Your DD might enjoy the "Your Business" math programs from SimplyCharlotteMason. There are pet shop, book store, and sports store versions. Kids get to apply lots of math skills while running their own virtual business, including ordering inventory, pricing items, calculating sales tax, etc. Jackie

Once he gets his Mac, Scrivener is a fantastic program for this sort of thing, because you can make virtual index cards (that look exactly like real index cards), reorganize them on a virtual corkboard, convert them to text, etc., without having to print, cut, paste, etc. Jackie

For Butterflymommy, Clear Creek, and anyone else who may be dealing with a gifted/VSL child, I highly recommend the Eides Neurolearning Blog. This video in particular, The Turkey and the Crow, may help you to better understand where your kids are coming from. Jackie

Yes! These kids are often able to understand the "big picture," and to think abstractly and analyze things at a much deeper level than other kids their ages, and yet they don't have the tools to work with yet. I always used to say that DS was born in the Logic Stage, and he has always found "grammar level" work — lots of drill & repetition & memorization — completely torturous. Many people will insist that those tasks are a "necessary foundation" for logic-level work, but I've not found that to be true with DS. And now that he's a much more fluent reader and has access to materials (books, TC courses, science programs, etc) that address subjects at a much deeper level than what one gets in elementary materials, he's sucking it all up like a sponge and absolutely thriving. Honestly, I think the most important thing with these kids is to get them to the point where they can access material that is as deep and abstract as their thought processes without screwing them up before they get there. As long as they haven't learned to hate school work, there will be a big leap in their ability and motivation to learn once they get to the point where "logic- and rhetoric-stage" material meets the "logic- and rhetoric-stage" brains they were born with. Jackie

Whole-to-parts learners do not do well with drill-&-kill or with learning things piecemeal. To use an analogy, part-to-whole learning is like constructing a building one brick at a time, and the child doesn't really see how everything fits together until the building is finished. Whole-to-part learners need to see the blueprints of the building first, so they know what the final product looks like. They can often understand higher-level abstract concepts well before they have acquired all the concrete "parts." They need context in order to understand the function of the individual bricks — without that, it's just a random jumble of bricks in their heads. It may look to you like a nice neat row of bricks in the curriculum, but once it's inside their heads it just becomes a big jumbled pile because they don't "file" information in a linear, sequential way. So it looks like they're not learning or retaining anything, because they can't retrieve the information from the pile. One of the most important aspects of VSL thinking that I think parents need to understand is that interest and engagement aren't just "luxuries" for VSLs, they're critical components in the way they learn, store, and retrieve information: This is from an article on Visual Spatial Strengths. There are many other articles, including specific advice for helping VSLs learn, here. For my DS, things that are hands-on, interest-led, project-based, discovery-based, etc., have worked very well and have led to a very active, engaged, switched-on learner. Not only has it not resulted in a "coddled" kid with no work ethic, he's putting forth far more effort than he ever did before, and he often does "school work" (Greek, science, history, programming) on weekends, because he's really interested in the subjects and wants to learn. Jackie

:iagree: with everything Faithe said, but I particularly want to address the part I quoted above. Working with these kids, instead of against them, takes both "more time and less time," and I think that's something that moms who haven't taught this way have a hard time visualizing. It took me a LOT of time to figure DS out. Lots and lots of reading and research and thinking and talking to him, talking to adults (including DH) who think like him, and trying to figure out the best way to help him learn, instead of trying to find disciplinary tactics to make him learn. Because you can't make these kids learn — you might be able to force them to go through the motions, fill in the worksheets, etc., but you can't make them retain and understand it. You can make them hate school, though. The approach I take with DS now is more work in the sense that I research things and find resources for him as we go along, rather than buying a stack of curriculum in the summer, scheduling it all out, and then just doing it every day. BUT it's also much less work in the sense that I don't schedule things, I don't "teach" him (other than answering questions, helping him find resources, making suggestions). Math is just "do the next thing" unless he's stuck; Greek is with an online course; history is with TC courses and readings (his choice); science is very much interest-led, hands-on, project-based. Computer programming & robotics he does on his own — I bought the books and resources and he does them when he wants to (which is almost every day, and often on weekends). We do lots of field trips, nature walks, museum visits, etc. We watch tons of documentaries, we have lots of discussions, I answer a million questions every day — and if I don't know the answer, I say "let's look that up!" and we grab a book or get on the internet. So there's much less time invested in planning and scheduling upfront, and a little more time involved in helping to find resources as we go along, but honestly we are all SO MUCH HAPPIER, we are enjoying school and each other so much more than before, I would never go back. Never. Jackie

