Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy what would you choose?

This is a good idea.

Honestly, the entire public school experience has so totally turned me off to brick and mortar schools. I wish that we could just 100% homeschool.

Sigh - in the back of my mind, I am thinking about DD3 and what we are going to do with her too. She is doing the Kindergarten curriculum that we have laying around the house.

I was so naive to think that sending my DS to school would solve all of our "problems".

I digress....

Why don't you homeschool then?

DS is super duper social. I think that he would miss his friends and the fun parts of the day. He loves having lunch with his friends and running around at recess. He likes going to his specials with friends. But once recess ends, he is like a bat out of hell when I pick him up. (Most of the morning he has specials and most academic subjects are in the afternoon.)

Although I see that he is starting to develop an aversion to more aspects of brick and mortar school. Ex. the class has to recite an acronym and the associated words (like "R-E-S-P-E-C-T, R is for rules, we follow the rules of the classroom"). He was asking me the other day what the point of that was. I found it to be a little revolting too.

Here is what DH and I have decided:

*we are going to subject accelerate at school into 5th grade (where DS was supposed to be in the first place!)

*we are going to table the full skip until later in the year, with an eye on doing it at the start of next year

*we are going to homeschool all academic subjects for the rest of this year

Honestly, I am amazed at how much we are enjoying homeschooling. I know I've mentioned it before. But it's been so eye opening for me (and him). What I am offering him at home is so much better than he would get in B+M school. Oh and the principal let us know that if we skip him into 3rd grade now, no more partial homeschooling for us! So, that just kind of sealed the deal. How could I skip him into a grade: that still wouldn't be challenging, where they are spending the year preparing for state tests, where they never go into depth in any subject. What is the point of skipping a grade then? (And if anyone has a good answer to this, please respond!)

So you are going to subject accelerate him at home up to fifth grade and then ask for him to be skipped into fourth next year? Will you ask them to let him do academics at 6th grade level.

The fact that ds enjoys certain aspects of school now doesn't mean he would miss them terribly if you home schooled until he was ready for the gifted school. There are other ways he can play with kids his age.

At home we are doing 5th grade math, just started 3/4th grade language arts (reading and grammar are very strong, writing is very weak), science is somewhere in middle/high school, history is middle school. (You can see how a skip to 3rd grade now is not going to even scratch the surface.)

For next year - anything is possible. And even before then. If DS asked to return to school full time and skip to 3rd grade now, I would do it. I would do the same in 4 months from now. I think the plan is to see how this year goes and then take it from there. Maybe we will skip him next fall. Maybe he will decide he wants to homeschool full time. I think I would prefer to NOT skip him until he leaves this school (so he will skip from 3rd to 5th to his new private school). I did discuss this with his tester and she thought it would not be a bad idea to keep the social disruptions to a minimum. As long as we continue meeting his academic needs at home and he is happy to go to school part time, then we will keep him with agemates until he leaves the school.

somewhereonearth,

I don't know where you live, but where we live homeschool does not mean lack of social interaction. There are clubs for everything under the sun (robotics, science, legos, chess, art) field trips and homeschool PE. There are also coop classes that meet maybe twice a week and then you can decide what level you want to place your son. You might want to investigate different homeschool organizations in your area and see what is available.

Thank you drtrum. I will definitely check this out. Do you homeschool?

We just started this year with my DD8. So, its been almost 3 months. It has worked out great for us, much better than I even expected. DH and I trade off responsibilities. We do not do the coop classes, but she does an art class and chess is about to start. She spends quite a bit of time at gymnastics, with kids at church, and other sports. She and DH also do the field trips once a month. So, you see, there are many ways to socialize. Academically, it was definitely the best thing we could do. She is in 3rd grade and between the different subjects she is doing a range of 3rd -5th grade work and she has lots of time to explore areas outside of the basic subjects, like Spanish and computer programming games.