As long as she wants. ;) You have a kid who's interested in advanced ideas and more than willing to tackle challenging and complex material; why would that not count as "school"? Why should your DD's approach to science seem any less valid than the "conventional" approach of slogging through a written-by-committee textbook padded with pointless stock photography, endless sidebars of "Connections in Your Community," vocabulary lists, and key points conveniently broken down and prehighlighted for the student to memorize for the chapter test (after which they're free to purge the information from their brains)? Whole-to-part, visual/spatial learners tend to delight in finding patterns; IME that's one of the most powerful tools in their "thinking kit" and one of the main ways they categorize information and make connections. One of the cool things about studying complexity/emergence/chaos theory is that it shows you how the same patterns can be found or modeled in all systems: mathematics, physics, biology, economics, epidemiology, meteorology — the list is endless. It's all about patterns and it's about as "big picture" as you can get — what better starting place could you find for a whole-to-part learner? Jackie

I'd probably put it on the either the logic board or the accelerated board and just PM anyone whose input you want who doesn't see it — but this really illustrates why a subforum for "nontraditional learners" would be so useful! Jackie

The Stewart book looks awesome — I've added it to my wishlist. Did you know the Teaching Co has courses on Chaos and Complexity? (PM me if you're interested.) You could add the TC courses and a couple of other books for a half-credit course (e.g. Chaos, Complexity, and Emergent Systems), or incorporate them into a History of Science course, fold them into another math or science course (e.g. Physics, Mathematical Modeling), etc. DH has lots of books on complexity and emergence, I can look through them and see if any would be accessible (and interesting enough) for her. Jackie

Yep. I can make my DS sit there and do 40 math problems, I can make him fill in grammar worksheets, his 3rd grade teacher made him do narration & dictation every day. He wouldn't learn anything, though — other than a deep hatred of math, grammar, and reading. It's not that he's rebellious or defiant, it's just that those things do. not. work. And it's frustrating when people who don't have kids like this imply that our kids are just manipulating us, or trying to get out of the work, and that they need to be made to just suck it up and do it. I think a lot of people fear getting out of the box because they think their kids will make crazy choices that look nothing like "school" — playing video games all day or reading nothing but manga or something. You will often hear that if kids are allowed to follow their interests, they'll choose fluff, they'll stay in their comfort zone and never push themselves, they'll never learn to work hard at boring things, so they won't be prepared for college. My experience has been exactly the opposite. Given more control over his education, DS has pushed himself much farther than I ever would have. He dropped an easy Spanish program and chose Athenaze Greek instead — despite being dyslexic, despite being told that it would be very difficult for him. He's watched hundreds of hours of Teaching Company lectures and reads adult level books on ancient history and classical warfare — including Herodotus and Thucydides. This formerly reluctant (at best) reader is now a voracious reader. He designs and carries out his own science experiments, watches science documentaries, reads science books, does research online, reads obscure articles on paleontology and does anywhere from 50-100 hours of paleo fieldwork every year. He's decided to learn programming this year, and wants to really work on his drawing technique, especially scientific illustration. He invented a civilization, complete with a writing and number system, culture, mythology, history, clothing & jewelry, weapons & technology, housing, etc., which he records in a sketchbook. This kid who hates to write is thinking of writing a novel about his civilization. I think your son will surprise you. Let the reins out a little at a time if that makes you feel more comfortable, but it's actually quite pleasant out here, outside the box. Ignore the maps that say "there be dragons!" ;) Jackie

I think a LOT of kids who are diagnosed with inattentive ADD are VSLs with low dopamine issues. VSLs also tend to be hyper aware of their environment and spatialize so many different sensations: the sound of the lawn mower outside the window, the itchy tag at the back of their neck, the way their shoe is pinching their sock, the flicker of the overhead light (that no one else sees), the kid next to them who's chewing gum too loudly, the bright-colored poster on the wall in front of them, etc. It's already hard for them to pay attention, and if you add in a low dopamine issue, it's extremely difficult to tune out all those other sensations and focus on just one thing in front of you — especially when it's a boring textbook or worksheet in a subject you hate! I think the need for engagement comes partly from the fact that when you do something enjoyable, your body releases dopamine, which improves your focus and concentration. Hence the "paradox" of the supposedly "attention deficient" kid who can't focus on math for more than 5 minutes, but who can spend 6 hours concentrating on building an elaborate lego construction or observing an ant hill and designing numerous experiments. Regarding math... I wouldn't make your DD memorize math facts out of context. My DS was so incredibly frustrated by that, he described it in terms of having all the answers in his head, but they were written on little scraps of paper scattered all over the floor, and whenever he had to recall one, a little man would run all over frantically turning over the scraps of paper looking for the right one. I just let him use a chart when he did math, and he learned them by using them in context. Games like Mythmatical Battles helped, too. I've also found that he does better with fewer, harder, more conceptual problems, rather than lots of drill and repetition. For him, drill and repetition are pure torture, and he really doesn't need it to get the concepts. Have you ever read the Eides' Mislabeled Child? Best book on 2e kids, hands down. They have a great blog, too; check out this video. These kids are definitely hard to parent, but once I started working with the way DS learns, instead of against it, I've found him really easy to homeschool! Jackie

