Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Will enrichment lead to more boredom at school?

After reading the "Life of Fred" thread, I bought the first Fred book to read to my son. He is 5 and preschool ends next week. I was looking for some fun things to read over the summer to keep him stimulated before kindergarten starts in the fall.

We received the first book yesterday and my son kept begging me to read more until we had finished 100 pages- in one sitting. He wanted to read it first thing this morning and we are now almost done. While I'm glad that he loves it so much, I feel a bit conflicted and wanted to check in with others here.

I worry that if we blow through several Fred books this summer that I'm setting my son up to be extra bored in kindergarten next year and that will translate to behavioral issues. My son is already a couple of years ahead of the math that he will be doing in kindergarten. For example, he already understands fractions and has been doing multiplication in his head (including factorials, exponential notation and square roots) for over a year (his dad is a mathematician so they talk about math a lot). On the other hand, a psychologist we work with has urged me to provide opportunities for stimulation in areas that my son is interested in.

The kindergarten my son will be attending in the fall is at a small private school that has a math/science focus so maybe they will be able to differentiate enough to keep him engaged. But I am concerned that if he knows more he will be bored. I want to stress that I'm not pushing my son. We follow his lead and provide access materials that we think will interest him. How do you balance your child's need for stimulation with concern that teaching them too much on your own will lead to problems in school?

If your son is already as advanced in math, reading him the Life of Fred books will not change how advanced he is before K, or affect his boredom of the K math curriculum. (You won't believe how basic it is.) But I do think you should have your mathematician husband vet the Life of Fred books first. Personally I'm not impressed at all by the books and they don't required working out any problems. I don't think it will change your problem one way or another.

FYI are a number of fun math books for this age kids. There were many good books suggestions made on a recent thread about infinity. (I'll post a link if I find it.)

Edited to add that I found the link and you were the one to post the most interesting book on it, so you probably don't need this.

Unless your school considers things like grade skipping and single subject acceleration, it is likely that your son will be bored no matter what you do, so I suggest letting him pursue his interests in math.

My oldest son is highly gifted in math, and my younger two children may be gifted. They all attend Russian School of Math, and I can see from the RSM homework assignments that the material is more advanced than what they do at school. Our local public schools, in an affluent Boston suburb, are so good that they don't need to consider subject acceleration in elementary and middle school /sarc. So the role of public school math classes for our children is mostly credentialing rather than learning -- in high school they should get A's in the algebra-to-calculus sequence to get into good colleges. They will rarely be learning something new.

I don't worry about "teaching them too much" and if that causes problems for my kids in school. We have books on a huge range of topics at home for our kids and really just let them go through whatever they want. DS found some of the engineering and science-y kits himself, and we just let him do what ever interests him. Sometimes it is just throwing various paper airplanes and sometimes he wants to do engineering stuff.

But, I don't worry if he goes in with "too much knowledge". The main issue is not knowing too much but if the school can adjust to the pace your child learns at. You child can still be bored to tears even if he goes in knowing nothing and has to endure repetition that is mind-numbing for your child. That is what we saw in daycare - he learned a lot of material we never went through at home, and yet he was still so bored by the constant repetition that other kids need to learn the same material. That is what kills the joy of learning.

We have him in a school where they are constantly being challenged and yet taking time to work on relative weakness - however, they are a GT school so move faster anyway.

Whew, I almost missed the sarcasm and I was getting ready to move to Boston for those "good" schools

Lepa,
I have a similarly advanced child. He was moved to 1st grade math in the most well performing local PS in his K year. Yet there was nothing new there for him. He too did not have any "formal" math because he went to a Developmental Play based preschool and daycare. Our family has a math background and we talk a lot about math concepts on car rides and during bath time, that is all. DS was so bored in school that I started afterschooling higher level math formally using a curriculum at age 5 so that he could understand that there was more to math than what he already knew. I used Miquon and Singapore Math and we have gone on from there.

If your child is very capable in math and is not enriched, he is probably going to understand new concepts in the first few minutes of being taught them in the classroom. And spend the rest of the days/weeks being bored until something else new is taught (check your school's math scope and sequence - the K and 1st grade curricula usually cover simple concepts). So, I would suggest that you keep enriching him.
From what you posted, I believe that he would love to read books by Theoni Pappas - especially The math adventures of Penrose the Mathematical cat -
http://www.amazon.com/The-Adventures-Penrose-Mathematical-Cat/dp/1884550142
Good luck.

Chances are he's already going to be bored with whatever math is taught in early elementary and need differentiation, whether or not you take him through the Life of Fred books - so boredom in Kindergarten is something you'll have to deal with and address. I wouldn't include it in any thoughts of how to deal with life at this point in time. I'll also add that math as most of us know it wasn't how math was taught in my kids' early elementary days, so my EG ds actually wasn't bored with math for the first 2 years of school. It was easy, but it wasn't out and out boring. OTOH, he went to a project-based school which didn't use any kind of worksheets or books so that helped.

My recommendation would be to enrich with something different - there are so many things you can do/read/experience with a pre-K child that don't have to necessarily tie in with reading/writing/arithmetic. If he's begging for math, give it to him. I wouldn't tell his dad to not talk to him about math - that's a dad sharing his passion, and that's worth more than any consequence of what might happen in school later on. But Life of Fred - I wouldn't feel that was necessary at this point in time. Focus on other things that can really push his brains to thinking deeply - books about science maybe, or read books about famous mathematicians etc, take him to museums, take him on hikes, just let his mind wander. Then if it wanders to math naturally, get out the Life of Fred again.

Thank you for all the thoughtful responses. Our approach is similar to what many of you have recommended. We read widely (everything from Little House on the Prairie to The Adventures of Penrose- which he loves). Lately he has been into reading home improvement manuals and I bought the Fred book intending to read it like any story book because I was sick of reading about fuse box repairs.

My son son told me that he loves the Fred book because we always read books about math concepts or people but we never do any math problems. This isn't true, of course. We are always doing math while baking or drawing plans to make something or waiting for our food in a restaurant but I was happy that he was so excited about doing math. I'm also worried about turning him off or setting him up for boredom.

My son is at a play based preschool (Reggio) and will be attending a project based elementary school with an emphasis on math/science/tinkering so I hope that it will keep him engaged even if he does know most of the math they will be teaching for the first couple of years. The classes are very small and I hear from current parents that the school does make a real effort to differentiate so I am hopeful that he will get the stimulation that he needs.

I've had a few people try to convince me that enrichment would lead to boredom at school. I finally reached the decision that we weren't going to let school stand in the way of a good education:)

Yes, as the others have pointed out-- the problem isn't the fit between what your child is being taught and what is taught at school, necessarily. It's a larger problem than that, and realistically, if you want less "boredom at school" using this method, you're talking about parenting that is pretty far over the line into neglectful relative to the child's needs. Basically, isolating the child and not PERMITTING him/her to have access to materials from which to learn.

Special kids have special needs-- meeting them as well as you can still isn't optional, however, no matter how much it seems like doing those things leads to a child which is "not normal."

Well-- no. But the child in question never was that to begin with. Enrichment doesn't cause poor school fit. Being gifted does.

This!!! I could not possibly agree more.