Do you ever wonder how much of your kid being ahead is homeschooling?

[brownie]

Oh I agree with you 8filltheheart.  My question was more about what happens when you re-insert them into the system I guess. But everyone was having so much fun with the bigger question :)

[Donna]

 My question was more about what happens when you re-insert them into the system I guess. But everyone was having so much fun with the bigger question :)

 

My oldest wanted to go to public high school to wrestle. It was our only option as we could not afford the only private school in the area with wrestling and he could not wrestle while continuing to home school. I wanted him to have a year to figure out school before going into high school so we put him in for 8th grade. He has a November birthday and I could have probably pushed for him to be in 9th grade with his testing scores…he only missed the cut-off by a little less than 2 months but he was small and for his wrestling, we wanted him to have that extra year to grow and mature so he went into the grade he was supposed to be in by age.

 

As he went into 8th grade in the public school, he was halfway through Algebra 2 at home but the only option the school had was to put him in their "accelerated" Algebra 1 class. He ended up breezing through it and Geometry the next year because he'd already done that as well at home. Not a huge deal because I had no plans to graduate him early. 

 

That was why I answered in my other post...I think dd is "allowed" to be as accelerated as she because she is home schooled. 

[SunshineMom]

I have found that I am not the same teacher to all the children I teach because children are not all the same.  

[8filltheheart]

Oh I agree with you 8filltheheart. My question was more about what happens when you re-insert them into the system I guess. But everyone was having so much fun with the bigger question :)

I don't think I could insert my advanced kids into the system. Public schools just aren't equipped to deal with kids far out of normal. Ds would have had to have foregone his advancement in both math and science. Dd would have to give up her multiple foreign languages, her unique lit studies, etc. public school is sort of the equivalent of generic or advanced generic, but not supremely unique. ;)

[SKL]

I think it depends on the kid, though.  I have a kid who really travels to the beat of her own drummer.  She is very bright and interested in learning, but not if it's my idea.  Whatever she knows from outside of school is because of opportunities, not teaching.  (For example, we have so many books of all kinds that she chooses to read; we've traveled and done other stuff that many kids haven't done.)  That said, I think being in school and seeing what the other kids are learning is a motivator for her.  She knows that if she refuses to write, she will be behind her peers.  She also likes to discuss books and information with people at school.  So for her, I think homeschooling would be neutral or negative.

 

For my other kid, definitely working with her at home (after school) has increased her skills, because the teachers at school don't get through to her very well.  So she'd be a mediocre student at best without home help.  This is improving over time, however.

[8filltheheart]

I have found that I am not the same teacher to all the children I teach because children are not all the same.

When I say I teach them all the same, I don't mean it literally as in each child gets offered exactly the same thing. If that were the case, all my kids would be lock step with each other in sequence. What it does mean is that I teach them what they are capable of learning, regardless of when it is. I do not accelerate my kids. I don't put my kids in holding patterns. I simply teach them and plug along with all of them. The acceleration is their ability, not my teaching.

[SunshineMom]

We have utilized resources and mentors which I am sure our area schools would not be able to replicate in elementary school, even in a gifted pull-out program. 

[Diviya]

I'd love to talk about the larger problem (because I think about it all the time), but I'm barely coherent tonight, so I better not.

 

In my opinion, the problem with a younger kid going into a "regular" algebra class has to do with the textbook and the pacing. You would need to look at the number of problems they would be expected to copy and work, the amount of repetition and the amount of review. All of those things would have simply crushed my dd's spirit at an age when she was ready for algebra. ONLY AOPS would work for her, because the pace is right, and the number of problems per section is just right. No review, no repetition - just incremental difficulty. Looking at a page in Dolciani made her hyperventilate.

 

Ok, not sure that was coherent, but hope it helps.

[Tanikit]

I have no idea how much homeschooling is affecting my children's ability to be ahead. My 3 year old would in any case not be in school and when my eldest was reading in her 2 year old preschool it did cause some remarks though even then I had kept it hidden from them on purpose as she was there to play and be looked after while I worked. My 3 year old is working slightly further ahead than my eldest was at this stage and it is perhaps that I am more clued up about what can come next and do not waste so much time wondering what to do with my child next - my second was slightly slower with all things physical than my elder, but both were ahead of the normal curve from babyhood.

 

Another reason for having no clue is that I am not aware of what happens in our schools and I do not trust even the private schools to do a very good job - there are some excellent (very expensive) schools and some high performing students, but I have no idea who is doing the teaching. Many (most?) of the public schools are not worth even talking about and standards in this country are poor - but then who am I comparing with?

 

Also being on this board I think I continue to get a skewed idea of what normal is - sometimes on here my child seems totally normal (or even behind) and then everyone must be doing this and teaching these things - and don't all children read very young and remember things easily and need almost no teaching. And then I ask is this a teaching issue (sometimes I teach without realising I am teaching) or a learning issue. It doesn't bother me much though - I will continue to teach/present information to my children at whatever pace works for them - and if that pace changes then I will teach/present information to them at the new pace until it changes again.