I have a kid who has a great interest in every single thing. It is impossible to pick one interest and pursue it as every single thing is interesting - origami, ancient civilization, cooking, computer programming, archaeology, spanish, latin, japanese, chinese, greek, french, martial arts, baseball, football, swimming, archery, fencing, lacrosse, hockey, ice skating, horseback riding, architecture, oceanography, astronomy, biology, geography ... - you know what I mean! It is the same condition as the OP is talking about, but manifesting in the opposite way. So, now I know that I am not alone either.

Madeline, my son likes the Zaner Bloser workbooks and we are making some progress on his writing with it, so far. We will continue to stick with it for a while to see how it goes. He is also writing a journal and that is interesting for him because he writes about the fun things he does in the summer. Hopefully his writing will be better by Fall :)

I suggest portion control and many small and healthy meals a day. A lot of the healthy options that we choose really have a ton of calories - I read the calorie content of salad dressing, nut butters, nut bars, yoghurt cups etc before purchasing because I have gained weight in the past while eating healthy. I also suggest to finish eating 2-3 hours before bedtime - it really helps you in metabolizing the food and preventing weight gain. And for the non-sporty types, a high quality Tae kwon Do school that trains kids rigorously (which means 3-4 evenings a week) or a year round swim program or a home gym with treadmill/elliptical trainers or just biking outdoors a few miles a day would help a lot.

Your post strikes a chord! In my experience so far, a teacher (even ones who are labeled as "gifted" education specialist) has no time, interest or the bandwidth to evaluate the depth of a child's talent. It is normal in a classroom of 25-30 kids of differing abilities where one teacher is expected to teach multiple subjects as well as supervise recess etc.

In my opinion, math skills are like any other skill. Let me compare them with piano playing and tennis just for illustrating the point. If you make a "daily practice habit", then the progress will be exponential in both piano and tennis - so, if a child wanted to be a tennis player who would be able to serve hard and consistently, imagine the hours upon hours of practice to get there. Similarly, for piano practice, if the child practices every day of the week, the next week's class will be easier to handle and the incremental learning in the next lesson is within their reach - but if there is no consistency in learning, it is easy to become that kid who dreads the piano lesson and begs to stop going. The main factor is to keep the child motivated (by mentoring in a manner appropriate to that child - making it fun, incentives or whatever works). In the same way, if your child consistently learns math and practices enough of it to retain and apply that knowledge, there is no way the skill will even out in the 3rd grade or middle school or whatever. Because there is an exponential growth in learning and understanding math concepts, a child ahead of her peers at grade 2 will still be learning ahead of her peers in grade 3 if the learning is consistent and they are mentored correctly. Now, if the child is mathematically inclined (even gifted in this field?), then the chances are high that the child would be more interested in participating and learning that subject at an accelerated level to keep the momentum going. If the child shows an interest in painting and dance and no interest in math, then it might be hard to keep that momentum going and the word "hothousing" is used for accelerating students in such scenarios - and there is a possibility of such students evening out eventually when the interest and effort fade. PS: I have a strong mathematical background and come from a family of mathematicians. We are not gifted in math, but all of us are highly interested to keep the learning going and none of us "evened out" until we left college :)

A maid, a personal chef for my family and a chauffeur. And an additional living room added on to my house to accomodate the schooling stuff. That should cover it for me!

We have the Bamboo Stylus too and it does not scratch the screen.

I am hearing the phrase "play by ear" with respect to piano music a lot from my family members. One of my BILs and his son never learnt music formally and hence never learnt music theory and cannot read music, but they are both in a band and "compose" music all the time and never use any sheet music - they picked up piano, flute and guitar this way. How is that possible at all? How does one figure out multiple finger combinations on an instrument without ever knowing the meanings associated with each key/chord/scale? The reason this came up is because they are visiting for the summer now and they told me that I need to pull my DS out of his piano classes, put him in front of an instrument and let him "fool around" with melodies by himself in order to become creative! (ofcourse, I have no intention of doing that). But they definitely got me thinking about music and how the brain learns it. Their beliefs are 180 degrees removed from my impression of music education that I am a little taken aback. I was of the opinion that a strong grounding in the theory of music is necessary to become a fine musician. Apparently not, according to some. Any people with piano background care to enlighten me on this? Thanks in advance. ETA: My DS goes to a piano academy where the teachers are highly qualified in piano education with decades of experience teaching children (his teacher has done it for 32 years) and they make it fun as well as educational. They teach sight reading, music theory, ear training, finger positioning as well as piano playing - they incorporate a lot of games into the classes for the younger set to keep them engaged. They have recitals, mini-recitals, guild exams etc to motivate their students.

