Need help planning for my very bright 3rd grader

[Kencam]

Hi!  This is my first time posting.  I have a very bright 3rd grader that I need help planning for.  She’s currently using MUS gamma, BJU for English, reading, science and Bible, and we are doing MoH with her older sister.  Both girls also started using Building Critical Thinking Skills and Reading Detective once a week to help with critical thinking skills.  My 3rd grader flies through her work and rarely gets less than 100% on all her work.  I feel she needs something that will challenge her more.  We had planned to continue using BJU for a lot of her classes next year.  Should we do 4th grade for her, skip to 5th grade work, or do a different curriculum entirely?  Just needing some advice!  TIA!

[Momto6inIN]

I am not familiar with BJU, but perhaps she needs assignments that challenge her thinking a bit more? For instance, if the assignment requires short answer or fill in the blank, you could have her write a paragraph instead.

That being said, my soon to be 3rd grader never takes more than 3 hours to do all of her work, including reading on her own for half an hour every day.

[Kencam]

20 minutes ago, Momto6inIN said:

I am not familiar with BJU, but perhaps she needs assignments that challenge her thinking a bit more? For instance, if the assignment requires short answer or fill in the blank, you could have her write a paragraph instead.

That being said, my soon to be 3rd grader never takes more than 3 hours to do all of her work, including reading on her own for half an hour every day.

Ok thanks for the input.  It helps to know that your dc takes no more than 3 hours as well.  I want to make sure my dd is solid in her foundations, but I also don’t want to bore her or leave her unchallenged.  She hates writing, even the physical act of writing, so getting her to do the writing chapters in BJU is like pulling teeth.  But everything else, she just understands so very easily and finishes with no effort at all.  We are missionaries in Kenya (don’t have many options here for testing and the such) and I just needed some confirmation of what we should do with her as far as levels.  Thanks!

[wendyroo]

Some thoughts:

1 - My third grader completes his "school" work in about 3.5ish hours, but that does not include a lot of "extras" (activities that I feel contribute to his overall education, but he sees as fun).  He free reads for a couple hours a day, listens to me read aloud for half an hour, draws, plays with Snap Circuits, participates in extracurriculars, etc. 

2 - For my mathy kids I have chosen curriculum that are easy to overlap and accelerate.  For us those are Math Mammoth, Singapore Challenging Word Problems, Beast Academy, and Hands on Equations.  My third grader is currently finishing up Math Mammoth 5B, and during a second math session each day chooses either Hands on Equations, Beast Academy or Challenging Word Problems.

3 - My 3rd grader HATES writing.  He has severe mental health and neuro-developmental challenges, and writing is a HUGE trigger.  So I have split up his language arts into all separate components so that I can focus on intensive (quality, not quantity), lower-level writing instruction, while continuing to progress more quickly in the areas he doesn't struggle with.  He is a strong reader, so I have him reading longer novels written at higher levels - but all output is discussion, oral narration, or drawing...if I tried to insist he fill out worksheets or write summaries of what he had written, it would sour his love of reading.  He uses AAS for spelling since it relies on tiles (we use the app) instead of some of the writing, and he types his dictation sentences (obviously without spell check)  And while he is still a horrendous speller, he doesn't mind it and is showing steady improvement.  We use Daily Grams and Michael Clay Thompson materials orally for grammar, poetry, vocabulary, etc.

4 - Writing.  My son does do some handwriting daily, but it is a very small amount, and he does it with the support of his ABA therapists.  I also sneak in as much fine motor practice as possible through art, typing practice, piano, handicrafts, cooking, fidget toys, legos, etc.  Other than that, all of DS's composition is done via typing, talk to text or me taking dictation.  I am open to him working on whatever type of writing is most palatable - as long as he is writing something.  We have had the most luck with highly structured programs.  For a while now we have been using Evan-Moor writing workbooks.  First he went through Write a Super Sentence, now he is working through Paragraph Writing.  I think he is going to need a lot of time and practice to get comfortable with paragraphs, so after the explicit instruction in general paragraphs, we are going to move to Text-Based Writing where he will have to find information in a passage to fill out a graphic organizer, and then use that information to write specific types of paragraphs (cause and effect, explanatory, opinion, etc).

5 - Other enrichment subjects.  Since reading and 'rithmatic are super fast and easy for DS, and writing is so torturous that he has to tackle it in small doses, I have to find other enrichment subjects to help supplement his learning.  Like I mentioned above, I always have him spending an additional math session each day with a resource that truly challenges, stretches and sometimes frustrates him.  I use high level (easily middle school level or above) science and history resources with him, but focus almost entirely on input, and only use discussion, oral narration, and drawing as output.  He practices typing several times a week, because handwriting may never be easy or fast for him, and that is okay, but he then must strengthen his typing skills so he has an efficient method of getting words on paper.  He spends structured time each week on computer programming, piano, memorization, and Spanish...all subjects I would probably drop if he were struggling with his core subjects, but which I include to round out his school day since the core subjects would not take up much time or productively challenge him.

[Momto6inIN]

3 hours ago, Kencam said:

Ok thanks for the input.  It helps to know that your dc takes no more than 3 hours as well.  I want to make sure my dd is solid in her foundations, but I also don’t want to bore her or leave her unchallenged.  She hates writing, even the physical act of writing, so getting her to do the writing chapters in BJU is like pulling teeth.  But everything else, she just understands so very easily and finishes with no effort at all.  We are missionaries in Kenya (don’t have many options here for testing and the such) and I just needed some confirmation of what we should do with her as far as levels.  Thanks!