The low processing speed is classic VSL. It should really be called verbal/sequential processing speed, because that's really what it's measuring, so it's not surprising that visual/spatial kids would do poorly. It takes a lot of time and effort to translate back and forth, and VSLs are not good at fast recall of random facts, because they don't "file" information in orderly, easily retrievable ways. FWIW, my DS was very much like your DD — ages 0-5 were h*ll on wheels (major sensory issues), 5-10 was good, 10-12 was, um, interesting (no tolerance for frustration, constantly beating himself up for being stupid every time he made any kind of mistake, etc.). Puberty has been a mixed bag, although largely positive; definitely some hormonal swings (especially associated with growth spurts), but also a sudden leap in maturity and cognitive ability. He's much more willing to take responsibility, more self-motivated, less mopey. So there may be better times ahead! My DS was also big on encyclopedias at that age, and not reading much else. I will be forever grateful to Rick Riordan, because Percy Jackson made DS realize for the first time that fiction can take you to another world. Those were the first books he couldn't put down, his first experience of staying up all night reading under the covers. He's worked his way up from there, and now averages a 500-page novel/week. He's currently finishing Prydain, and plans to start LOTR next. Finding the book that "hooked" him took a while, but once he was hooked, there was no stopping him. What is she using for math? Jackie

I can tell you that what worked for my DS for grammar was exactly the opposite of what almost everyone else on the board would say to do. I'm convinced that, for him, (1) waiting until he has an interest in something, or at least a reason for studying it; (2) waiting until he's cognitively ready to take in the whole thing, instead of learning bits at a time; and (3) presenting it in an interesting, engaging, visual way, is about 1000 times more effective than trying to build up skills piece by piece, year by year. He found standard grammar programs tedious and pointless and none of it ever stuck. At the end of 6th grade (last year), he knew what a noun, verb, adjective, and adverb were — and that was mostly from playing MadLibs. But he wants to learn Greek, so now he has a reason to learn grammar, and now he's cognitively capable of taking it all in at once and getting the "big picture" instead of snippets. I signed him up for an intensive online grammar class with Lukeion this summer. Great course — definitely intense, but also very funny, with lots of visuals and mnemonics, hilarious example sentences, custom grammar games for practice, etc. In 4 weeks, they covered everything from parts of speech to case, mood, voice, aspect, tenses (all 12), clauses, phrases, verbals, diagramming — the whole ball of wax. He loved the course, got an A, remembers everything. Forcing him through five years of R&S grammar would have accomplished little more than instilling a lifelong hatred of grammar. Now he thinks it's easy, and even fun. Clearly that wouldn't work for every kid, but knowing that it worked for somebody's kid at least provides an alternative worth looking at. I plan to approach writing the same way: when he's ready and he wants to do it (he's mentioned recently that he'd like to write a novel about a civilization he's invented), then we'll "do writing." I'll let you know how it goes. :001_smile: Jackie

I feel like I started out with a very specific idea of what I wanted DS's education to look like; I bought a big pile of building materials (curriculum), and while I was sitting there reading Chapter 1 of the Construction Manual, "How to Build a Foundation," DS took all the PVC pipes that were supposed to go into the plumbing, assembled them into triangles, and started building a geodesic dome on his own. After staring at it a while in shock, I finally thought "OK, we can go with that." Jackie

:iagree: The state of Maine only requires 17.5 credits, and only 80 hrs per credit; she could probably graduate now. Jackie

Maybe we can use the definition of "2e" in #5 for the subforum. That should be inclusive enough. :lol: Jackie

That is totally DH! He knows more about equine mechanics and movement than the vet does, he knows more about the neurology of binocular vision than his opthamologist does, and yet every year the fact that Christmas falls on December 25th seems to take him completely by surprise. ("Tomorrow is Christmas??? Really??? But I haven't bought anything..." <panicked look>) :lol: Jackie