To me, though, while this approach may be effective in getting a child to do schoolwork, in the long run it may end up reinforcing the idea that school is boring and tedious, and that a child should try to just get it over with as quickly as possible so they can do "fun stuff." Ditto with the approach a PP mentioned, comparing schoolwork to other boring things like housework and diaper changing, things that one must simply endure because it needs to be done. My ultimate goal in educating my kids is to produce life-long learners, people who will love to read and research and learn new things throughout their lives. Telling them that yes, schoolwork is boring and tedious and they need to just suck it up and do it because life is full of boring things, which one has to do in order to get to the fun stuff, might achieve a short-term goal (immediate compliance) but at the expense of a (much more important, IMHO) long-term goal, and that's not a price I'm willing to pay. And in fact, by working with my kids' individual strengths and weaknesses and interests, I'm achieving both goals — I have kids who love to learn, who don't balk at schoolwork, who read for pleasure, and for whom learning is intrinsically valuable and actually enjoyable. Jackie

I would arrange for testing (IQ, LDs, learning style) ASAP; I would bet that you have a gifted, visual/spatial learner on your hands, and treating this as a matter of laziness/defiance is not going to get you very far. Their brains are wired differently, they think and learn in very different ways — it's not just a matter of "thinking in pictures." You say that she's extremely compliant in every other way but just "shuts down" over school — that doesn't sound like disobedience or a power struggle to me, that sounds like a kid whose brain is shutting down because she needs to learn in a different way. The suggestions here for punishing her "defiance" by withholding food, or taking pencil and paper away from a child who's only pleasureable outlet at the moment seems to be writing and drawing, just makes me want to cry. I have a kid who was just like yours (extremely bright, very sweet & compliant but hated school, loved to draw, picky eater due to sensory issues, etc), and I can tell you that those tactics would only have made things worse — and would have destroyed our relationship in the process. Now, in 7th grade, he's doing Athenaze Greek, Algebra, ancient history with TC lectures, interest-led science, computer programming & robotics, and he loves homeschooling, loves his life, and is a very happy kid. Because I had him tested, I researched like crazy, and I met his needs, so that he can learn the way his brain works instead of trying to force him to "learn" in ways that absolutely do not work for him. Please don't believe that your DD is just lazy, disobedient, or defiant; she needs your help, not punishment. :( Jackie

I have both of those books; Earth Science is high school level and Earth is college. Tarbuck & Lutgens have a variety of other college level texts as well (I also have their Essentials of Geology text). I quite like Smith & Pun's How the Earth Works, which is a nonmajors college text — very visual and written in an accessible & engaging way. Teaching Co has a couple of good Geology courses as well, and be sure to check out the Roadside Geology book for your state for fieldtrips. Jackie

Two websites that are great for getting ideas are Instructables (everything from recipes to sewing to advanced techy projects, with complete instructions) and Pinterest. Pinterest photos usually link to the original source, which may have instructions. Etsy is another place to get ideas for homemade presents, although obviously there won't be tutorials or instructions. Jackie

