We did WWS for 6th and 7th grade, because I'm a huge believer in structural proficiency. It was easy for DS to follow on his own and didn't require much time. I think having a handle on mechanics is invaluable, both for academic writing (he is unusual even among most boys on this forum, it seems, because his radical acceleration is in the humanities rather than math) and fiction (it's not unreasonable to set publication as a goal in high school, so he needs control and structure.) Last year he also had a fiction blog about an alternate universe. All his entries took place in that universe, but weren't necessarily connected. The only requirement was that he had to write on it twice a week. We'd edit together for grammar and flow, but otherwise I didn't grade or critique his stories. This year instruction is coming from Brandon Sanderson's BYU lectures. (If your kid is into fiction, especially fantasy, Sanderson's website is a fantastic, generous resource.) DS is writing every day now. As before, no assigned content - we just want him to experience the discipline of daily writing.

THIS. My oldest daughter's IQ is in the 135-145 range, and even though she has significant dyslexia, her educational options are far broader than her brother's. There are any number of schools where she could thrive. Your kiddo may have legitimate behavioral issues that need to be addressed so he can be happy and successful. But this psychiatrist may not be up to the task of advising you.

I can't speak to your son's individual needs and challenges, of course, but FWIW, the educational psychologist (she has two PhD's, one of them specifically in gifted education) who worked with my son this year told me that "with a kid like this, you had no choice but to homeschool him. It was your only option." It was hugely liberating to hear someone who truly knows what she's talking about affirm our choices and instincts. It's hard when people who don't know our situation judge our choices. Very few people, even professionals, understand what it's like to have a PG kid. So I can only imagine how hard it was to hear someone who's supposed to be an expert tell you that a regular gifted school and some peer pressure will "fix" your son. In our experience, gifted school programs only served to make DS feel more isolated and confused, because he was being told those kids were his tribe, and they just weren't. His best friends come from environments that are wholy unrelated to academics: church, family friends, camp. He doesn't have intellectual peers his age, and that's okay for now.

Hey, we live in Roswell, just south of Alpharetta. We love it here! My DS, 13yo/7th grade, is good solid math student, above average in science, but working at a college level in the humanities. We pulled him out of public school in 5th grade because he was deeply miserable, and have accelerated the heck out of his reading and writing, and now he's happy as a clam. We would love to put him in a B&M high school for 9th grade, but so far we can't come up with any boxed curriculum that can accommodate him. The state offers dual enrollment for high school juniors, but by that point he'll have eclipsed many of the humanities courses he'd be placed in. We don't want to send him to residential college early. So we're staying the course for now and thinking of hiring a couple of grad students to direct his reading in philosophy and theology next year - DH and I have very shmancy university degrees, but we can't keep up with him anymore in those areas. We have found the public schools to be kind and flexible to a point. But there is only so much they can accommodate. If your kid is a grade or two ahead, the school can totally work with that. Beyond that, there's not much they can offer. There are some very impressive private schools that might be worth looking into, but they are very (VERY) pricey. We have a friend who is the dean of faculty at one of the best private schools in the city, and if you'd like I can ask him what they can offer a highly accelerated kid. One thing to look into is Metro Academic Studies. (http://www.metroacademicstudies.com) It's a school for homeschoolers where you can sign up for courses a la carte. I know two people who teach there and they are fantastic. From what I understand, there is some flexibility in terms of where you can place your kid. Classes vary in difficulty level depending on the teacher and the students enrolled. There is a lunch hour, a prom, etc. So there're definitely social options, and you don't have to commit to a full course of study, which might allow for you to enroll her in areas where she's less accelerated, and continue to fly free in her strongest subjects. I am tossing around the idea of a class or two there for ds, but our logistics are tough & I'm trying to keep our driving schedule manageable. My oldest DD, age 11/5th grade, gifted + dyslexic, will be going to a hybrid school for middle school next year. They have classes 2 days a week and the kids work at home the other 3. The program is challenging and there are lots of extracurriculars. They offer dual enrollment rather than AP, and start that in 8th or 9th grade if the kid is ready. (The college classes are taught at the hybrid campus, so the children can stay part of their school community - love that.) Classes are capped at 10. We're hoping it will be a good fit for her, because she really wants a social environment and she needs a small class environment due to the LD. It also gives us the option to supplement a bit. There are a few schools like this in the area, and they vary in academic rigor. (DD is extremely, but not profoundly, gifted, which is much easier to work with. My sense is that your DD is more like my son, and is thus a harder fit. He is too accelerated in his strongest areas to attend this school.) If you'd like to pick my brain, feel free to PM me. Are you moving this summer? DD is super friendly and one of her best friends is both lovely and absolutely brilliant. They'd like nothing more than to welcome your daughter to Atlanta.

