Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy I have enough evidence...i'm homeschooling

I have been watching, testing, posting, asking, poking forever...since my now 10 year old DD began pre-school and I met other children and realized that she did everything, not just some things quicker and better..

It has been a long long time coming and i always said that I would home school only as a last resort...but here we are.

I finally got out of the principal that her OLSAT was at 97% but he still will not give me the breakdown.

I did however, ask for the number of children who scored higher than her on the DRP for 4th grade this year and the number of children who scored higher than her on her state test. He gave me ALL the scores and let me do the Math.

There were two others who scored the same as her on the DRP in the district and one who scored a few points higher.

For the state test...not one child scored higher or the same. She was the top score by far.

I have asked for skips, I have asked for partial skips, I have asked for further differentiation. They keep telling me they are doing enough and she seems happy.

Meanwhile I am seeing a sensitive, compassionate little girl turn into a know-it-all, disinterested, and lazy pre-teen...

She has asked to be home schooled next year for fifth grade. I assume that I should be looking for at least 6th Grade material. She wants to be Clara in the Nutcracker this year. To do this I must drive her an hour to classes. This will be possible if she is home schooled.

I will be sending her little sis to reg Second Grade at a wonder K-3 Pub. School. She is happy there so far. Her teachers have recognized that she does not need the repetition that the other children need and let her sneak books during working time. She usually doesn't even do her work. We will see how her teacher handles this next year, but so far so good.

So, it is crazy for me to be going ahead with this home schooling. She and I butt heads and she is 10 and very independent. I'm hoping to find an on-line program and most of a curriculum that is independent and free of me.

She needs to know exactly what is expected of her every day and can't accuse me of expecting too much.

I'm hoping some of you have ideas of what i should use or how I should go about schooling her.

She has become quite the underachiever and would like to spend all her time making movies, powerpoint presentations, reading ballet blogs, or drawing and panting.

Unfortunately, although she is talented with the arts, I feel as though her strength lies in Math and Science.

She is reading college level but writes at grade level summaries...


She only outputs what is expected and nothing more...

She is very gifted. I wonder how to remedy this, and make her care again about learning things other than art....:)

Thank you so much for you advice and program ideas in advance.
I really love this forum!

If I can answer any questions about her to give you more info, let me know what would be helpful...Thank you so much..

DD's are just 10 and 6.5

Most kids hate writing, and my PG DS8 is no different.


He was required to write summaries and the school received very little effort on them from him.

I wrote him up an outline on what constitutes a summary, outlining what each sentence should be about.

If he did not meet the requirements and it was not neat, he would be grounded that day.

We fought over this for 2 months and he finally capitulated and did the summaries correctly.

I have upgraded the outline to reflect his higher reading level and push his now documented writing proficiency.

While he still is not fond of writing, he does now put forth real effort to put thoughts coherently and neatly.

My advice : Set the standard in writing and @ 10 years old, inform her that the expectation to meet them is required.

Might seem harsh but you are running out of time with her @ 10 ... the battle I had with my son was when he was 7.

If he did not meet the requirements and it was not neat, he would be grounded that day.

Wow! I really was starting to think that I was being too harsh with expecting her to capitalize the first letter of sentences....ya know, like she did when she was in first grade...her hand writing has become so bad that I was starting to think dysgraphia...then, I saw a paper come home...a creative writing paper...that she obviously enjoyed writing...such neat penmanship!

So, dysgraphia is out!

How important is it to teach neat-ness?

So, You are happy you made him write neatly?

Was it worth it?

The grounding and the fighting?

Cause I'm way more stubborn that her and I can get it out if i think it is important...and really I do...

Oh, this is going to be harder than I thought...I have to un-do so much damage!

As far as most kids hating writing...

Is that really true?

I used to be so meticulous when i wrote at her age. Many of her friends write with bubbly letters and draw little flowers and things...hers is just the ugliest writing ever! LOL

She wants to type everything and I have a mind to let her for her assignments and to do a "penmanship" lesson with her every day - like copying a nice passage...