I second Make magazine for either your DH or DS! For your DH, you could make a version of this keychain, using coins with dates that are special to you (year you met, were married, birth of kids, etc.) You could also make your own version of this, either with a drawing or with your children's fingerprints engraved on each side. Can be a keychain or a "dogtag" type necklace on a cord. How about a duct tape wallet? Does your DH like Bender from Futurama? I gave DH a metal Bender figure for Christmas last year and he loves it. I'm thinking of making this Bender hat for him this year (except knit instead of crocheted). I've also given DH some of the architectural lego kits, and an electric lego AT-AT Walker kit. For your DS, how about a homemade alien abduction lamp or a lamp made with lots of leftover toys & a glue gun, which you could paint a solid color or leave in the original multi-colors? One of DS13's favorite presents ever was a copy of Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction along with a big box of all the materials he would need: paper clips, bulldog clips, plastic spoons, straws, rubber bands, wire, 3 kinds of glue, popsicle sticks in different sizes, dowels, etc. (There's a Volume 2 out now, if he already has the first book). Or what about a book on Arduino projects and some materials? The Mindstorms book for Building Thinking Robots (that solve Rubik's cubes and play tic-tac-toe) was a huge hit with DH for his birthday, and I have the book Forbidden Lego: Build the Models Your Parents Warned You Against stashed away for DS & DH for Christmas. For your DD, how about a cute homemade purse, scarves made from t-shirts like this or this, a small crocheted scarf that isn't too warm for Florida, or a cute felt camera case? You can decorate plain tee-shirts with a bleach pen, or make a scarf like this by writing your DD's favorite poem/quotes/literary passage with fabric pens (or in reverse with the bleach pen). For all of them, you could do homemade snowglobes customized to their interests — if you can find tiny jars, you could even make them as ornaments. In lieu of photobooks, you could order these cool little flipbooks made from video clips. Jackie

I briefly had a subscription to that woman's website and downloaded a number of science units as well as part of the US History curriculum. In going through some of the units I noticed numerous factual errors as well as outdated & racist language in the history unit. When I emailed to complain, the author was extremely snotty to me, denied the factual errors, and excused the language in the history unit by saying that it "came from an old book and I don't change other people's words." I then googled whole chunks of text from the history unit and discovered that almost the ENTIRE text of that unit (Explorers) had been taken, word for word, from A First Course in American History by Jeannette Rector Hodgdon (1908) on Google books, without any citation or attribution. In fact, she had put her own copyright on every single page! I then started googling chunks of text from some of the science units and discovered that large parts of those were plagiarized as well, taken from various websites (including their photos and illustrations) without attribution. When I confronted her about the plagiarism, she cancelled my subscription and refused to refund my $97. You can read more details about the errors and my experience with her in this thread. Jackie

Paula, here are some fun supplements for geometry: Bradford Hansen-Smith's incredible paperfolding website. You can buy his books from RedHenToys.com (I think it's linked on his website) Zome Geometry TTC The Shape of Nature TTC Mathematics from the Visual World Geometer's Sketchpad software — on sale through HSBC for $15, expires tomorrow (9/30) We also have the hardback of this edition of Euclid's Elements, which is a beautiful book, but it will be a couple of years before DS gets to it. Jackie

