Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Homeschooling Approach for GT?

Hi. I've just began homeschooling DS6 and feel like I'm not getting it. I'm reading The Well Trained Mind and not sure that the age interests correspond to my very bright son. If you're familiar with the Classical Curriculum thing, the idea is to teach the three r's first until fourth grade. Then, they get to go deep into other things. Well, my son is very interested in other things and I want to encourage those interests and preserve his natural curiosity. I'm concerned that this style isn't ideal for gifted/very bright kids.

DS likes math, reads naturally, has nice enough handwriting (I'm not big on penmanship) and is very interested in human biology, astronomy, religion, drawing, piano, puzzles/problem solving, trains and history. He is a good listener but prefers to touch things when possible. He hopes to eventually go back to montessori.

Can anyone point me in the right direction for a hs style that will work for him? Is it Charlotte Mason or un-schooling?

I'm currently homeschooling my DS7, we pulled him from K last spring (I also have a DS5 who is going to K in the fall and a DD2.5 who is just along for the ride). For us, none of the pre-packaged home school methods or curricula works. We pull a little from here, a little from there and use what works and makes sense for us. We're truly eclectic! I would say read up on the different styles and use what you think would work for your son and your family, and ignore what doesn't seem to fit. Most of the methods have some really good aspects and some parts that would never work in our family. One of the benefits of homeschooling is that you don't have to follow someone else's idea of how your kid *should* learn. You can tailor things to how he *actually* learns.

A wonderful book I got when we first started homeschooling was Creative Homeschooling by Lisa Rivero. It is written specifically for GT kids and she talks extensively about the different methods and what kind of kid they work for and what their drawbacks are.

http://www.amazon.com/Creative-Home...mp;s=books&qid=1241266998&sr=8-1

ETA: I should also say that the first year is really more about learning how to learn together than it is about achieving any particular academic knowledge. Take the time to really get to know how your DS learns and how you guys actually function as homeschoolers. Our first year was *rough* and I think it was because I assumed I knew how we would work together and made plans based on those (false) assumptions. The homeschooling we're doing now works wonderfully for us, but it looks absolutely nothing like I expected it to when we first started.

We use a little of this and a little of that too. I tend to get board pretty easy, so the idea of using just one curriculum all year just doesn't work for us. The bad part of that is that I'm a curriculum junkie.....can't get enough of it. Is there any curriculum fairs coming to your state soon? Our big one is in June, and I can't wait.

I would just browse the many many different curriculum sites. Look at their samples, and the try to buy used. If I do that, I don't feel as bad if it doesn't work out. Plus you can resell it.

http://www.homeschoolclassifieds.com/

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=15

I agree w/ Mamaandmore - that first year is a learning year for you both....but not academics! What I would do is ask your DS what he wants to learn about then assist him. Show him how to use the computer at the library to research his topic, locate books, read the index etc to see if the book is what he wants, do google searches and go from there. Perhaps ask him for a science topic and a history topic.

I personally like Charlotte Mason crossed with a bit of WTM. I like narration and I know DS8 is really getting better at getting his thoughts together. This will help w/ public speaking, note taking, summarizing, listening skills etc. So I emphasize more narration and discussion and less "answer these questions about what you just read or saw" and less writing than public school. Where I mainly use a curriculum is math but I try to supplement that w/ math history and fun math books.

Then make a list of field trips - museums, living museums, national parks, zoos, science centers, etc. Then you can prepare ahead of time for each trip. For art museums, I like to prepare a treasure hunt list ... or I get a good art book of paintings and see how many they can find. Or we sit and sketch a painting of his choice.

I think what my son and I do is closer to unschooling than anything else, except for math, piano and handwriting.

My son always liked general knowledge trivia so I just bought books about whatever he was interested in at the time. Instead of using a reading textbook I let him read from the science encyclopedia that he liked so much at age 5 and 6. I let him play free online educational games a lot. He only used a spelling textbook for one year to learn basic spelling rules and I saw that he was pretty good at remembering the way a word was spelled, if he had seen the word a few times. I printed out the Sitton high frequency word list and asked him to spell words on it and had him write any words he missed. By the time he competed in a state spelling bee, he was good at noticing and remembering how difficult or unusual words were spelled. He was interested enough in words that he looked up words that he wasn't familiar with because using context clues wasn't good enough for him. He wanted to know the exact meaning and etymology so I let him take the time to do that. When we read together we often had the laptop with us so we could look up more info about words or history on dictionary sites and Wikipedia. He loved to discuss things. Reading anything with him was slow going sometimes, especially if it was something he was really interested in and he often had two or three books going at the same time. This was one of the reasons the library wouldn't work for us--we would have to pay library fines on top of having to pay $40 a year and the gas to get there to use the library in the city. Also, I like to write the comments, jokes and comical analogies that my son makes when we read. On the pages of the books, I underline the paragraph or phrase or whatever prompted his comments and write down what he says so I can remember the fun we had when he is grown. I think he might also enjoy looking at the books and reading the comments when he is older.

Because he liked history so much, the only fiction he would read for a while was historical fiction and he really liked books like Johnny Tremain when he was second and third grade age. At almost 11, he knows a lot more history than I do and can relate it to things that are happening now. But it isn't just history that he likes, its economics, law, philosophy, psychology, sociology, biology, all kinds of different subjects that a lot of teachers might not think are important for an almost 11 year old to know and would not be on their tests.