It would be fun for me to find interesting material for her to copy.

But is that being too soft?

My 10 year old also likes most of those same things (and has become convinced she doesn't like math)... We aren't homeschooling, but fwiw, I think what you have there is actually a good starting foundation for building on whatever curriculum you choose for writing. It sounds like she likes creative writing, so don't feel like she has to only write things down - she can also tell her stories through making movies, writing her own blog perhaps, and through her art (drawing and painting). You can teach grammar/spelling/punctuation/editing/revising/etc all through working with her own stories that she creates, and it doesn't hurt to let her focus on her areas of interest - so if it's ballet she loves, have her write stories about ballet (if she wants to).

I'm sorry I don't have any specific curriculum suggestions, but my kids are all adamantly opposed to homeschooling lol! I can't even begin to imagine corraling my 10 year old dd into doing all she'd need to do to be homeschooled, even if we were able to compact it into 2-3 hours per day as I've heard can be done - she's just too into drama over anything remotely sounding like work or like my idea!

Good luck!

polarbear

Depends on how important pride in one's work is to you? For me , it is very important. If something is not done right, why do it?



Yes we can now read what he is writing and he has found he can fit more ideas on paper



Yes, for myself and his teacher .. it is one conflict that has been removed from obstructing time that can now be spent teaching

For me, he understands there are expectations, this would be no different than being fired if he was not putting forth the effort to the task assigned to him.

I do not do this to be mean but I do do this to nip bad habits and improper behavior in the bud before it can really snowball into something much larger.

There is always positive reinforcement when expectations are met or exceeded so its not all downhill for my DS

OH My Polarbear...I said that a month ago...

There is NO way this child was EVER going to let me convince her to homeschool, so you can imagine my surprise when she asked to on her own!

I think it is partly and mostly because she wants to do more Ballet, and I'm soooooo worried about asking her to do her work. I know that some people like to teach on the fly, but with this kid, she needs to know exactly what is required of her ahead of time so she can't accuse me of changing the rules to make her life harder...lol

She really is a good girl, just has learned to avoid doing work, and gets away with it too!

There has been no gifted program, and because there are only a handful in our district, I think the teachers let her slide on penmanship because of her obvious capacity to learn and her ability to always know what is going on.

Ugh...thank you for the the replies, but I think I'm more nervous than I was before.

She does keep a blog and I'm sure most of her reports will be done via PowerPoint or movie, or even comic cartoon, but I don't plan to home school forever and I have to make sure that she is on target when she returns.

I am not gifted. I already don't feel i can teach Math to her...

Learning together doesn't seem like a good option either because she already thinks that adults are a little dim witted...I don't want to give her more ammo for that assumption...

I have found that love and strong parental involvement in your child can overcome academic deficiencies in ones self

Although my son is younger - only 5, we were seeing a very disturbing trend of apathy and general "blah-ness" for anything and everything aside from a very few random activities. He decided he could no longer do maths, could not read, could not figure out anything on his own.

I took him out of his gifted school even though they offered us a skip - he has confused the idea of learning with the concept of being at school. He believes that he will never learn anything new at school.

He has been home nearly 2 months now and we are still de-schooling. Although we have a specific outline to our day, he gets to choose what he does every day. At first it was literally only going for walks, jumping on the trampoline, playing on the PC and watching TV. Only this past week has he tried to set up a few experiments, started reading of his own accord again and started seeking out maths again. ITs still all at a level he was comfortable with nearly 18 months ago, but its the first sign of HIM we have seen in ages.

The point to my rambling - why not let her do the powerpoint, the dancing etc for a while? It could help her heal the underachievement, it will make everyone happier, and I am sure that once she feels fulfilled again she will of her own volition seek out academic work again. And then it will be what she is interested in, at her own level. This will also ensure that SHE oversees her learning as it is what interests her.