:iagree: This is why I don't post here anymore either. Since I loosened the reins and started following my kids' interests, our homeschool has improved immeasurably, and I don't believe that interest-led learning has to come to a screeching halt as soon as a child reaches middle school, or even high school, age. I have a dyslexic/ADD 7th grade boy who used to hate school and never read for pleasure, who now loves school and is a voracious reader. He has chosen far more difficult subjects than I would have chosen for him, but because he's interested, engaged, and invested in learning, he's working his butt off and doing incredibly well. For example, he chose to study Greek — not a language I would have ever chosen for an ADD dyslexic — but he's voluntarily putting in at least 1.5 hrs/day and often works weekends as well; he has straight As in that class. In case anyone is interested in what that looks like: 7th Grade DS Math: from a selection of about a dozen math programs, he chose Thinkwell, which I supplement w/extra challenge problems. He also does Khan Academy, Zome Geometry, plays with fractal software, does geometric paperfolding with the Hansen-Smith book, and other things. Greek: Athenaze, online course with Lukeion English: My own mix of things, much of it informal, including lots of discussion of the books he reads for pleasure (as opposed to assigned reading). He completed an intensive 4-week grammar course last summer and has retained all of it, so we don't do any formal grammar (he gets plenty in Greek anyway). He's asked to do LLfLotR as soon as he's done with The Hobbit, and he asked me to order some linguistics courses from TTC, which should be here tomorrow. He's writing a short story based on a civilization he invented, and is currently storyboarding a version of the Odyssey he's rewriting involving space pirates. He plans to make a comic book of that using lego minifigs and sets he builds himself. History: He continues to watch TTC courses on Greek history, and recently asked me to teach him how to take notes, since the lectures he's currently watching are quite advanced and very dense and he wanted help remembering everything (lots of names and dates). We've also started watching DVDs on American History; my 4th grader is very interested in US history and is totally sick of Ancients, since DS has been obsessed for the last 3 years, so I figured we could do them simultaneously. Science: We're watching TTC courses and documentaries on Geology, plus the kids do physics kits (Supercharged Science) with DH, and we always have tanks full of critters and biology experiments going on, plus we watch tons of nature & biology programs. DS also reads a LOT of paleontology on his own; he's currently reading a textbook on the evolution of amphibians (he has a particular interest in Triassic amphibians). Technology: He is working his way through Virtual World Design & Creation for Teens, which teaches programming in Alice, and he does Mindstorms robotics. Art: He's working on technical/biological illustration because he desperately wants to produce at least one illustration that's good enough for me to include in the paleo museum exhibits I'm designing. He'll also be learning a lot about graphic design & museum design in the process of my work. 4th Grade DD Math: MM, Pet Shop Math, Khan, fractal software, Zome Geometry, and assorted "living math" activities English: My own mix of things, plus lots of reading. She loves to write little reports, stories, and letters to grandparents, so I teach a lot of spelling, grammar, & mechanics in context as I help her correct & improve what she chooses to write. Latin: She chose Latin and is doing GSWL. We'll add in Minimus and Lively Latin when she finishes GSWL. History: She's more into US History than DS, and chooses to read biographies, watch documentaries & programs like Liberty's Kids, read American Girl books, etc. I also have some lapbooky things she can do when she wants. Science: She watches the geology lectures/DVDs with the family, does physics kits with DH, and on her own has been studying the human body. I printed out a bunch of activities from a Scholastic Make-&-Learn book, which she's assembling into a lapbook. She chooses whatever videos & activities she wants from Discovery Streaming, BrainPop, and Adaptive Curriculum, as well as books & DVDs from our shelves (we have tons of books & DVDs on the body). Art: She loves Mark Kistler. We also do nature journaling and she likes illustrating her stories and letters. Technology: She's learning programming with Scratch and WeDo Robotics. Generally the kids like to get Math, English, and Greek/Latin out of the way in the morning, then in the afternoons they watch TTC lectures or documentaries, read, do online activities (BrainPop, DS, Khan, etc.), draw, or do programming/robotics. DS still doesn't like math much, but they both love all the other subjects and often choose to do them on weekends if nothing else is going on. We also do lots of hiking, geocaching, nature journaling, field trips, and other projects. We don't do video games and we watch very little commercial TV, so there is no distinction in our family between "school work" and "fun stuff" — it's all enjoyable and it's an integral part of life. I intend to keep it that way. Jackie

Predicate nominative and predicate adjective are not the same thing. They are both subject complements. He is a farmer. "farmer" = predicate nominative (it's a noun) He is tall. "tall" = predicate adjective (it's an adjective) Jackie