I come to this forum for learning so that I can teach my child better. But, I have learnt more from this thread than what I knew just a few days ago. So, thanks for enriching my brain! PS: I might only have been able to name the Gettysburg address and the "I have a dream" speech before delving into this thread.

The good telescopes cost a lot. So, that would be a great gift. And ofcourse an ipad for each would be great too!

My local city library accepts all books in "gently used" condition. They either use it for circulation or give it to the "friends of the library group" who sell those books to raise money for the library. We usually are gentle on our books. So, once a year we carry sackfuls of books to our library. I was thrilled when I saw some of the Dr Suess books I donated on the bookshelves on a later visit. So, that could be a good option for those of you who want to get rid of good books in order to declutter.

Thanks a lot for the responses. Since both are compatible, I ordered the Contraptions 200 set because it was cheaper then the structures set on amazon.

We already own a starter set of Keva Contraptions. We need more for the summer. I found that the Contraptions and Structures from Keva look the same to me. Is there a difference in the size of the blocks? And are the two sets compatible with each other? Looking for advise from anyone who is familiar with these. Thanks!

My DS (almost 6 years old) does not like "speed math". He cannot do anything under pressure (including sports) - anxiety and perfectionism issues. But he is super fast when doing things that are the most familiar to him. I want to enroll him in a few math contests in order to familiarize him to the concept of quick thinking, rigor as well as to work on his perfectionism issues. I want him to know that in the real world, tests, exams and contests are measures by which people are judged on their abilities and the outcome of these are very important to one's future (academically as well as in sports). I want to start with math because it is an important subject to our family, my DS simply wilts under pressure when the word "timing" is used with respect to math and also, I want to build up a resume of sorts for applying to a "magnet" school in my area that focuses a lot on math for the 4th or 5th grade level. All my searches come up with Math Kangaroo and we will try it this year. I am not able to find any other contests that are easily available for the early elementary levels. I am thinking of doing 3-4 per year with preparation time of 1-2 weeks per contest. Any suggestions?

My advise is that you can do whatever you need to do for your child and it does not affect the K experience. And you can continue afterschooling your child after they enter K and it is a great way to keep the spark of learning alive. Not everyone wants to homeschool or can afford very expensive private schools - so make the best of your situation and try to see how your child can have the best of all the worlds :) My DS is advanced and he could read and write and do math way above grade level when he entered K. But, he had zero interest in crafts and did not like coloring at all. He has learnt those skill sets during his K year. His teacher was well aware of how advanced he was and though there was no "official" differentiation in instruction, she used to make him join an advanced reading group where there were a few other kids reading at 2nd and 3rd grade level. She knew that Kinder math was boring for DS, so she would tell him to finish his math tasks quickly and go and play with legos (which is what he loved doing most) - DS would feel special because he was the only kid who got to play with legos and blocks while all the others were working on math. The only problems we faced was that DS would lose focus during instruction time because he knew what was being taught and then would try to entice his classmates to play with him or act silly. We had a couple of meetings with the teacher about it and she decided to let me send in work packets from home for him to keep busy during instruction time. My experience is that most teachers are able to differentiate instructions whenever they can. And they appreciate the parental involvement in their kids education - in their eyes, it is way better than parental indifference. Public K is heavily focused on arts and crafts. So, keep up with the academics at home. Our K year went by so quickly and so will yours! So, enjoy the experience and don't worry too much about it :)

Music Tree is a new one to me. It looks like there is a "workbook" that goes with the music book for each level. I am going to check them out. prairiemom, I have the Popular and Favorites from the Showtime series - we enjoy them a lot. Maybe I should get a few more in that series.

Yes, they do. You may get one after a week if you have backordered items. The email is from an address that goes like: server@rainbow... You need to search for that address in your mailbox.