Buying a set curriculum at a specific grade level may only reinforce pre-concieved ideas based on another adult's ideas/expectations. There are so many resources available, that I'd suggest at the very least you allow her to select what she would like to study and get only the materials to support those choices at those levels. You can set guidelines and ground rules in terms of neatness etc, but I am sure that you can then build in everything you think she may need into what she really wants to do.

Just my ideas and ramblings. I hope that the transition brings peace of mind to both of you

Madoosa...This is what I had in mind initially...We were going to do some room make-overs...Very Her...We would learn all the Math we needed to buy exactly the right amount of paint, carpet and even material for curtains, pillows...etc...She could even design a desk if she wanted...Except i realized that I don't think I know how to do this stuff and boy will she be annoyed if she needs help and i have no idea...ugh...;0

One thing I have realised about homeschooling my kids is this: I will never know all the answers. In fact I am pretty sure that by the time they are about 8 I will have outlived my academic usefulness.

When planning a project with Aiden now, or when he asks me a question now, even if I know the answer - I ask him how HE thinks we can learn about it/ solve it etc. Initially he only said "let's google it!". I started suggesting other people or places to turn to for help. Now he asks grandparents, goes to the library, calls uncles etc. The point is that if we want them to be personally responsible for their own learning, we need to give them the tools to get on with it - that means helping them find other means of getting the information they may need - opening their minds that neighbours, uncles, aunts, grandparents, shop owners etc can assist.

Now with some projects Aiden gets to plan it all, and I just smile, wave and pay! lol. Even if its not perfect, he is learning valuable life skills that will translate into him being able to learn what he needs to as he needs to.

Get this book, even if by interlibrary loan. the screenwriters workbook by syd field

I just met a man that teaches home repair, remodeling and woodworking classes at Home Depot. They have similar classes at Lowes too. He's one of those people that really enjoys teaching. He said that he and most of the other teachers are happy to work one-on-one or even take requests for a class topic. If those stores are in your area, you might try them as a resource for the how-to on your idea.

I love the Home Depot idea! My DH has taken classes an we used to bring the girls to their free satuday morning classes. They loved them! We used bring oldest to home depot Starting when she was just weeks old. We would let her smell the wood and touch the textures. Such a fun place to go - even without a baby to show things to. The funny thing DH and I really are not very handy! But the people there are so kind and expect you know NOTHING! Especially if you are a little mommy with a big question pushing around two little girls. When the girls were younger, and we lived half a mile away, we used to go to home depot to let the girls drive those "cars" that were shopping carts. DH would push them all crazy down the big isles yelling watch out! Crazy driver coming through! and then he would be done and the little one would get mad and start annoying her big sis who was squashed next to her, sharing the one steering wheel and, we you know... You all have kids!

FWIW, being able to do something neatly for a creative project doesn't rule out dysgraphia.

I'm severely dysgraphic, but I also do calligraphy - I can draw letters fine if I do it slowly, and don't have to do composition quickly and simultaneously. I just can't develop automaticity for the letter forms to write quickly for meaning and good penmanship at the same time. I end up with sloppy writing and letter reversals, uneven spacing, letters out of order, and other motor output errors if I have to take notes, or write quickly for something like a timed essay, but when I have lots of time to compose separately from writing the final product and can focus on drawing each individual letter, I have won calligraphy prizes.

Word processors have been a godsend.

Your child finds typing preferable to handwriting. This is a red flag that the physical process of writing really is causing her problems.

Thank you all for helping me out. We are just finishing up school and wouldn't you know, some of the kids my dd is friends with have asked me to homeschool them too! Lol. There parents dodnt go for it. At least my dd feels like her friends will still like her! I have to get to the library and look of some of the wonderful resources. Thank you so much!

Sydness That's so good. I would encourage the friends to form a once a week afterschool learning club. Part of the daily curricula can be planning the meetings and you can set up challenges for your dd to earn resouces for the club...field trips or lego leauge fees or whatever. Have fun!