Jackie

I second Angela's suggestion of getting one of the "for Teens" books for Alice or Scratch. DS is working through Virtual World Design & Creation for Teens and really enjoying it. It teaches Alice, a free Java-based program developed at Carnegie Mellon specifically to teach beginning programming. You can "see inside" the book and read the reviews on Amazon. Jackie

:iagree: with everything Elizabeth said, especially the parts quoted above. Read The Dyslexic Advantage; the Eides are neurologists specializing in 2E kids. It will change the way you see your daughter, and it will change the way your daughter sees herself. Jackie

:iagree::iagree::iagree: That approach has been very successful here, too. My kids know that I trust them and that I will always take their concerns seriously, and they have responded by being very trustworthy kids. This is exactly what I did, with the same result. When DS was in 3rd grade (PS), he would do anything to avoid homework and then he'd sit there and hit himself in the head and wail about what a stupid idiot he was. When I pulled him out, my first priority was to change that — not by telling him he was being ridiculous but by helping him work through those feelings. If I was teaching him something he wasn't getting, or wasn't retaining, I would explain that the problem wasn't him, the problem was that apparently I hadn't explained things in a way that he understood, or in a way that he could "file" properly and remember. I made sure he understood that we were a team, and that we would work together to find the way that he learned best. That has taken a lot of research and a lot of trial & error, but we have a really good system now, and I have a confident, happy, hard-working kid who is definitely living up to his "potential." I think in many ways 2E kids have a much harder time than "1E" kids, because their giftedness allows them to compensate for the LDs in a way that often masks the severity of their issues. Teachers and parents then assume they only have a "mild" issue in one or two areas, and misinterpret real struggles as "lack of effort" or "not trying their best," when in fact the sheer effort involved in compensating for the hidden LDs can leave them exhausted and emotionally drained. Jackie

But what these kids are capable of one day, and what they're capable of the next day, may be very different. It's common for these kids to whip through math one day and forget 2+2 the next. That doesn't mean they're being lazy or bratty or trying to get away with something; sometimes it just means their brains are working a different way that day. Maybe their serotonin or blood sugar is low, maybe they're preoccupied with something else, maybe they just feel like crap and can't access the math part of their brain that day. But how does forbidding her from expressing something she does feel help her to process those feelings? How does telling her that what she feels is false and ridiculous and useless help her to feel less stupid? Wouldn't that make her feel more stupid and more inadequate, since not only is she often wrong in her school work, she even has the "wrong" feelings? Jackie

I wasn't suggesting that she's depressed, that's not my point. My point was that her feelings are perfectly valid, and telling a child who feels stupid and inadequate that her feelings are ridiculous and nonsensical is, IMO, analogous to telling a depressed child to just get over it because they don't have a "legitimate" reason for feeling sad. It's insensitive, and it's almost guaranteed to make things worse. I have a gifted, dyslexic, "spacey" 2E kid as well, and I've dealt with the same issues you describe, from trouble with spelling and math facts to attention issues, sensitivity, and feeling stupid. You're telling your DD that comparisons are pointless, and yet you are comparing her to some hypothetical kid in your head who "should" be able to sound out certain words, memorize math facts, and pay attention, and you're making your disappointment in her pretty clear. And then you're blaming her for internalizing that and getting "emotional" about it. Maybe she's just an emotional kid — many gifted people are. Maybe she has a lot more learning issues going on than just "mild" dyslexia. Maybe, as Elizabeth suggested, she learns in a completely different way and needs a different approach, instead of impatience and criticism. Jackie

Wow, would you rant at a depressed child that she's being "ridiculous" and her feelings are nonsense? Would you treat that like a character flaw? :confused: The words you are using to describe your DD's very real learning issues are quite flippant and dismissive (spce case, la-la land, etc.). Your daughter's feelings are not "ridiculous," and I have to agree with OhELizabeth that she is not the obstacle at this point. So, your 9 yo, dyslexic, 2E child is not allowed be frustrated, irritable, and impatient about her schoolwork, but you are? I would strongly recommend that you do some reading on giftedness, dyslexia, and 2E issues. MANY gifted kids are highly emotional, very sensitive, and perfectionistic; combine that with an LD and you have a child who is very likely to feel frustrated, upset, and stupid because they can't do what they, and others, think they should be able to do. MANY dyslexic kids have issues with processing speed and working memory that make storage and retrieval of math facts very difficult. They often learn math facts much more easily if they are allowed to use a chart and learn them in context, while applying them to math calculations. I second the suggestion of reading the Eides's books, The Mislabeled Child and The Dyslexic Advantage. Jackie

