in the field.

 

It doesn't change who the child is. But jumping each of the appropriate hoops at the right stage makes it easier to advocate for and support your child as they need you to do so at that point. My role when my DD was 4 is very different than it is at age 10, and I suspect it will be even more strange by age 14.

 

 

 

[La Condessa]

Another vote for SOTW, though it starts with Ancients, not American History. My girls both love it. My younger dd was three when we started it, and I only did the narration with her if she demanded it, but otherwise she participated in all of it. They have retained a ton and built a great love of history.

[Gabrielsyme]

Thank you Binip and Dmmetler for you comments on giftedness. I was a bright child who grew up very aware that I was smarter than the other kids at school and I can't say that it did wonders for my humility or work ethic for that matter. My desire to homeschool hinges largely on the hope that I can raise children who work hard a learn for the sake of character development rather than pride. I never learned to apply myself because it simply wasn't necessary and though I don't want to push my poor little five year old's nose to the grindstone too much I do want to gently show her that careful, considered work is valuable. I know she'll notice all too soon that she's brighter than many of her peers but I don't want her to think that that's the most important thing about her. Anyway... 

 

We have Story of the World and have done about 1/3 of the first book and she just HATED it. I've never heard of anyone else who has had this experience with SOTW so I feel sheepish admitting it but it just didn't work for us. I'm willing to push when  healthy and necessary (we practice violin every day or bust) but it just didn't seem needful to force history her kindergarten year if it wasn't going well. 

 

I got about half of the Sonlight Core D books from the library to look over and we've started reading Pocahontas and the Strangers to see how it goes. All of the books seem to be very close to where we're working right now so I'm trying to figure out how it will be too much. We read aloud about 45 minutes per day now so I know the volume will be ok. Content looks ok too? These appear to be solidly "elementary" rather than young adult novels. Does the "hardness" come in through the discussion questions or writing assignments? She definitely does not have the writing skills of a 3rd or 4th grader so I was thinking I would adapt that portion and do oral reports (a la Classical Conversations) and maybe only assign some of them. 

 

I DO NOT want to burn her out and I've been thinking maybe I should forget US History and do an easier Core next year if D is too much. Kind of falling in love with Sonlight at the moment.

[kiwik]

I tried to do SOTW at those ages and it is the only book they have ever disliked that much.

[CardinalAlt]

Another option: My 7yo is enjoying American History through the American Girl books (she reads) and the companion non-fiction books (we read together). We flush out topics with more library books, documentaries, BrainPop videos, etc., but it's the most fun we've had with history in a while. (I think we're more science, math, literature motivated in general.). I've been impressed with the "Welcome to ____'s World Books," they're nice overviews of history and culture with lots of pictures, diagrams, maps, photos....

 

There are some free Lapbooking resources for these at Homeschoolshare.com if you think your child would be motivated by something more crafty. We do these where my daughter narrates what she wants to write, I put it on a whiteboard, then she uses the narration as copy work onto the lapbook piece.

[jar7709]

SOTW was also a disaster here. I also often don't think I should admit that publicly, but you're not alone! I had to do our own thing for a couple years, using a history encyclopedia as a spine and picking a lot of books to go along. It worked well.

[HS Mom in NC]

History- If you care about The Trivium, you need to make decisions about history by 1st grade to avoid catching up.  If you know about it and have decided not to do The Trivium, then you have time to browse.

 

I think American History cannot be done to its full extent if it's not done within world history or after one round of world history. 

 

I strongly recommend SOTW.  If you don't like how much SOTW1 jumps around from people group to people group, just rearrange the readings by region. It's not hard to do.   Use the Activity Books that go with SOTW because they're so incredibly well done covering hands on activities, literature, other non-fiction, narration prompts and  geography for each and every reading.

[MASHomeschooler]

We did American History when mine were 3-4, 5-6, and 7-8 with Evan Moor's History Pockets as our main focus. We also read a lot of books, watched Liberty's Kids as mentioned above, and used Scholastic's Interactive 3-D Maps: American History. They were into the hands-on stuff at those ages so those were fun and informative (and they also aren't overly complicated or require a lot of supplies like some hands-on stuff).

 

Like someone else mentioned, we aren't really accelerated in history, as least not compared with other subjects. We homeschool for much the same reasons, but that doesn't mean every subject needs to be accelerated as much as possible, and history can get intense and unsettling when you really dive into it. But if you're finding Core D meets your needs, go for it. You can leave out anything that you feel might be too much, and add in anything you think they might enjoy and learn from.

[PentecostalMom]

Another resource for American History that us lit based is Beautiful Feet. You could supplement with SL books. We love Sonlight here!

[raptor_dad]

I strongly recommend SOTW.  If you don't like how much SOTW1 jumps around from people group to people group, just rearrange the readings by region. It's not hard to do.   Use the Activity Books that go with SOTW because they're so incredibly well done covering hands on activities, literature, other non-fiction, narration prompts and  geography for each and every reading.

 

We didn't like SOTW because of its condescending tone. At a higher level Joy Hakim's "Story of US" has the same problem. In K and 1st DS wasn't willing to do SOTW. In 2nd he is lukewarm on Hakim. For an American History spine, I am getting ready to switch him from Hakim to Gerald Johnson's "History for Peter". 

 

I don't think there is a good reason for books to talk down to kids and treat them like idiots. SOTW failed for us by both seeming patronizing and moralistic.

 

[PentecostalMom]

For a complete source of history spines, check out Guerber's books at Nothing New Press.

[kiwik]

One of the reasons for getting gifted kids into gifted classes or accelerating them is so they are challenged enough to learn humility and a work ethic. Unfortunately here they think that having as wide an ability spread as possible in each class is most beneficial.

[Gabrielsyme]

I've spent some time thinking and planning this week and I think I've put together a literature-based American history curriculum that will meet our needs and challenge my kids without overtaxing their hearts. We enjoyed Pocahontas and the Strangers but it raised questions about colonialism, war, death and even disease that I can see she (and especially her younger brother) would engage much more deeply a few years from now. As many have pointed out, it's one thing to do math (or grammar or science) that is ahead of your years and quite another to synthesize the many disparate parts that come together in "social studies." In the end Sonlight wasn't really going to work for us anyway. We satisfy Bible study elsewhere and I didn't want to use their Language Arts which would leave a large portion of that pricey core unused. I tend to geek out about things for a minute and then sometimes realize how wrong it would be for my circumstances (I spent half of today daydreaming about lifting the roof off of our house and adding a fourth bedroom.) My kids are the kind who will LOVE History Pockets so we're going to get those to supplement all the reading and maybe the Scholastic interactive maps too. I usually buy curriculum at a conference (if it's cheaper) so I've been researching ahead of time. Glad I got this whole thing out of my system now because Sarita of Sonlight is one of the speakers and it's hard not to be drawn in when you talk to believers in person. 

[Gabrielsyme]

Although, when talking about colonialism I asked them how they would like it if someone came and built a house in our backyard without asking. "That would be great!" my daughter (the extrovert) said.

 

Her brother's response: "No, that would be terrible, we would have nowhere to play and then what if they decided they wanted our house too. Where would we live?!"

 

He gets it. Ha! 

[Korrale]

Your daughter sounds very much like my son.

Same age too.

We use this book for history.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Book-United-States-History/dp/1561896799/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1428719043&sr=1-1-catcorr&keywords=Complete+us+history

 

It is a very nice spine. We have read it through a few times. We supplement it with shows like. Liberty's Kids and documentaries. And we pick other books to read that cover what we are covering at the time. We also do fun things like wash clothes with a washboard like the may have used in colonial times. And we also visit living museums.

 

We also like the If You ... Series like this one.

 

http://www.amazon.com/If-You-Lived-Colonial-Times/dp/059045160X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1428719157&sr=1-1&keywords=If+you+live+in+colonial

 

And we love the Who is...? What is...? Series

 

http://www.amazon.com/Who-Was-Harriet-Beecher-Stowe/dp/0448483017/ref=sr_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1428719201&sr=1-9&keywords=who+is+series

 

Our next read through will be this book.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Childrens-Encyclopedia-American-Smithsonian-Institution/dp/0789483300/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1428719266&sr=1-1&keywords=smithsonian+american+history

 

We have also read books from Dear America series, as well as American Girls. We love Little House Books. And we have a great picture book that helped to illustrate the passage of time.

 

http://www.amazon.com/House-Maple-Street-Bonnie-Pryor/dp/0688120318/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1428719456&sr=1-1&keywords=Maple+street+Bonnie

 

We also love to read American Tall tales like those of Johnny Appleseed, Casey Jones.

 

We also focused on other areas of Americana. Landmarks, geography, some presidents (will do that more in depth later), civics, economy. Age 4-5 was intended to be his Americana year, then 5-6 we were intending to start SotW. Incidentally we have decided to do Americana alongside SotW and keep going because there is so much just on the basic level to cover. We have barely touched on traditional folk songs.

 

What Your Grader Needs to Know is also a great series that covers a lot of American history too.