In my case, after the emotional high of saying "I am not crazy" this is real, there was this feeling of "now what" and I did not get clear direction on where to go, or how to do it. Especially when I read that level 4 & 5 should be able to complete the elementary education curriculum in a year. I did not know what to do with that. And when I put that in the forum, the responses I got back were: "you kind of ignore that" I paraphrase. But did anyone here experience their PG kid doing the elementary curriculum in a year and have them start college at 10 or 12?
I did not get one response that said yes. [...]
Ren
Here's a "yes....sort of."
I was visiting the forum looking for some other info, but Ren's question caught my eye and I decided to toss in my 2 cents worth.
I've known a lot of EG & PG kids and families over the years. The son of a friend completed the K-12 curriculum by age 6, and I think most PG kids I've known were at least intellectually capable of finishing the K-5 curriculum by that age. And, at least in my experience, virtually 100% of PG kids are capable of completing K-12 by age 12 if they want to, and quite a few of them do.
But the question about doing elementary in one year ends up being moot for most of our kids because WE, the parents, are usually so slow to recognize that they are not just gifted but way off the charts. Most of us are still either clueless or in denial at that stage. I know in our case that, when our son was six, the thought of having a 7yo ready for 7th grade would have shocked us and scared us silly!
DW and I thought we were meeting his needs by getting him into a full-time gifted elementary. After many tears were shed over how slow and boring school was, especially math, we enrolled him in Stanford's EPGY math program. He did grades 3-8 in 6 months (@15 min/day) and two years of HS algebra in another 6 months (@ ~30min/day).
This finally clued us in that we weren't just dealing with "normal gifted." Then he asked to skip grades 5-8 and go to high school. I did some pretesting and outlined the preparation he needed. We homeschooled for a year (nominally 5th grade). He did a compressed grade 5-8 curriculum with absurd ease and continued through geometry, some other high school content, and a bit of college-level material.
He was accepted at the local math/science magnet high school at age 11. He did fine the first year, with a 1st place in the science fair, a 2nd in the history fair, and pretty good grades in honors and AP courses, but then he took a college course in Symbolic Logic over the summer, led the class, and decided that high school courses were boring. He stuck it out for one more year because WE weren't prepared for him to be in college, but we caved in and let him start at a local university at 13.
This was a kid who would have had a wide mixture of scores on Ruf's levels at age 5. He was quite early with things like lifting his head, walking, speaking, grammar, and vocabulary, but he didn't read independently or do arithmetic until kindergarten. He NEVER showed the generalized passion for learning that seems to characterize most level 5s and many level 4s. Passion for specific subjects, yes. Unhappiness with "slow" instruction, yes. Relentless pressure to learn everything, definitely not! At that age, he preferred drawing, daydreaming, playing games, or just hanging out with older kids or grownups.
Now, COULD he have done (say) the K-5 curriculum in one year? We'll never know, but - excluding handwriting, and assuming either homeschooling by a very motivated parent or a highly compacted program for PG 6yos (!) - I wouldn't want to bet against him. I strongly suspect that he had the ability to do it, but he might not have had the motivation. More to the point, even if such an accelerated program had been available, it would never have occurred to us to put him in it when he was 6.
Anyway, IMHO, Ruf is about right on how fast level 3s, 4s, and 5s can learn the elementary curriculum, especially if they already have a good headstart on reading and arithmetic. The reason they usually don't is that grownups don't give them the chance to try!
Drake