Has he done the Creepy Crawlies and the Scientific Method book? Those are real experiments (not "demonstrations"), where the student can set/change parameters, and none of the creepy crawlies get hurt. My DS is also hypersensitive to animal suffering, and he frequently designs his own experiments with invertebrates. E.g., he tried putting different (already) dead insects at the edge of ant nests to see which insects the ants preferred, if there were differences between species, how they got the insect into the nest, etc. Last year we had a "pet" praying mantis and he experimented with different species/sizes of prey (OK, there was killing involved there, but mantids are not vegetarians, so what can you do). He also did a series of experiments with planarians to see what foods they preferred, whether they preferred light or dark spaces, deeper or shallower water, fresh or slightly slimy water, etc. Explore the World Using Protozoa is another good book for "living" bio labs. Biological Inquiries by Martin Shields (Jossey-Bass Teacher series) has lots of HS bio labs, complete with lab sheets, assessments, etc. Some are doable with household materials and some you would need to order a few supplies from somewhere like Home Science Tools or Carolina Biological. There are also online labs, like Froguts. Froguts includes a number of virtual dissections as well as fruit fly and pea genetics labs. I think it's pretty easy for kids to think up, and set up, their own labs, once they've done a few and understand how to form a hypothesis, which factors will be variable and which will be controlled, etc. Jackie

That was my point. ;) I wasn't seriously suggesting that the two boards be merged; my point was that just as Accelerated & SN kids are different from each other, 2e kids are different from both of them. In the case of 2e kids, 1 (LD) + 1 (high IQ) does not equal 2. It's more like some combination of 47 different fractions, decimals, and irrational and imaginary numbers = 2. IMO, the types of criticism and even attacks that occur when discussing nontraditional learners on the curriculum boards do not occur on the SN board, for example. One parent might say that they feel it's better to require their child to adapt to traditional methods rather than the other way around, but parents do not usually tell each other that what they're doing is wrong or not "rigorous" enough or "classical" enough or that they don't belong on this board at all. No, it's not a reference to you at all! I also enjoyed talking to you in that thread and appreciated that you were genuinely interested in understanding where those of us with 2e/VSL/nontraditional learners are coming from. There was another thread, started by someone else partly in response to that one, which was an extremely nasty personal attack directed at Karen and me. The mods deleted it. Jackie

So.. when parents of logic stage kids asked for a logic board, were they "biting the hand that feeds them? :confused: Did you post your objections when two new boards were created just for writing? The HS writing subforum has a grand total of about 300 posts — I could probably point to half a dozen threads on 2e/VSL/nontraditional learners that each have vastly more posts than that, just in a single thread. What's the point of an entirely separate bilingual board for a tiny subset of WTMers — probably a much smaller subset than 2e/VSL/nontraditional learners? Why have separate boards for accelerated and SN kids — after all, giftedness is a special need, too. Why not just have one big "non-NT" board? Heck, why not just have a curriculum board for each of the three "stages" and then a General board to talk about everything else? After all, parents of SN kids could just ask about curriculum on the curriculum boards, and diagnoses/therapy/etc., on the General board. It's not that hard to look for parents with similar needs and interests, right? It seems like most of the people who object to the idea of a separate board do so because the existing set-up already meets their needs. If the Special Needs board didn't exist, and parents were asking for one, would you be telling people to just be grateful for what they have and stop biting the hand that feeds them? Jackie