early radical acceleration questions

[sunnyday]

 As to your observation of the advice "if it's student driven, hands-off, if it's parent-driven, stop."  I disagree.  *I* choose to ramp it up to a level appropriate to their skill/talent -- to where they are challenged in the same way that an average student is challenged by an average curriculum.  My kids aren't begging for more material or harder material in all subjects. But if I don't give them material that makes them think, then what are they learning? They are learning that they do not have to work hard to succeed, and that is a *terrible* lesson.

 

I do this too, with my first grader. I've worked hard with him to get him to accept that we need to work at math, to ignore the grade levels on books and to just figure out what is *interesting* (which means, *sometimes you get it wrong*). When he gets something, I give him the next thing. I'm intentionally compacting his Singapore because I'm seeing that he can handle it.

 

But that's a child who's of actual school age. The OP's child is still in his kindergarten year. (Edit: obviously my personal preference of de-emphasizing academics for the very young comes into my evaluation here...as I noted before, we've all got very different kids and different philosophies.)

[lewelma]

I do this too, with my first grader. I've worked hard with him to get him to accept that we need to work at math, to ignore the grade levels on books and to just figure out what is *interesting* (which means, *sometimes you get it wrong*). When he gets something, I give him the next thing. I'm intentionally compacting his Singapore because I'm seeing that he can handle it.

 

But that's a child who's of actual school age. The OP's child is still in his kindergarten year. (Edit: obviously my personal preference of de-emphasizing academics for the very young comes into my evaluation here...as I noted before, we've all got very different kids and different philosophies.)

I too de-emphasize academics in K with one exception - reading. I did ramp it up on purpose. Being able to read complex material, material with real plots and characters, is a wonderful gift to give any child, let alone a gifted one. Every week I got more difficult books. I never let either of them coast, and neither asked to. By their 7 year old birthdays, each one could read at the level of the Hobbit or Eyewitness nonfiction books. This was parent driven.

 

We did no other academics in K, except 10 minutes of handwriting practice per day.

[sunnyday]

I too de-emphasize academics in K with one exception - reading. I did ramp it up on purpose. Being able to read complex material, material with real plots and characters, is a wonderful gift to give any child, let alone a gifted one. Every week I got more difficult books. I never let either of them coast, and neither asked to. By their 7 year old birthdays, each one could read at the level of the Hobbit or Eyewitness nonfiction books. This was parent driven.

 

We did no other academics in K, except 10 minutes of handwriting practice per day.

 

DD5 is not technically in her K year yet but we're beginning this ramping-up process. She *can* read Charlotte's Web and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but she's fizzled out after a couple of chapters and much prefers to slurp down Kevin Henkes books and level 3 readers ("Breyer Stablemates: Penny" kept her nose in the book for the full 15 minutes it took for her to finish it...she barely paused long enough to run it through the library check-out self-scanner). In the hopes of stretching her just a bit I'm trying to get her to engage with Beatrix Potter and Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. Still, at this age I feel no urgency about it. Modeling an enjoyment of reading, and reading aloud regularly, feel more compelling.

 

I've got MCT's Classics in the Classroom on the way and I hope he gives some good ideas for getting higher levels of material into kids' hands and heads. I also need to start putting the screws to my mom. I *know* she has all of my gorgeously illustrated Greg Hildebrandt children's classics in her storage room, and I don't think she appreciates the urgency I feel to get them into my kids' hands NOW because they are primed for them!

[La Texican]

I think I should have never mentioned my kid's age.  Let's pretend I said he was 8.  I think it's too late to salvage that brave feeling I had posting here, although realistically a good number of posters I've always liked reading have offered quite a bit of relevant and helpful posts.  I honestly think the quote lewelma said, that everybody loves, sums up this thread, but now it's being said that maybe it doesn't even belong in this thread?  

