I remember my kid looking at song lyrics at his musical theater practice and happily pointing out examples of alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia, etc.
I think he was around six years old at the time. None of the other kids in his class were doing this and he was one of the youngest kids there. When he was five and in kindergarten I volunteered at the school and found a 3rd grade language arts worksheet in the trash. I took it home and with my husband watching, had my son read and do the worksheet. It was easy for him. But there was no grade skipping or anything like that at our school.
He hated reading books that were predictable or redundant or just didn't use enough interesting new vocabulary. He wouldn't even read Magic Treehouse books after he turned five. He liked them at three and four but refused to read them after that, preferring to read his science encyclopedia, how it works type books, and DK books, and classic stories with high level vocabulary. He was disappointed that he didn't really learn anything new in kindergarten and all they wanted him to do was color and do crafts that he had trouble doing because he has a disability that affects fine motor skills.
We had to homeschool for my son to get an appropriate education. He is 14 now and has to work around chronic pain issues. He wakes up in pain every morning. It slows him down. It affects the amount of work he can get done. We never had time to waste on "learning" things he already knew. We are hoping and praying that he will be finished growing soon so that he can stop wearing a painful scoliosis brace and have a normal life again instead of watching other people have fun.
We mostly unschooled until now. I did make him do some math and I did make him practice handwriting when he was younger but the rest of the time I let him choose what he learned. This worked for him because he was interested in so many things and compared to other kids he always seemed to be very well read. He was always very interested in current events and the newest technology and science news and even politics. He liked to do online quizzes. He reminds me a little of my mother who read all the time and could answer more Jeopardy questions than anyone I knew--until complications from surgery left her with severe brain damage. When this happened we read a lot of wikipedia articles about the human brain and neuroplasticity. He became very interested in neuroscience because of my mother. He learned a lot about cancer when his dad went through cancer treatment. When he later developed his own difficult medical issues at eleven it was too much so he took a break from reading about medical things. He and I both developed a really bad case of medical or white coat anxiety. Last year was very difficult and he didn't do much math of any kind. My son watched his grandmother die and saw his grandfather go through the pain of losing his wife. He then saw his grandfather recovering from the multiple surgeries that were put off because my dad was providing 24 hour, seven day a week care for my mother. My dad didn't tell anyone that he was in so much pain because he didn't want my mother to go into a nursing home.
So my dad got through his painful surgeries and I got through the pain of watching him and helping him (he lives next door) while also helping my son deal with his brace pain and isolation in a town where he doesn't fit in and with unsupportive extended family that we need to limit our contact with to maintain our sanity, and I am still determined to provide my son with a better education than our local public school and to prepare him for college. We are dealing with challenges that nobody can help us with because nobody else has any experience with this particular set of challenges.
Okay, so we survived last year. It didn't kills us, but I can't say that we feel stronger. We are just too stubborn to quit. And that thing I read about cortisol and belly fat is true. On top of everything else, I now have to work on that. I have to stay healthy so that we can keep homeschooling.
My son, who has always liked taking online quizzes anyway, has been taking AP practice tests on biology and history and getting about half the questions right without having read the books so we are going to figure out what he needs to learn and just learn those things. Because the pain issues eat up so much of his time he will have to do it this way. We just don't have time to waste.