Perfect! Someone on another thread asked what "2e" meant and I felt like posting: It means that schools don't have to provide either accommodations for the LDs or enrichment for the giftedness, because the two of them "cancel each other out," as a PS teacher once told me. :glare: I loved this one: :lol: Jackie

My son finished MM6, and messed around with assorted other prealgebra programs, and I'm planning to have him do AoPS Prealgebra this fall. Someone just posted on another thread that a child who had completed Saxon Alg 1/2 tested into AoPS Prealgebra, so I'm not worried that it will duplicate MM6. TOCs can be deceiving. I'm also not worried about ruining the "discovery aspect" of AoPS; on the contrary, I specifically wanted to introduce him to AoPS using material he's familiar with, rather than throwing him into the deep end with Algebra. This is a kid who thinks he hates math, although I'm convinced he really just hates arithmetic, because he seems to get math concepts quite easily. I think the AoPS approach will appeal to him. I'm hoping we can get through it at a slightly faster pace, and start Algebra sometime in the spring. Unfortunately my AoPS text won't be here until Monday afternoon and I'm going out of town Monday morning and won't be back until Friday. :( Jackie

But at least it's a lot rarer than it would be if those parents were posting on the K8 board. I also think there's a big difference between parents of gifted kids having differences of opinion about how to teach/parent their gifted kids, and a parent of a nongifted kid, who doesn't understand the issues, telling parents of gifted kids that accelerated academics are wrong or harmful or whatever. I'm just using VSL examples because I happen to have a VSL, but I certainly didn't mean to imply that I was interested in a subforum just for VSLs. Maybe an "Alternative Classical" subforum would be more useful than a 2E subforum, because it would be more inclusive (including parents of NT kids who are looking for alternative approaches) while also making explicit that the focus is on finding alternative methods of implementing a classical education (i.e. not particularly relevant to parents of 2E kids who feel that the best approach is not to seek alternative methods but rather to find ways for them to work within the standard framework). Jackie

Yes, but a parent of a neurotypical child is not going to go on the Special Needs board and start telling parents of ADD kids that ADD doesn't exist and their kids just need to learn to sit still and pay attention. Parents of non-accelerated kids don't generally go on the Accelerated board and tell people to just chill out and stop "pushing" their kids. But when a parent with a differently-wired kid posts on the K8 or HS board, the vast majority of respondents do not have kids like that and really do not understand the issues. So if a parent of a gifted VSL posts about their child's need to be engaged and interested in order to learn, they will be told that: life is full of boring, uninteresting tasks and kids need to just suck it up and deal with it; that all kids prefer to be engaged, but a child who simply cannot learn something they're not interested in has a severe disability; that this is a discipline/behavior issue; that the concept of a VSL is just a "pet theory" and that most kids who appear to be nonlinear thinkers are just lazy, etc. At least with a separate 2E subforum, most of the participants would be parents of "twice exceptional" kids (whatever the "exceptions" happen to be) who "get" it. Or call it an Alternative Classical forum — either way it is clear up front that participants are looking for nonstandard, alternative ways of implementing a Classical education, and not looking to debate whether alternative methods are valid or dangerous or "rigorous" enough or "classical enough" or whatever. Jackie

Oh my -- that is painfully true! :smilielol5: Jackie

I so wish I had done something like that with DS, instead of putting him in school. When he started school halfway through 1st grade (January), his reading and math were above grade level — just from playing games at home, no formal schooling or seatwork. By the end of 1st grade he was pretty much in the same place; by the end of 2nd he was behind, and by the end of 3rd he was so far behind in both math and reading that he was held back. After his second trip through 3rd grade, he still hadn't started division, he'd stopped reading entirely, he hated school, hated life, and was one very unhappy little boy. :( RE: learning things "out of order"... the realization that many VSLs don't need to learn things in any particular order was a huge epiphany for me last year, and made it much easier for me to relax and let DS learn the way he needs to learn, without worrying about "gaps" or whether he has the right "foundation," etc. They have their own system for filing and retaining information and connecting it to other information, and they often do much better if you just hand them the puzzle box and let them figure out how to put it together, rather than trying to teach them to find the corners first, then fill in the sides, then work on one area at a time, etc. Jackie