 

 

I wouldn't mind more help figuring out teaching resources.  I  really appreciate the advice I recieved that was helpful and improved what I am teaching.  I have mentioned in this thread a few other subjects that I am trying to figure out a plan for the time being.  Hate to have to state the obvious but I know there's no planning once and done.  You always have to adjust the fit.  But a smart kid should be studying something, and every family is different.  I?m just talking about this year  and next.  I will be picking his work for the next few years.   I give my kid three subjects a day. I'm feeling a little frusterated right now and unsure if this is the time and place to talk.

 

 

My kid is moving into a new level on the 3 r's right now.  (Call it a video game, hmmph).  I know what he's doing in school and what he's looking at on his own time and it really is one of those developmental leaps or transitions or whatever jargon is better.  

 

 

I really came here to talk about books, non-gimmicky, solid, condensed books.  Or, really, rewarding things to study. (Intrinsically, not yale, ah-forget it). That's all.  I know what effort my child puts into learning and I want to reward that effort meaningfully with knowledge for the effort.  The word "early" in the title and the fact that I said six years old seemed to me to show that I'm not here to talk about college.  This is not the highschool board or College Confidential.  I read hoagies and SENG.  I'm not oblivious to the talked about issues.

 

 

Yes, I am looking at competition materials.  I am looking at hexco spelling rules and vocabulary products.  I'm not planning to put my kids in a spelling bee.  The product does say it's meaty, complete, condensed.  It tells you everything you need to know about spelling and vocabulary.  

 

 

My husband and I have kids and we are deciding what to teach them, and what to start with.  He could already read when I sent him to pre-k last year.  This year I'm homeschooling and decided that first things first, teach him the three R's, and add in the content subjects once we get those going.  His 3 R's are going good, now I'm looking at what's next in those subjects (and have started on the content subjects).

 

 

I'm not planning on teaching Latin (maybe later).  My kids are becoming bilingual in Spanish because of our neighborhood.  I'm leaving foreign language alone right now because they are learning from native speakers.  I do have CAPS Spanish grammer so that after they are conversationally fluent they will learn Spanish grammer.

 

 

He's fluent in english, reading, handwriting, making progress in composition.  Kindergarteners are learning to make a sentence.  He's doing narration and dictation from the complete writer.  I know there's conversations to be had for slow and easy kinder in classical education.  I know mine's not the only six year old working on narration and dictation.  Perfectly normal for him to work on spelling and grammer next at this point.  That's where I'm at with language arts.  I want to discuss other subjects too, but let's start with one at a time.

 

 

I'm feeling on one hand like I should quit posting and let this thread go, and on the other hand I want to see if it's possible to talk about this without it being about eleven and twelve year olds in college.  I know that you have to make adjustments after a certain age including tutors or alternative education plans. Who knows how they'll be then? I'm talking about the next year or two, and his summer because we ended up on a year round schedule where he works a couple hrs. seven days in row, then takes a seven day weekend. He can have his long weekends, but he will study something for 190 days a year like a school kid should. * subject to change based on what I see

 

 

Personally, to address a few concerns : A friend of mine laughs and says, "they're already living their own life, you're just another person that's there."  My personal stories about my kids show that this is how it is, much more than you'd think for their ages.  I know my kids have a mind of their own, they're on a path of their own.  What stands out to those who know us is that my kids are very much their own people.  I don't think I need advice here about enmeshment or a reminder to let my kids be their own people. This in case anyone thinks I need to be taught what 8FillTheHeart is saying. I'm not ignoring that they have their own lives to live their own way. I'm just raising them, teaching them, and living with them. The people who know us see that my kids are very much their own people.

[La Texican]

Cool random quote. "The greatest good we can do for anyone is not share our wealth with them, but rather reveal their own wealth to them." My kids should study, but the inner wealth is theirs already.

[quark]

LaTexican, the title of a thread really helps clarify what it is you need to know, so perhaps calling it radical acceleration with an early in front of it was not the best choice. :p

 

In this specific case, mentioning age helped me to know what to say. I would have otherwise generalized a lot more. The fact that you are posting on the accel. board should hopefully clue people in to the fact that you are requiring something other than average advice. There might be other questions where age is not a necessary data point.