Just wanted to mention two things I wish I'd known when we started homeschooling:

(1) Children need time to "get over" school. This is called de-schooling. A month of de-schooling per year of schooling is the general recommendation. Re-doing a bedroom sounds like a great de-schooling activity!

(2) There's a list called TAGMAX which is for folks who are homeschooling gifted children. It's a great place to ask any question regarding curricula or surviving homeschooling. Google TAGMAX to find info. The subscription process is archaic, but it is worth it.

Our dd loves her complete grade �homeschool� DVD class that operates at a gallop. And as she gallops through her core classes, she finishes by noon, skypes her friends, leaving afternoons for her selected interest projects. As great as the mornings are, it�s hard to stay directed in the afternoons (especially since I�ve gone back to work/travel half of the school week.) I feel we homeschool moms need more daily online AP afternoon classes to keep our kids challenged and digging in the books.
Have any of you homeschool moms found challenging advanced middle & high school online classes?

Homeschooling really isn't as scary as all that. Youngest dd's gone in and out of it, as the year seems to require, and she is currently headed back to school after a mostly homeschooled middle school. (Her brother's been dually-enrolled or homeschooled during the same time period.)
Check your state for requirements, but as a comparison, here's our fifth grade curriculum (our state is pretty free and easy with requirements):

Math: online, seventh grade advanced math through the state's virtual school (required me being creative about their expected graduation date, but no biggie). I'm also fond of Math Minutes workbooks, by Creative Teaching Press, if you have to have a workbook. They're very non-intimidating and user friendly.
Social studies: nothing formal, though we spent a lot of time on civics and politics because it was a big election year. I arranged for them to be observers at our polling place, so they got to see what happens when voting is over and everything is torn down and sent back to the Supervisor of Elections. We also did a lot of field trips just to see people in their natural habitat. Just sort of...a wider worldview than is possessed by the average 9 or 10 year old. And my daughter decided to do a project wherein she studied a little about every country in the world, alphabetically, because that was her interest at the time. She still knows Burkina Faso and Myanmar better than anyone I know.
Science: environmental science, with an emphasis on marine ecosystems because we knew some people doing cool stuff with beach reclamation and renourishment at the time. Lots of field trips. We got to see sea turtles hatch, which was fun. We did a lot of experimentiing in the kitchen, and consequently learned the scientific process backward and forward.
Foreign language/culture: a little bit of Japanese, self-taught off the internet, because dd was interested. (Ds mostly just learned insults in Russian and Yiddish from a friend. Oh well...) We did a lot of cooking from various cultures, because it was a good way to get my picky eater to expand his palate.
Music: private lessons. This was the biggest expense, but one we might have had even if they'd been in school.
Language Arts: I completely made up my own curriculum based on what I perceived as my kids' deficits. One thing we did was write five paragraph papers every week. Either they picked a topic, or they drew one from a jar (random crazy things, the only ones of which I remember were William Henry Harrison, how to raise rabbits, and Gilgamesh). We also did an assigned fiction book every month, which I picked to illustrate a topic (theme, platform, setting, protagonist, etc) and then they kept a log of the books they read for fun: title, author, year published, a two sentence description, and a star rating (one-five). I will tell you they hated Johnny Tremain, and loved Alex and the Ironic Gentleman. (Though this summer's required reading for high school means that Johnny has been replaced in my son's opinion as Worst Book Ever by The Old Man and the Sea.) Also, ds learned to spell from the five-paragraph papers, because I made him type them on the computer without Spellcheck, and then edit them with it on. Spellcheck and Grammarcheck were less embarrassing to him, and he internalized the corrections more easily, than if I'd gone over them with a red pencil.
They also took "fun" classes at homeschool coops like a Hogwarts potions class, Southern Folktales, shuffleboard, and fencing.

Now that I type it out, it looks like a lot, but honestly, I spent less time on homeschooling than I did on homework and fighting with the IEP team. The biggest time-suck was that we're required to keep portfolios, and I decided to scrapbook ours.