Count me in. Jackie

Strange, isn't it? :001_huh: This is a blurb from visualspatial.org: According to DS and DH (both extreme VSLs), as well as a number of other VSLs (and parents of VSLs) I've talked to, that summary is quite accurate. Interest and engagement are necessary for retention; if they don't "hook" into the material, it goes in one side of the brain and out the other, with little or no retention. I've found that it's much more effective and productive to jump on DS's interests as they arise, rather than saying "I know you're fascinated by electricity and magnetism right now, but we'll cover that in two years when we get to physics; right now you have to do cell biology, because that's what I've scheduled. You can putter around with electronics a bit in your spare time, though, if you like." Strike while the iron is hot and he'll absorb and retain an amazing amount of quite advanced information, almost effortlessly. Make him slog through something he has no interest in and it's like trying to "fill" a colander with water. Even if the colander is willing to sit there and let me pour in the water, it's just going to go straight through. Jackie

I was speaking for myself. :) I enjoy discussions like the depth-vs-breadth thread, or the recent thread on VSLs (before it went downhill and fell apart), but I'm not (personally) looking for advice or support or a "safe haven." I've found a method and approach that is working really really well with my DS — I have a rising 7th grader who, 3 years ago, hated school, had to be bribed to read a Magic Treehouse book, and could barely do 3rd grade math. He now reads voraciously, at least 500 pages/wk (he's currently devouring Chronicles of Prydain), he learned all of English grammar in one intensive 4 wk online class this summer, he's doing Athenaze Greek (his choice), his other courses for next year include AoPS math, LLfLOTR, hands-on/inquiry-based physics, a 3rd year (!) of ancient history, programming, robotics, and art. He's currently working on a 10-day paleo dig with professors and grad students. He was looking through a copy of Euclid's Elements (in English) last week and asked if he could use it — in Greek — when he gets to Geometry. So I don't really worry about whether my homeschool is "rigorous enough" or "classical enough" or whether DS will have any trouble getting into college. But I know there are a lot of people here who do worry, people with kids like DS who haven't figured them out yet, people who PM me and others who post in these threads saying that they're afraid to post but really appreciate the discussion. That's why I think a subforum would be a good idea. Jackie

What did you send Adobe for proof of homeschooling, and did they give you any hassle? I need to buy CS5 soon. Has your DS ever used InDesign? I use Quark, too, and I didn't get along with InDesign because it seemed really unintuitive to me compared to Quark — but maybe that's just because I'm used to Quark, so the way Quark does things seems "normal" to me. Jackie

It's not about looking for a "safe haven"; it's about being able to ask questions and have discussions without having to provide a lengthy preamble of explanation and justification. If a parent of a profoundly gifted child posts on the K8 board asking about a 5th grade history curriculum for a 4 yo, 20 people will tell her to back off and chill out and just make mud pies; to get any information, she'll need to "prove" that her child really does need it and can handle it, that he taught himself to read at 3 and currently reads on a 5th grade level, that he's been begging to learn history, etc. On the Accelerated board, the same parent can say "What's a good history program for a PG 4 yo reading at a 5th grade level?" and she'll get the answers she's looking for. It would be nice for parents of VSLs, for example, to be able to discuss why interest-led, whole-to-part learning is often more effective with these kids, without having to answer the inevitable warnings that interest-led learning equals coddling, that kids who are allowed to study what they want will choose fluff, will never get out of their comfort zones, won't be able to handle hard work, etc. It would be nice to be able to discuss whether taking a "better late than early" approach with some of these kids might be more effective, without fending off warnings about "lack of standard output" and kids not being prepared for college. It would be nice to be able to discuss alternative approaches to providing a classical education without being challenged to justify it by proving that our kids truly can't do things the normal way and therefore require an alternative approach — because if they're remotely capable of "normal" work, then they should be forced to just suck it up and do it. A subforum on adapting classical methods for "differently wired" kids (especially at the Logic and Rhetoric levels) would spare parents of these kids from constantly having to explain themselves and justify what they do, just as the Special Needs and Accelerated boards do. And presumably it would spare those who find alternative approaches "antithetical to classical methods" (as one poster recently put it) from having such discussions clutter up the main HS board. Jackie

Netflix has it here, and Amazon has it here. It's over six hours and it's in French with subtitles, but it's absolutely terrific. Jackie

If you want to add in some fun "artsy" geometry, I would suggest a few other resources instead: Geometry: The Beauty of Numbers & Polywogs to Polygons: The Metmorphosis of Numbers to Art (scroll down to the bottom of the page) Bradford Hansen-Smith's Geometry of Wholemovement Xaos fractal software (free download from the Fractal Foundation) The author of Patty Paper Geometry, Michael Serra, also wrote the Discovering Geometry text for Key Curriculum Press, which is a lot more "arty" than PPG (IMO). Lots of connections between art, nature, and geometry in there. You can get used copies of the previous edition starting at about $5. Jackie