Rounding out “pointy” kids

[Condessa]

I mentioned to dh that ds11 is finishing AOPS Intro to Algebra 1 this week and starting Counting & Probability next week.  Dh questioned why we would immediately go on to another advanced math class instead of focusing more time on ds’s areas of relative weakness, language and humanities.  I am satisfied with our plans for this semester and am not planning on making changes, but as I am planning for next year I am considering the positives and negatives of allowing a kid to devote the majority of his school time to areas of interest.  
 

Ds11 is an intense kid who excels in his interests of math, science, cello, and judo.  The time he spends on humanities is high quality, but only a very small fraction of what he spends on his interests, and is often slanted to intersect with his interests.  For example, the last few months he has been memorizing the bill of rights, reading The Story of Science, working on The Fallacy Detective, and slowly working through On the Origin of Species with me, plus some spelling, handwriting, and the tail end of Essay Voyage that we were pretty casual about getting around to.  He spends probably 5-10xs as much time on math and science as he does on humanities.  I want to let my kids run in their areas of interest, but how little time in areas of less interest is too little?  

[8filltheheart]

For an 11 yr old, I would simply establish a basic time requirement for history that you are satisfied with. For my kids around that age, 45 mins of reading would have been enough for me. Writing output is another meet my expectations and all is good. IOW, I dont think things have to be equally balanced, but I do want a threshold met

For me, I'm fine with age avg. I dont expect higher levels of output for areas they arent interested in.

[EKS]

With my pointy STEM kid, I decided that the only humanities instruction he was ever going to get was from me, so I made our homeschool history focused and made sure he had encounters with as much classic literature as possible.  I also insisted that he learn to write properly.

That said, I read most of it aloud and I tried to make sure that the supplemental stuff was something he would enjoy.

That's not to say that we didn't focus on STEM as well because we did, but all of his self directed activity in that area I didn't consider to be a part of our school time.

He ended up going to an engineering focused university and getting a degree in robotics engineering--exactly what he wanted to do.  His school required that each student specialize in some sort of humanities study, and he picked writing.  He got all As, and even though he is dyslexic, his writing now is excellent.  He puts his writing skill to good use in his work every day, and I am very happy we spent the time on it when he was younger.

He also has an appreciation for history and is frequently amazed by the lack of history knowledge of his peers.  My understanding is that he has also used his appreciation and knowledge of the humanities to impress women, going to art museums willingly, that sort of thing, so there's that.

[SFisher]

This is just my opinion… but I would let him continue to drive toward interests and passions. I wouldn’t do a lot of balancing out. I would probably just make sure he’s meeting grade level standards in less interesting subjects.

I’m coming at this from the perspective of having a 10 yo 2e kid… generally the advice for him is to have a strengths based approach and use his strengths to compensate for weaknesses.

It’s possible your son is already learning about cultural history by learning about mathematicians and scientists. Generally the work of mathematicians and scientists was both informed by their culture and made changes to their culture. Science history is culturally fascinating.

my son really likes science. Lately he’s been interested in pigments and dyes and how they are created. It’s chemistry. Plants. Minerals. Lots of cultural influences, then the dyes and pigments are used to dye wool or fabric or make paintings. There’s a book called “before colors” that he really loved that tied all of those things together. He would love to grow/collect/process/dye/ink things.

another thing he likes is paper making. It’s really a sciencey way into art. 

i suspect there are some humanities in his interests that you didn’t realize were there or you could encourage him to develop a little more. 

 

 

[Penderwink]

I‘d be OK with aiming for grade level average in the weaker subjects, and allowing the child to really fly in the areas of interest. It may be in some weaker areas, aiming for grade level requires some additional work.

The exception to that would be if, for example, I was expecting that my child would want to aim eventually for a very academic college environment in order to pursue the area of passion. In that case, I‘d be trying to keep the weaker subjects at a appropriate level for a student of that grade who was heading down that pathway.

[lewelma]

I had set time requirements for his weaker subjects, and then let his passions run. I did this throughout middle and highschool.

At 11, his dad read history to him at night, and during the day I required 1 hour of English with me. The rest of his time was his to do with as he wanted. Typically, he did 2+ hours math, 1 hour physics, and 1 hour violin. He also chose to read for hours and hours every night - classic literature, the economist, national geographic, and scientific american.