Thanks! I had no idea that Suzuki books can be used with non-suzuki students! I am off to check them out. We do have the primer Alfred's books and love them. I will look at the level 2 Alfred books - Amazon has them, so they are easy to buy :)

My son's piano teacher uses Faber's Piano Adventures in her music studio. My son loves it and is in level 2A and will most likely move to level 2B in early 2014. He needs a "fun" break during practicing and asks me to provide extra material that his teacher does not cover in classes (his teacher asks him to practice some pieces 5 times a day and he wants to play a "fun" piece of his choice in between to break the monotony). I have bought the Playtime, ChordTime series from Faber for him and he loves to play songs like Star wars, Harry Potter etc. He also enjoys playing very simple classical pieces. Any "fun" supplements that will help an eager learner? Thanks in advance.

I am not sure if this is the best approach - but I have a similar boy in K this year. His handwriting is legible, but barely so. I ordered the Zaner Bloser workbooks (for K, 1st and 2nd grades) from their website - this is the same method that my son's school uses. I am going to use it in the summer to see how much it helps. Also, I think more practice helps - so now he is required to write a weekly journal page, copywork on alternate days in addition to the handwriting practice. Hope this helps ...

I take DS to an offsite aftercare place because the onsite one is not good and the offsite care place is a really good one with academics and play blended in. The other option is to hire a "pickup service" to pickup kids in vans and send them to the aftercare places - many parents wait until the kids are around 7 years old to entrust them to a kid cab driver. I have been that last mom to arrive a lot of times - sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Here's hoping that you have a better bunch of parents outside your dd's classroom :) Sorry to have scared you ...

Congratulations! Awesome portfolio! Very impressive for an 8 year old!

In my area, they let you do what is called "shadowing" for a day in all the top private schools. I could get a good idea on what happened on a daily basis by sitting through an hour or two of classes in the classroom. I could see the student-teacher ratios (very important to me), number of aides, approach to math, spelling, science, recess environment, lunch rooms etc. I also always set up a meeting with the admissions co-ordinator who can walk you through a few grades of classes, show you all the curriculum, tools, labs etc, talk about field trips, pick up drop off logistics, afterschool enrichment etc. Then they usually have a meeting for all interested parents with the sports director who answers questions on sports programs and what options are available to your child. I was made aware of a sad fact during my research of these schools (I was only looking at non-religious top private schools) - they are so competitive that they do not want to consider kids who they need to spend extra time on to bring up to speed - the competition to get into these schools is so intense that these schools eliminate kids with special needs, kids with IQs that are below their cutoff (which is actually in the profoundly gifted range!), kids with learning disabilities etc. For me, the most important things to find out are: student-teacher ratio, curriculum followed, homework load, student diversity (if I am going to shell out 20-40 K for an education every year, I would expect that the education happened in the classroom and all my child's educational needs were addressed and afterschooling was not a mainstay). A private school is a well run business - though you can get all this information from them, it is advisable to approach a few parents in your neighborhood or workplace whose kids have been at that school for a long time and get an informed opinion from them before making a decision. I have found that online school reviews never work for me - they say that the school in question is either too good (probably posted by someone affiliated to it) or too bad (probably posted by a disgruntled student/employee). In my area, the top schools have a reputation already and there is no need to do much research as most of the information is well known - there is only the need to cough up the $$$$$ to attend them (and qualify to get admitted there, ofcourse)!

I agree. My child who was tested as gifted was not reading at 4. My family and my DH's is full of people who started reading at 2 and 3. I kept working with him - the problem was his perfection. He gave up if he encountered a word he knew he was going to mess up. We used bob books, some phonics programs, starfall, Reading Eggs, ETC Online, Super Why videos etc and many, many, many books and tons of ipad apps. I taught him to use his finger to point to words that he is trying to read and also to use his finger to cover parts of a long word, read the smaller parts and then put it all together - that helped him immensely. I also had him in piano classes at age 4 (group lessons) and the music notes reading and decoding of music he learnt also helped in the reading books department somehow for him. And one day it just clicked! He is an advanced reader at 5 now and is in the advanced reading group at school (reading 3rd grade level material as assessed by his teacher). He can read chapter books (Magic Tree House, Boxcar children) - all in a matter of a year. So, please wait for it to click. Also don't give up trying - keep changing the material you use but keep trying constantly and gently. Good luck.