 

Speaking for myself, it was also not easy to discern what exactly you were asking for so I kept going back to the title of your thread and answering based on that.

 

What I have learned from asking questions on the boards...take what is helpful, clarify what you need to clarify to those who are genuinely interested in helping you, and keep other posts in the back of your mind as being possibly helpful in the future but not worrying too much about them if they are not. :grouphug:

 

ETA: and hey, I wanted to add that it's lovely to see you willing to keep this discussion going. There have been previous discussions where OPs have stomped off in a huff after hearing things they didn't want to hear. Good for you! That in itself is such a good example for your kids. Good luck!

[sunnyday]

It's not that he's six per se, it's that there's a world of wonder out there and twelve years, give or take, to get through school stuff, whether school stuff for your particular kid means building a fusion reactor in the garage and writing the next great American novel or just trying to scrape together the minimum graduation requirements before he's 19. There's just not a rush, IMO. That's why I would say you do want to look at what you are accelerating TOWARD. What's the big picture here?

 

When I start to freak out about the delicate task of handling surprisingly bright kids, I come to this board for a reality check. My kids are probably not going to qualify for Epsilon Camp or Delta Camp. They're not going to be doing competitive Latin exams and going to college lectures at 9. They're bright but we have time to work this out. People do work this out -- this and more.

 

Look back through this board and find out what the kids who DO meet these impressive qualifications were doing when they were 6.

 

[8filltheheart]

Honestly, I find it very difficult to read your stream of consciousness posts to understand what your questions actually are. On the one hand it seems like you are asking a question but on the other hand it seems like you aren't really.

 

Perhaps if you wrote a question directly addressing what it is you want answered, you would get replies that you would find more helpful. Questions like "what are some resources that help kids straddle basic arithmetic and pre-alg skills that contain multi-levels" are pretty clear and easy to answer.

 

But your posts went from planning on doing all of SM through level 6

I was planning to go through all of the Singapore textbooks, every page, every problem so he can see how the mathwork looks when it's done on the page. I was teaching him other things about math. I thought this would come togeather to having the concepts and knowing how to do the work. I think I'm spiraling, just not taking so long. He's doing a page or a few of Singapore math a day, which is something like the third time he's seen something. ...... Now that I've read the book I think this was good enough for early education, but I need to learn to switch gears to a mastery approach. I'm not sure when or how I should switch gears.

to testing and grade skipping

If my kid does these credit by examination tests, will that necessarily raise his official grade level if I don't want it to mean that? For example, I've seen that some middle school homeschoolers sit through an AP exam, but get reccomendations to go on and do four more years of that subject in highschool. It doesn't seem like these tests have to move them up a grade, although it can be used that way.

to discussing him possibly wanting to go to a competitive college

I know not to accelerate his grade because I can't predict the future and he may want to be in a competitive contest at some point where official grade level matters. It also might matter if he wants to go to a competitive college.

The responses you received are all over the place bc your posts wander all over the place. Not that it is a problem that you aren't focused bc you are at the beginning of the journey and it is wide open in front of you. But, the fact that the responses aren't what you want and are addressing older age issues than a 6 yr old is probably bc you wandered there.

[lewelma]

ETA: and hey, I wanted to add that it's lovely to see you willing to keep this discussion going. There have been previous discussions where OPs have stomped off in a huff after hearing things they didn't want to hear. Good for you! That in itself is such a good example for your kids. Good luck!

 

I agree!!!  I have found this thread fascinating as I have never read any GT books or taught any other GT kids than my own.  Keep asking.