I think the way we are homeschooling has helped him develop a very good general knowledge. I finally played Buzz The Mega Quiz on his PS2 with him and he was answering questions faster than I could. If he didn't know the answer he could make an educated guess. He's very good at making educated guesses because he has read a lot and watched a lot of educational television and played educational computer and video games. He is fun to talk to because he can talk about just about anything and this adds to his self confidence. I really enjoy learning with him because he thinks of things I would never think of and asks questions that I would have never thought to ask. I refused to try to stifle his curiosity like my sister-in-law suggested before he started kindergarten and I refused to make him color in the lines and I think it is working well for us.

I have The Well Trained Mind somewhere. I read a few pages of it and I didn't think it would work for us at the time. I bought it when my son was six or seven and I don't remember much about it.

We're secular eclectic, which basically translates to reading whatever we feel like--mostly from library books rather than any set curriculum. We started out much more school-at-home-y than we are now. Now we're bordering on unschooling, though the choices I let him make are within certain boundaries and must be of the academic variety. (i.e., he's not out playing in the yard all day!) We have a school time, and during that time, he's expected to do some math, some fiction reading, some non-fiction reading, some writing...but what he chooses in those broad areas is pretty much up to him. I make sure he has plenty of options that are acceptable to me and intersting to him. That has worked pretty well for us.

FWIW, I often find that methods and curricula that sound good don't really work with an HG+ child. These kids often break the mold of even homeschooling methods, which are typically more flexible than bricks-and-mortar schools (though not always, depending upon the method of homeschooling and the B&M school in question...).

And that's not even discussing the money you'd have to spend as the kids race through the curricula that you buy!

I find that the mostly-library method gives us maximum flexibility for a minimal cost. Our library even has an "educator's card" that HSers qualify for. It allows me to check out books for 3 months without ever renewing, and anything late has no fine! It ROCKS!

I use E.D. Hisrch's "What Your Xth Grader Needs to Know" series and other such resources to make sure that we're not missing anything important.

I usually take a couple of weeks before spring testing to cover anything that someone in his grade is expected to know that we didn't yet hit on. So far, it hasn't taken us more than a couple of lazy weeks to fill in those minor gaps. If it's a subject he's not really interested in, I just cover it with him in the form of an at-grade-level book and discussion. I figure that's what he'd get if he were in a traditional school, so I see no reason to club him over the head with anything that he's not into. It seems to work pretty well.

YMMV, of course, but that's what suits us. And I agree that Lisa Rivero's book is a must-read! (And not just for homeschoolers!) It's fabulous!

So much about how you approach homeschooling is about personality--yours and your child's. As everyone has said, you almost certainly have to adapt as you go along because it's a learning experience. But there's no wrong way as long as what you're doing is working for you and your child.

I have the Well Trained Mind. That is about the most structured homeschooling book I've read. I think there are pieces you can pull from there, but certainly the age ranges can be totally skewed for GT kids. I do use Story of the World as a base for history (but usually we do considerably more from library books or internet research). Some of the hands on projects seem great for my PreK kid, but my 2nd grader would laugh in my face if I insisted he did some of this stuff.

I do think Creative Homeschooling by Lisa Rivero is a helpful book! Well worth a look.

What we do looks very eclectic and almost unschooling sometimes. We have a math curriculum that we use daily. Other than that, we do have a science and history curriculum, but we diverge from that a lot. We journal and using Writing without Tears. I require minimally piano, math, reading, and writing every day. My son has picked up some programming, some typing, had a lot more time to read on his own. He was in a chess club, built his own board game over several months, etc. I was really worried about his writing skills this year, but we have come quite a ways actually and he has written a few fiction stories that have given me hope (he'd be a 2nd grader this year).

My homeschooling philosophy is as long as he is learning something, learning something incrementally (learning how to learn), and could be dropped back into the public school at grade level at least we're doing ok. We've gotten through almost 3 years of math this year and we really aren't trying. That's 20-30 minutes of math (sometimes less if it's an easy unit) usually 4 or 5 times a week (when we have co-op we skip it). He figures about 90% out on his own. I guess my point is that GT kids are pretty easy to teach. Especially if you can hone into their learning style and let them own it.

We're using Singapore for math. Which I really like for my son. I love that they throw in plenty of really challenging problems.

Good luck! I'm sure it will be great!

I agree, kimck. For the most part, I'd say that the hardest thing about homeschooling an HG+ kid is keeping up with him.

The other hard thing for me is getting him social time without my introverted self having to be too social...but that's another issue and my own problem. We're doing much better with that this year than we did last year, when I was worn to a frazzle!

We are doing an unschooling method and it is working very well for DS6. We started out with a more traditional method with some curriculum items and he HATED it - it was a fight to get him to sit and "complete" worksheets and workbooks. I got tired of the daily struggle and I saw him start to disappear so we began unschooling at the holiday break and what a difference....I let him set the pace for the day - one day might be exploring snap circuits, another day might be completing several activities on the National Park Webrangers online program, another might be cooking and doubling a recipe, the other day he printed out several county maps and came up with a route for us to take to several locations on the Indian River so we could go look for manatees, we sat on the river bank and saw several come right up next to the bank and he was in heaven - then we went to the library and checked out a ton of books on them....the list goes on and on....he is covering now more than when we were doing the traditional...but each kid will be different - you will figure out really quickly where your child fits in :-)

I love reading how everyone's HSing is done! I'm still trying to wrap my brain around unschooling. My impression was that if you require anything (even if it's choices w/ in that subject area) that's not unschooling. I think of unschooling as learning most things out in the real world. Now i did read that unschooling doesn't mean no textbooks, but that the child initiates it. I read of one unschooled girl who did NO writing until late highschool. She had some bad writing experiences while in public school so the mother didn't push it when she brought her home. She went to college and tested out of several writing courses. WOW! With no writing at all! I would be just too afraid to try that route.