Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Making Games In Math? Is this learning?

I would be beyond frustrated with the "enrichment" projects. Enrichment is supposed to be taking thinking skills to a deeper level - this just sounds like busy work, plus busy work inside an insane set of arbitrary rules (don't do homework at school, don't do schoolwork at home). The first project with mean, median etc sounds like an attempt to make math applicable and interesting... but, just fwiw, that's a math project my kids did as regular classroom work in 3rd grade in a non-GT school, so I'm guessing your dd is ready for something much more challenging.

It sounds like you're in a nothing-you-can-do-about it situation - we had that same situation in our ds' elementary school. We did what others mentioned, after-schooled in math at his level, and had him work on the regular class math at school. DS didn't mind working on math after school - and I can't imagine a reason for a teacher to tell a parent not to let their child work on academics that they are interested in and want to work on after school - with intellectually gifted kids, that can be the way they explore their passions, every bit as much as a child who loves soccer gets to play soccer a lot after school. If your dd were practicing soccer 5 nights a week would a teacher tell her she should only do it during her one gym class per week at school?

Anyway, fwiw, our ds became very frustrated with his school by the time he was in 5th grade both due to the low level of classroom discussion relative to his intellect, and also due to his advocating for himself to be math-accelerated and being denied over and over again. He switched schools for 6th grade, and we were able to show the work he'd done after-schooling in math and he was instantly given a 2-grade math skip - so - if that's the only option open to you and your dd wants to do it, it might be worth it since she's halfway or more through elementary school already. OTOH programming or other directions that she wants to go in at home may be more fun for her, and equally rewarding, and in that case I would continue to advocate for truly challenging math at school. If advocating is taking up too much energy, I'd let go of it for this one remaining half year.

Best wishes,

polarbear