It's so kind of you to think of your niece and her unique learning needs. I can relate to your desire to help her with her confidence and find a platform that would allow her to utilize her natural aptitude. My brilliant 10 yo is very globally dyslexic, so her disability affects both letters and numbers. For her, dyslexia is very much not just about reading - she reads at a high school level - but ask her to spell, or copy a set of numbers onto another page, or do a busy worksheet of math computations, or negotiate a crowded room... not so much. While her cognitive aptitude for math is high, she finds actual math work very anxiety-provoking. Reading is done in a context, so there are clues about meaning. But numbers just float around and if you mix them up, there's no way to know you're on the wrong track. She also finds computer work very difficult. I think this is in part because she perceives the zillions of colors that compose pixelated screens very differently than a neurotypical person, so she finds computers disorienting. In addition, dyslexic kids are generally taught lots of paper-based compensation skills, but aren't given a lot of strategies for working with computers. All of which is to say, these kids are all different and it's hard for someone who doesn't know your niece really well to offer suggestions about what might work for her. Would your niece be comfortable with a conversation about how/whether her disability affects her ability to work with numbers - practically, not conceptually - and how she feels about computer work? What would her ideal math program be like if she designed it? Various adults, including me, have often made the mistake of offering "help" to my kiddo without really understanding how it would play out in her weird, awesome little brain, and that has lead to her feeling isolated and misunderstood.

It depends on how interested/motivated/accelerated your ds is, but in 5th and 6th grade my humanities-obsessed kiddo LOVED SWB's adult history series. A recent thread addressed these books; the consensus wasn't in favor of using them with middle schoolers. But we are huge fans and are so disappointed that he out-read the publication schedule!

This book was a big 6th grade hit for my ds. We used this edition: http://www.amazon.com/Morte-DArthur-Arthur-Legends-Classics/dp/0451531493/ref=sr_1_17?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1439645731&sr=1-17&keywords=la+morte+darthur

My kid is a huge reader and he has loved nearly every book that's been mentioned here. He could easily read everything on your list by 3rd grade, but that doesn't always mean he wanted to; sometimes concepts or themes were/are too upsetting for him at a certain time. We really have found that as long as the material is appropriate, the limitation is what clicks with him at a particular age. For example, he didn't like The Hobbit at age 9 despite it being within his reading level, but at 11 he devoured it in a single day. I am sometimes surprised by what does or doesn't work at a certain age. Last year he read Dante's Inferno, and now he's begging to read The Divine Comedy. And yet, the Three Musketeers got a big old "meh." Go figure! I wouldn't begin to suggest what would be good for your kiddo at this age, because accelerated learners are all different. I'd recommend having a bigger list, perhaps, than what you absolutely need, so you have room for improvisation. And don't be afraid to go down rabbit holes! Does he love Oliver Twist? Then you can go on to David Copperfield. Is 20,000 Leagues a hit? Then he can groove on Jules Verne for a while, and maybe you've found out that speculative scifi is a good theme.

My middle-grade humanities-wonk kid actually LOVED the adult SWB history books. He read one each semester and we used them as a spine to guide choices for literature and supplemental history reading. He was so bummed when I broke the news that he has now read all the volumes she's published so far. For 7th grade we're mostly going to rely on narrative history books and Dad's fancy college history degree.

My 6th grader is also a voracious reader, and he loves history, classics and philosophy as well. He needs a reading-centered curriculum that ties all of those together. We use his history textbooks as a spine (for the past two years he's read one volume of Susan Wise Bauer's adult history series per semester) and then for the most part choose literature that was either written during that time period or is set in that time period. I also assign some classics that he just should be reading - for example, this semester he's reading David Copperfield, even though it's outside of the Renaissance time period, because it's time he was introduced to Dickens. He reads one novel a week, and usually is working on another, more challenging fiction text at the same time - for example, last year he read the Odyssey, Illiad, and Aeneid, last semester he closed he read Beowulf, La Morte d'Arthur and Don Quixote, and this semester he read The Inferno, Arabian Nights, Utopia and the Dickens - and we usually take more time with those. We've found the Shmoop.com website great as a supplement. (Shmoop has sophisticated but age-appropriate overviews of the themes, historical context, "why does this matter," etc in classic books, written by grad students. It's a nice support to a reading-heavy curriculum.) We always have a philosophy spine for him to be working on. This semester he's also read the first volume of The History of Britain, which has a great BBC series to back it up. He also enjoys narrative history - this semester, he's devoured three books about the Renaissance by Ross King, The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England, and 1215: the Year of Magna Carta. This all works out to about 500 pages of reading a week, but it's where his heart is, and I find that he needs a great deal of volume in his areas of strength to keep him centered. Otherwise he gets what we call the "border collie syndrome" we saw when he was in public school (you know how a perfectly normal border collie, when deprived of work and kept inside, will be crazy/anxious, tear up the house and chew its paws? But when you give it a flock of sheep (or geese, or an agility course) and a lot of work, it's a happy, well-adjusted dog? Like that.) I admit to mooching off various curriculum lists to get ideas for his bibliography, since he just needs so much quantity. The Ambleside Online site is great for books lists. Sonlight is a literature-based program that is organized by time period, and I've gotten ideas from there as well. When in doubt, I choose Newberry books that get great reviews on Amazon. For writing, we've had a good experience with Writing With Ease and Writing with Skill, by Susan Wise Bauer. In addition to being a good program with just enough work every day, it's also super organized and very easy for him to work through on his own.