If she's that writing phobic, then don't take my advice! 🙂 I just suggested that as an example of how you could take what she's already doing to the next level.

Honestly, at that age it's just so important for them to have time to play and create and read on their own that I hesitate to recommend you add more "school" to the day. I would just try to make sure that the school she is doing is meaningful and rich and engaging her thinking, not that she needs more of it.

My 8 year-old reads, builds with Legos, types chapters to the book she's writing on the computer, paints and draws and colors, plays piano, and plays outside in elaborate made-up world scenarios with her sisters. Those aren't "school" but they are so important for her to have time to do!

[Kencam]

2 hours ago, wendyroo said:

Some thoughts:

1 - My third grader completes his "school" work in about 3.5ish hours, but that does not include a lot of "extras" (activities that I feel contribute to his overall education, but he sees as fun).  He free reads for a couple hours a day, listens to me read aloud for half an hour, draws, plays with Snap Circuits, participates in extracurriculars, etc. 

2 - For my mathy kids I have chosen curriculum that are easy to overlap and accelerate.  For us those are Math Mammoth, Singapore Challenging Word Problems, Beast Academy, and Hands on Equations.  My third grader is currently finishing up Math Mammoth 5B, and during a second math session each day chooses either Hands on Equations, Beast Academy or Challenging Word Problems.

3 - My 3rd grader HATES writing.  He has severe mental health and neuro-developmental challenges, and writing is a HUGE trigger.  So I have split up his language arts into all separate components so that I can focus on intensive (quality, not quantity), lower-level writing instruction, while continuing to progress more quickly in the areas he doesn't struggle with.  He is a strong reader, so I have him reading longer novels written at higher levels - but all output is discussion, oral narration, or drawing...if I tried to insist he fill out worksheets or write summaries of what he had written, it would sour his love of reading.  He uses AAS for spelling since it relies on tiles (we use the app) instead of some of the writing, and he types his dictation sentences (obviously without spell check)  And while he is still a horrendous speller, he doesn't mind it and is showing steady improvement.  We use Daily Grams and Michael Clay Thompson materials orally for grammar, poetry, vocabulary, etc.

4 - Writing.  My son does do some handwriting daily, but it is a very small amount, and he does it with the support of his ABA therapists.  I also sneak in as much fine motor practice as possible through art, typing practice, piano, handicrafts, cooking, fidget toys, legos, etc.  Other than that, all of DS's composition is done via typing, talk to text or me taking dictation.  I am open to him working on whatever type of writing is most palatable - as long as he is writing something.  We have had the most luck with highly structured programs.  For a while now we have been using Evan-Moor writing workbooks.  First he went through Write a Super Sentence, now he is working through Paragraph Writing.  I think he is going to need a lot of time and practice to get comfortable with paragraphs, so after the explicit instruction in general paragraphs, we are going to move to Text-Based Writing where he will have to find information in a passage to fill out a graphic organizer, and then use that information to write specific types of paragraphs (cause and effect, explanatory, opinion, etc).

5 - Other enrichment subjects.  Since reading and 'rithmatic are super fast and easy for DS, and writing is so torturous that he has to tackle it in small doses, I have to find other enrichment subjects to help supplement his learning.  Like I mentioned above, I always have him spending an additional math session each day with a resource that truly challenges, stretches and sometimes frustrates him.  I use high level (easily middle school level or above) science and history resources with him, but focus almost entirely on input, and only use discussion, oral narration, and drawing as output.  He practices typing several times a week, because handwriting may never be easy or fast for him, and that is okay, but he then must strengthen his typing skills so he has an efficient method of getting words on paper.  He spends structured time each week on computer programming, piano, memorization, and Spanish...all subjects I would probably drop if he were struggling with his core subjects, but which I include to round out his school day since the core subjects would not take up much time or productively challenge him.

Thank you sooo much for this!  It sounds like your ds is an amazing kid!  He does so many great things!  Typing is a good idea!  I hadn’t thought of this before, but that may be something to consider with my dd.  Thank you for sharing how he does activities at different levels.   I will definitely keep this in mind!  I haven’t homeschooled long, so I hadn’t thought about using different levels.  Thanks for sharing!

[Kencam]

49 minutes ago, Momto6inIN said:

If she's that writing phobic, then don't take my advice! 🙂 I just suggested that as an example of how you could take what she's already doing to the next level.

Honestly, at that age it's just so important for them to have time to play and create and read on their own that I hesitate to recommend you add more "school" to the day. I would just try to make sure that the school she is doing is meaningful and rich and engaging her thinking, not that she needs more of it.

My 8 year-old reads, builds with Legos, types chapters to the book she's writing on the computer, paints and draws and colors, plays piano, and plays outside in elaborate made-up world scenarios with her sisters. Those aren't "school" but they are so important for her to have time to do!

Oh I appreciate all that you wrote!  I didn’t specify in my first post that she doesn’t like to write.  Thank you for the reminder to just let her play!  I haven’t homeschooled very long, and probably put too much pressure on myself and my dc.  You are so right that playing with legos, drawing, and all her creative activities are important, too!