 

Also agreeing on the thread title.  I would suggest that at this point you start a new thread with a very specific purpose, like how to increase reading.  Here is a thread where I asked a question like that: http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/371304-please-give-me-some-reading-suggestions-for-my-12-year-old-who-has-ready-everything/

 

 

[La Texican]

Thanks. :grouphug:. I do feel a lot of genuine help. That's why I continued posting even though I feel awkward. I felt the title of the post indicated a type of learner and that we're at the beginning of education. So far my kid has not ever been willing to look at something he's not about ready to start learning. If he hears or sees something that he doesn't understand he's quick to say "that's nonsense". Lately he's been asking for YouTube to look at that guy that does the cube thing and the circles that organize categories (Venn diagrams as described by Curious George, which is YouTube aops, and looking at the older level khan videos on YouTube. I don't know or care how much time it takes to get from here to there. The acceleration/enrichment combo plan I have for that now sounds appropriate to me. He's also starting to ask to read my books a little bit. He hasn't finished any of them, he's just starting to ask for older stuff. I've noticed he starts looking at stuff a certain time before he starts snowballing into studying them (months, a year, unspecified time). But he won't look at something until it's a certain amount of time before it snowballs and he's studying and understanding something. He didn't even like to be read to as a baby until he understood enough of the words I was saying. It was after I taught him to read and after he was reading well that he enjoyed being read to. This is a personality trait that shows in so many areas. That's guiding my efforts to search for meaty materials to teach, let's call it the grammer, of subjects. He wants to understand something before he considers enjoying it. He won't even start looking at something until it's in his zone of proximal development, getting ready to learn it stage. I don't know if I'm describing well why he's different or why I'm looking for a radically accelerated way to teach him. That's why I want to teach him the basics, but asynchronistically, the condensed basics- not the superficial, skimming basics, or even the start off slowly basics. Yes, I feel awkward describing this.

[sunnyday]

Have you considered that the disinterest in things for which he has no prior experience, may be more developmental than personality-based? The "click" at age 6.5-7, which a lot of people see, is a pretty cool thing.

 

A lot of people also hit a point around this age where they see that their bright child engaging better with abstract stuff than concrete stuff, and they see that they don't need a lot of repetition to learn. Parents then start exploring the possibility of compacting introductory curriculum in order to pave the way to the "good stuff". Search this forum for "compacting" -- when I did, I found 54 threads.

 

[La Texican]

I like Hunter's thread on "k-8 in a footlocker". The idea was to condense what you felt you needed to teach before you left the rest to chance. I think k-8 is too big of a stretch, but I'm trying to figure out just a couple of years. Reading, writing, arithmatic, introduce history, introduce science, a foreign language, music, art.

[La Texican]

Here's where I'm at in figuring this out for the first few years.

Compacting/enriching math:

Use the singapore text and IP to compact, Borac to enrich.

Compacting/enriching grammer:

Let him finish MCT grammer/sentence/practice island

Next, considering Analytical grammer, hexco spelling and vocabulary (still unsure and looking).

Compacting/enriching composition:

The Complete Writer, then WWS, young novelist workbook from NaNoWriMo

Teaching Social Studies:

walk through Usborne World History, maybe find a good World Geography, maybe get something like TIME for kids for current events

Reading:

plays, fiction, non-fiction, discussing stories

Enriching science:

BFSU, electronics, gardening, books about natural science. I'm stuck on what to teach about evolution (here comes that pesky non-linear stream of conscience), I've been participating in the evolution threads to figure this out. "Evolution is the study of the mechanism for change." And it's current. But I don't want to hand him a book describing ancient evolution any more than I want to talk about Adam and Eve. I guess the current part is in biology, so that's not a here and now.

[La Texican]

8FillTheHeart, I'll make other threads (plenty of them, I'm sure) as often as I get more specific questions. This thread was a spin-off of a spin-off and it lead me to an answer to a question I did not know I had that needed addressed about math. I was disorganized about it before, plodding through the Singapore textbook with eclectic math pieces I thought was enrichment.

 

Lewelma, I know a good bit of what's online about gifted issues because I read a lot of what's online. Last year I thought I was sending my kids to public school. There's a lot of things available to learn about supporting your kids, and asynchronisity and gifted issues that has less to do with my situation now that I'm homeschooling.

 

So many of the posters in this thread have more experience and knowledge about homeschooling than I do at this point. Sure, I browse and search the threads here a lot, but I have noticed there's been a lot of responses from experienced homeschoolers. Definitely know more about this than I do yet.