Hey there. I've been lurking around here for months and months, but think it's time to actually say hello. We started homeschooling my son (11, 5th grade) this September because he was miserable to the point of self-harm, extreme anxiety, intrusive thoughts. YUCK. The difference in him is astonishing. He is happy, truly happy, for the first time since he started kindergarten. All mental health issues have disappeared. His work ethic and self-control have skyrocketed. Now that he is really engaged and appropriately challenged in school, he's like a border collie who stops chewing its paw off and gets down to business because it finally has some darned sheep to herd! Academically, ds is a normal 5th-grade math student. In the humanities, he's accelerated 2-5 grades ahead depending on the subject area. Our general strategy is to keep him up to grade level in math, make sure we're covering the bases with middle school-level grammar, writing, latin, and logic, and then let him run with about 500 pages a week of literature, mythology, and history reading. My question for y'all is: do we just stay the course, or would it be helpful to do some testing to qualify for Davidson, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, whatever? I feel good about the curriculum we've got going, and we don't need an outside observer to let us know ds is smart. (Or to remind us that he still can't tie his shoes, and regularly forgets to use soap in the shower. :001_rolleyes: ) But is it helpful (looking ahead to possibly going back to public high school someday) to lay a paper trail confirming that this is an unusual kid, that we had good cause to do pull him out? Does the advising that Davidson offers really help? Would there be real opportunities to connect with other kids like him if he was involved in something like CTY? Anyway, thanks for being here - not that you knew you were - when I was frantically trying to figure out what to do with my sweet, distressed, asynchronous boy. It has been so lovely to know that we aren't alone!

Well, I've finally registered after lurking around these forums for months. I really need some advice from you all, as I simply cannot decide what curriculum path would be best for us. Here's the background, and please forgive the length (sorry!): My son is 7 and in first grade at the local public school. He's a sweet, sensitive, imaginative boy. He enjoys his friends, his excellent teacher, and the day he spends in the gifted program. He "hates" school. There are several reasons for this. First, he's one of those "twice-gifted" kids, incredibly bright and creative, but with some sensory and fine-motor challenges that are hard for outsiders to notice but which cause him lots of anxiety in class because he has a hard time doing all the busywork. According to educational testing, his math abilities are well above average, but he struggles in math at school, in part because he's a contextual learner and cannot memorize the math facts to save his life. At the same time, his reading/science/verbal skills are far above grade level and he's not learning much. So. I'm leaning heavily toward taking him out next year. I'll be home with the baby anyway, right? (Dd1 will be going to public kindergarten, which is a whole other decision.) He can decompress, stop thinking that school is a bad word, learn at his own accelerated level in most areas, and we can try to fix the math problems before we end up with a train wreck there. But I'm stuck on what to do about curriculum. Math is the easiest, as Math U See seems a good match. We'll start back at the Alpha level, and hopefully move pretty quickly through the basics while covering any conceptual gaps he's missed. Any other programs you think I should look at? I have the Rosetta Stone Spanish program, so we'll do that. There's a homeschool swim team at a local swim center, and he's in a boy choir and gymnastics lessons, so we've got extracurriculars covered. Fridays he'd spend doing enrichment classes with other homeschool kids at a local church. But then what? Part of me wants to do a unit study - probaby Learning Adventures or Moving Beyond the Page - because that's just how his mind works. MBTP is reputed to be fairly low-key, which would make it easy for us to supplement with whatever he's into at the time. I could buy just one unit of MBTP, and thus only commit for a couple of months. On the other hand, I don't know if I'd get annoyed by having everything tied to one author's perspective. So then I lean toward a la carte, preferably secular: Maybe Elements of Science, some kind of grammar (but which one?), SOTW, and perhaps a guided reading of the Narnia series, in addition to lots of other literature. I would appreciate any and all recommendations/comments from people who know what they're doing! I know I need a structured program to keep myself on track. We need a concept-based math program, on at about 2nd grade level, but everything else should be pretty far accelerated - but if I skip ahead several grades to match his abilities, will we miss out on important material? I can do this, right?! :001_huh: