Please tell me what you think

[yellowperch]

DS9, highly gifted in math, avid, compulsive reader (hours daily, with lots of breaks for age appropriate play and shenanigans and shirking of chores and piano). His non-math learning skills (in short writing, study skills, follow through, listening skills, work ethic) are decidedly grade-level.

 

It seems that anytime we engage in something not skills-oriented he knows most of the material. Some examples form today:

 

Starting Music of the Hemispheres with DD7. The opening section mentions that scientists from the middle ages believed the planets produce musical notes. DS pipes in that Pythagoras thought the same thing. He discusses that for a while. Then he says that in 1944 it was discovered that pulsar stars do in fact produce sound-like waves. More on that.

 

The section goes on to discuss the two hemispheres of the human brain. This brings to his mind the differences in the structure of both Einstein's and Beethoven's brain. He discusses and grabs a book off a shelf to check something.

 

For history we are doing a mix of Story of the World (my dd's speed) and Story of Science (ds's speed) and are off cycle a bit. We started the Romans today. We were reading a little fiction as an intro, and DD and I are treated to a nifty little chat about citizenry vs. slavery followed by a bit on Julius Caesar and whether he wanted to be king and then some about Hannibal and the elephants. Of course, a little bathroom humor best in there as we chat about Roman city planning and toilets.

 

We haven't done this part of history yet. For the record, He's not interrupting. This is all part of our relaxed afternoon salon--cookies, books, Jim Wiess reading SOTW, map coloring, and Kapla blocks. But it made me wonder if I am doing the right thing with him. He already is conversational in many of the things I wanted to examine this year. We have similar issues in science discussions, which has made committing to an approach rather difficult.

 

I'll repeat that his writing, and other important skill skills are not anywhere near his broad knowledge. And his attitude about nitty-gritty morning-at-the-table schoolwork is not terrific.

 

What do you more experienced moms of gifted kids think? I hope I'm not coming off as braggy. (I think here I am safe to describe and not be interpreted as bragging.) I think he's pretty cool, but I am also perplexed. And concerned. And I feel out of my depth.

 

I know skills

[Iucounu]

No worries about coming off as braggy. What do we think about what? It sounds like he likes to read, which is a good thing. It also sounds like he likes being the center of attention when you try to spend time with your daughter. What is your concern?

[MBM]

It sounds like he has a remarkable memory. I'd just keep having him read. :)

[yellowperch]

My main concern is that the history and history of science program that I've been pulling together contains a lot of material he's very familiar with. In general, I'm finding it difficult to find a good balance between the content levels and the skill levels in the work we are doing.

 

Obviously, I need to challenge him to expand his skill base, and learn to follow-through and focus on completing learning tasks (in short, he needs to work on his writing). But I fear the material I intend to use to do this is old hat.

 

As for him hogging attention, I can see that my post would give that impression. He's actually painfully quiet and self-absorbed at times, and today he was really busting out. He's not a limelight guy.

[2smartones]

My advice: buy or borrow a whole library full of books, and relax. He'll make his name on Jeopardy someday. It's perfectly normal for gifted kids to be age-appropriate in some subjects and jaw-dropping great at others. Let him soak up all the plain old facts himself. Focus your attention on the why's and how's and what-if's so that your conversations have more depth during lesson times.

[lewelma]

Spend time on skills. At age 9, we did 2 to 3 hours of skills per day. Writing, spelling, grammar, handwriting and math (this does not count violin). We did them first. Then we added in the content areas. Documentaries, reading, discussing, field trips.

 

As an aside: I have always found that writing is particularly hard for kids that read high level material, because they want to write at the same level as they read, and they can't. Slow and steady wins the race. And expect a lot of frustration.

 

Whatever content you are have planned, you will probably need to drop it. Instead of a curriculum, I picked a topic every month in Science and History and went to the library. I didn't plan too far ahead, because I have always found that at that age, things change soooooo quickly.

 

Ruth in NZ

[Osmosis Mom]

I don't really have advice for you. My oldest did not need to be taught anything (I thought all kids were like that?) and was a pretty independent learner who as a young teen delved into her interests and never had any problems talking to adults such as professors, scientists etc.

 

It sounds to me that your son is comfortable right now. You stretch hi in one area (the math), but that does not necessarily mean he should get stretched and challenged in everything. There is something about feeling as confident as he is in fx. history and science; he is chatting and sharing and building confidence while drawing interconnected lines in his mind.

 

You might think he is in grade-level in other areas, but quite frankly then he sounds above-level to me -and comfortably so. If he spends a lot of time reading and has neat literature to choose from, then he will expand on his knowledge on his own. And believe me, with his chatter-box attitude (great thing) and his gene-pool, then he'll soon enough start writing more and more freely. I am sure of that.

 

I guess my piece of advice would be to not change a thing right now. Except perhaps to offer him some of Critical Thinking's materials on history and science to spice things up a bit, but essentially then I would let his mind explore on his own time.

[Beth in SW WA]

 

As an aside: I have always found that writing is particularly hard for kids that read high level material, because they want to write at the same level as they read, and they can't.

 

This is the first time I've heard this. Makes sense. And good to know! Thanks!

 

:bigear:

[LisaDSB]

Your son sounds a lot like my DS11. I think he's read just about all of Wikipedia by now, and just about everything else, and he somehow retains and draws connections between this vast amount of information.

 

Since he learns so much stuff on his own, I have found that strictly following a curriculum like Story of the World or Story of Science (we've tried both) to be a bit frustrating. For him, it's better to come up with esoteric things he hasn't thought of. For example, I found Ellen McHenry's "Excavating English" and we went through that. It was a great way to follow up on all of the history reading he has been doing, and it introduced him to a new passion -- linguistics.

 

To be honest, I'm flying by the seat of my pants with this kid. I do have to make sure he's covering those writing skills and life skills, because those don't come as easy to him. My time is probably better spent focusing on those things, than trying to teach him what he already knows.

 

Good luck!

[acurtis75]

It sounds like your son and my daugher are a lot alike. I believe she remembers everything she's ever seen, heard or read. It's crazy and hard to keep up with. I don't see any harm in continuing to do the SOTW together. My daughter read the whole book the first few days after we got it but I still go through 2 chapters a week and do the narrations and the tests. It gives us a chance to discuss what she's learning and I know she needs work on writing, narration, paying attention, turning in neat work, etc. There's no way any curriculum is going to keep up with a child that reads several hours a day and I know she's not ready to do detailed writing assignments or focus by herself on schoolwork for hours on end yet. I accelerate the skill areas (math, grammar, etc) but for history I see the SOTW has an outline for her to use to place all the stuff she's reading about inside so it makes sense chronologically when we get to more detailed writing and analysis in the future. We also recently started an actual timeline from Homeschool in the Woods for her to use to organize the people & places she's learning about.

[acurtis75]

I don't see any Latin in your current curriculum list. You might also consider adding that as a challenge for him. Since he has such an exceptional memory Latin would probably come easy to him and there's a lot of value in knowing it if he's going to pursue any field of science. I use Latin for Children from Classical Academic Press and my daugher loves it. She just asked if we could start Greek from the same company.

[quark]

DS9, highly gifted in math, avid, compulsive reader (hours daily, with lots of breaks for age appropriate play and shenanigans and shirking of chores and piano). His non-math learning skills (in short writing, study skills, follow through, listening skills, work ethic) are decidedly grade-level.

 

It seems that anytime we engage in something not skills-oriented he knows most of the material. Some examples form today:

 

Starting Music of the Hemispheres with DD7. The opening section mentions that scientists from the middle ages believed the planets produce musical notes. DS pipes in that Pythagoras thought the same thing. He discusses that for a while. Then he says that in 1944 it was discovered that pulsar stars do in fact produce sound-like waves. More on that.

 

The section goes on to discuss the two hemispheres of the human brain. This brings to his mind the differences in the structure of both Einstein's and Beethoven's brain. He discusses and grabs a book off a shelf to check something.

 

I feel like you are describing my soon-to-be 9-year-old guy. What I'm doing this year is to introduce more of The Great Courses into our lives. I don't expect DS to take notes. We watch one or two lectures daily and if it's something I can discuss with him orally I will (e.g. math) and if it's something that's better left for hubby to take on (physics/chemistry) we wait till hubby gets home for discussions or they watch the lectures in the evening together and talk about it right then or afterwards. I give DS age-appropriate science kits to play with and various math/ number theory problems (Khan/ AoPS) to keep him occupied. He takes 2 foreign languages to keep those gears oiled. At other times, he reads exactly like how you describe your son does or works on Critical Thinking puzzles. Writing skills are grade level so I just work with him at his level for writing.

 

All the best to you as you figure this out!

[hil]

My homeschooled seven-year-old enjoys the Khan Academy. I've needed to incentivize focus, or there would be too much foot-dragging and frustration. My son is motivated to earn whole days off. Ten modules, (problem sets), for a day off. One chapter of a book is also a module, etc.

 

What's motivating to him is individual and will change over time.

 

This framework has worked well for us, but I'm at a loss right now for appropriate superlatives for the Khan Academy. Trust me, it's great. (Life-altering?)

 

Hilary

'Bruno' 7, Khan Academy for math and science, Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, Brave New World and Gulliver's Travels for lit.

'Miloshka' 1, running experiments daily.

[Storm Bay]

It's not uncommon to have an intput/output discrepancy, and you're not alone! I have three like this, all for different reasons. Some because they can't and some because the won't. I'd work on the output school skills separately in the language arts part of your day (writing, grammar, communicating, etc.)

 

I absorbed everything like a sponge (not sports, though, I was such a late bloomer there that I missed it completely during my growing up years) but not writing well. In fact, I didn't learn to write a great paper until my third year of university when my aunt became one of two mentors. I won't bore you with the details, but some people need very thorough writing teaching, and she nearly drove me crazy with the way she went through my drafts with me, but I learned the process of how to write well (not my posts, which are never going to be that highly worked.) My aunt also did this with her dc when they finally asked and they, who are far more motivated than I am, got to the point where they did things like win scholarships, do a MA at Cambridge, etc, and one is now a writer who is also trilinual (one of those scholarships landed her 3 years getting a BA in Icelandic. But they couldn't write worth beans before their mother taught them. She would have made a great tutor, IMO.

[Sun]

What do I think? I wish you lived down the street from us because your DS sounds just like mine!

 

I have the same issues with DS already knowing a huge amount. This year we're using some Great Courses DVDs to supplement history (this is providing new material - yeah!). We're also using a more high-school level science course in chemistry (probably without hs-level labs). Both of these are providing new material for DS. They cover some things he knows, but they go into much greater depth. He's absolutely loving it, and our year is going much better because he's actually learning new things.

 

I've decided that DS does a lot of learning through reading, so I'm going to go with it. I've made a conscious decision to "seed" his environment with lots of input. This means I spend a small fortune on books, but he reads and rereads them, so I've found it worthwhile. I've been providing him with lots of general history and science reading as well as books on more specific subjects. This keeps him happy, and I'm happy that he's learning.

 

DS really is much happier this year since I've substantially upped the level of input from his schoolwork. I think a lot of our struggles came from inadequate stimulation. In addition to the history DVDs that we're doing as part of our schoolwork, we also bought several sets of math DVDs from the Great Courses. We watch these for family movie night or when we need a break from butting heads over skill-building schoolwork (this still has to happen). The amount of information that DS is learning this year is much, much higher than last year, but he's happier, and I think, for the moment at least, we've hit the right balance.

 

Can you figure out a way to work in increased input that's new to him to help balance out the necessary skill-building work?

[Critterfixer]

If he's fighting the learning of the mundane skills of writing, spelling, and the like and likes bathroom humor, tell him that the reason we study grammar, spelling, writing summaries and the like is the same as the reason we clean the toliets. If you want to be able to use it and not hold your nose, you've got to clean it. If he wants to use all the knowledge he soaks up like a sponge, he's got to be able to express it in his writing.