DD 7 dances 3-4 afternoons a week, ballet and jazz. Jazz is new to her this (calendar) year & she loves it, she has her first exam in seven days. Ballet is her passion though. She's been dancing since 2.5 (in pre-ballet obviously) & has proclaimed her desire to dance ballet professionally constantly since then. She did her first Summer programme in January (obviously we are in the Southern hemisphere ;) ) & came out begging to dance full time. There are programmes here & there around the country from 13/14ish but obviously nothing at her young age. She is currently doing the most she possibly can at her studio. Next year we will have to change studios in order to a) meet her immediate need for MORE ballet and b) meet her longer term goals of getting into a full time pre-professional programme as soon as she can. I'm not looking forward to that. She has built a solid relationship with her current teacher.

Don't discount Beast Academy. We are finding that BA3 and SM4 are a perfect for each other. My mathy girl (not so advanced as she is seven and doing BA3B, SM4 and LoF concurrently) really thrives on multiple curricula. We also use a few other things intermittently.

My DD also started BA after SM2B. It was the perfect progression for her imo, although I don't think all students would be ready for BA after SM2.

My seven year old is similar on all counts to your description of your DS. She just got her glasses today & we have vision therapy exercises to do including the tracking one mentioned above. She dances three to five afternoons a week and her sensory stuff completely disappears if she has enough dancing in a week. A lot of time on our big trampoline helps & I recently read that trampolining can helps with tracking issues - especially playing with a ball while bouncing. That might be something fun you could do?

Yes, yes yes. I loathe it. It really, really bothers me immensely. I have heard it in Australia. Initially only by second gen immigrants (parents were not native English speakers) but more recently it seems to have taken off.

We love BA too. Glad to hear it is going well for you.

I'm glad you asked because I was going to. I know quite a few adult Aspies with children and stable relationships. They none of them have easy lives, but those things aren't impossibilities. Actually the 21 year old Aspie son of my Dad's best friend just got engaged (to a lovely girl also on the spectrum)...

Yes, there is. Quite a lot of action, but I doubt it will do any good.

No lewelma, over the ditch ;) Thanks for the support everyone.

On Monday the government department that deals with home schoolers here released it's updated guidelines for registrations. The new requirements seem to be a lot more restrictive on what we can teach and when. There are lots of little wording changes here and there that have the effect of really tightening things up, but here is a direct quote of an entirely new section that really blows my mind: Elsewhere in the document it states numerous times that we must allow three months from any contact with them. So basically I have to contact them (in writing) three months before each and every time DD wants to study something outside the scope of the syllabus (which we are now required to follow much more closely) for her age grade and then wait for approval. What? Say what??? Of course it could be that I (and many other home schoolers) are just freaking out about the wording and it won't be taken in that sense. But experience says that if any legal document can be read in a certain way, then someone in authority somewhere WILL read it that way. Sigh. Since we now have to register children for a particular grade I could just push for DD to be registered as the most appropriate grade. This would be difficult if not impossible if she were globally advanced, but she's not. DD is one of the most highly asynchrous children I know, sigh. Her written output is at least two, sometimes three years behind the rest of her work. I honestly do believe it is a maturity issue and her handwriting (which has already improved leagues this year) and spelling will catch up eventually if she were able to continue as we have done so far - following her interests in her strengths and gently remediating the more difficult areas. However, it seems the new guidelines wont allow us to do so. Ugh. Meeting her where she is at is THE biggest reason for home schooling and what keeps me sane on the many oh so difficult days. I feel like throwing in the towel but of course that won't help either :(

Excuse me while I shout Yes, Yes, Yes!

Just seconding serendipitous journey - we work through BA just like that. I actually don't let DD skip a single question in BA, if something is taking a little longer I might have her do even as little as one question from that section first each day before continuing with another section. Since we also use two, sometimes three other programs this means BA is taking a while ;)

Actually my DD does ballet with her age grade and an extra class with girls two years older. Has been doing so since March & I have so far successfully avoided talking about it to any of the other ballet parents. It isn't as clear cut as you think. OP,I just wanted to say ita with your perspective about not allowing giftedness to be a self-esteem band aid. Good luck addressing the deeper issues instead. I think you are right to be turned off by the title of the book, but I see you have plenty of other suggestions instead.

Actually my DD does ballet with her age grade and an extra class with girls two years older. Has been doing so since March & I have so far successfully avoided talking about it to any of the other ballet parents. It isn't as clear cut as you think. OP,I just wanted to say ita with your perspective about not allowing giftedness to be a self-esteem band aid. Good luck addressing the deeper issues instead. I think you are right to be turned off by the title of the book, but I see you have plenty of other suggestions instead.

Oh dear. It's nice to be respected though :)

I agree with this. Your poor sister. It sounds as though she comes by her narcissistic dx honestly :(

Hmmm, I just skimmed but it seemed his sister who is only a year younger is transferring directly from community college to U of Va, which would imply she didn't need so many remedial classes. It seems to me that perhaps this particular young man's learning style didn't work very well with his parent's teaching and I do think it's unfortunate that they wouldn't consider letting him try school. I'm wary of making judgements about overall hs accountability based on his experience though. After all, there are plenty of students flunking public school because their learning style isn't catered for & their parents wont consider home schooling.

This was also our experience. We firmly decided to home school when DD was only just 1 within a year identified as RU. As DD matured & expressed her interests & personality it became obvious that a structured approach was needed for our family sanity. DS has had much less of an unschooled environment & likely will have even less as we go on. Unschoolers as a group are VERY prominent here although there are a handful of unashamedly school at home folks too. Whilst we definitely don't fit the unschool label anymore, we are still much more relaxed than the few school at home families we know irl. Interestingly now that DD is approaching 3rd grade age more families of her age peers are starting a gradual slide away from unschooling so I think Farrawilliams theory holds true.

Fabulous!

Well yes, I've always played it wrong. I loathe the free parking $$ thing. Maybe I'm a rules freak. Another Aussie who has only played the UK version with dollars. I had no idea there was an Australian (or New Zealand) version.

The mother probably told you that because she doesn't want you to get offended if the girl doesn't get chatty with you. I was the same (still am to an extent) and plenty of adults that didn't know me well got extremely offended (some even really angry) just because I wasn't into small talk.

Great news :)

Australian here and it is pronounced as Laura Corin described. I remember distinctly my entire seventh grade class laughing at un unfortunate US exchange student who pronounced it with two syllables. We'd never heard it like that & weren't entirely sure what he was talking about.

I heartily recommend doing this. DD 7 is almost finished with 3A and it has been absolutely fabulous for the "do hard things" subject which is the core of our curriculum for young ms perfectionist ;) I have all of SM4 sitting here & she could race through that with only a little challenge and probably a lot of boredom. BA is really, really hard for her in that she not only has to think but has to face that part of herself that gets upset when she can't do something immediately. For that reason we both love it. She feels such a sense of achievement afterwards that she tells me BA stands for "Best Activity". Reminding her of that before she starts every day is the hard part of my job though...

My biggest difficulty is my possibly 2E eldest who is so bright and loves learning so much yet is sometimes unpredictably defiant and or utterly disinterested. This is annoying too though: