That sounds really good...I hate overly rigid sequences. I mean, yeah, you need to know electrodynamics and complex analysis before you tackle quantum field theory, or algebra before calculus, and so in these subjects that have many prerequisites, you'll see a long chain...but for any given subject, often there are multiple paths. I think if I had homeschool from a young age (or at least middle school), then I would be academically much farther than I am now.
I am homeschooling my son who is 12. He went to kindergarten at age 5 and was reading at a 5th grade level. He could read his lines from Alice in Wonderland in his musical theater class at age 4. He had been reading since he was 2 1/2. At school all they cared about was that he didn't color in the lines very well. We were told to homeschool. Multiple paths are not tolerated in our public school. There is one path, involving lots of coloring in the lines.
I think he could be really good in math but he learns math differently than most. When he was tested the month he turned 7 he was working at a 4th grade level. He had learned what he knew from playing games that he found online, but he has motor dysgraphia so he refused to use a pencil and paper during the testing and only used mental math to get the answers.
I tried to make him do things the way our math books showed it done but he said it was easier when he used his own methods and showing his work was hard because of the mild writing disability that makes his hands tire faster than most people's. I have had to figure this out on my own, with a little help from my friends on message boards, but nobody has a child exactly like mine. Sometimes I think those early years of insisting that my son do math the way the school would require made him hate math and I am trying to undo the damage.
When my son and I race each other to get the answer on his online math, my son is twice as fast as I am, but only if allowed to do it his way, which is by doing as doing as much mental math as possible and only writing what is absolutely required for him to get the correct answer. I am limited to the way I was taught, which until I had this child, was what I thought the only way of doing things. I have to write everything out to get the answers.
But there is another problem much harder to deal with than the mild motor dysgraphia. It is his migraine headaches which he gets an average of 4 or 5 days a week when there are a lot of weather changes. I have trouble doing math as quickly and accurately when I have a migraine and so does he but when he was tested by a neuropsychologist she said she didn't think his headache could affect the results of his tests.
