For ZPD for academics, maybe start with one subject at a time and keep exploring further until your DD reaches a saturation point and stops being excited about accessing more content at that time. Although achievement tests should give you a good idea of current academic capabilities, broadly, I think it's a lot more fun to just delve into a few topics she's passionate about to see how she performs when unconstrained by the teaching model/material. They're obviously not mutually-exclusive approaches.
Example from my DS: He liked learning more about disease a while ago, so we borrowed some books on various afflictions and plagues from the library. Immune responses really seemed to fascinate him, so I pulled out an old grade 12 biology text of mine and started to show him basic cell structures, organelle functions, etc. He wanted more content, so we went onto a more detailed discussion of the immune system, various types of blood cells, histamine responses and allergy, etc. The interest still persisted, so we delved into some discussion of cytotoxic cells, perforin, and some of the chemical underpinnings of its mechanism of action. Basically, I followed him down the rabbit hole as far as he'd go, and interest stopped at energy systems at the cellular level. I don't know what level that was grade-wise, but it was a good indicator that he required content well beyond what was traditionally offered. It was also a ton of fun!
Make sense?
Unrelated sidebar / Portia, love the basketball story! Wonderful!!
