Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion The best academic extra-cirriculars

I have a lot of questions tonite. I just came from my SENG support group and am trying to decompress.

What do you think of academic extra-cirriculars to enrich a child who is clearly working WAY below grade level at school? If you are in favor, which would you do: math monkey, a language workshop (like spanish immersion), Kumon for math or reading, or something else??

If I were going to enrich in math, and my child was still taking math at school, I'd do problem solving, perhaps with something like this, or with the Art of Problem Solving's Alcumus program, not necessarily kumon-style practice.

Learning a new language can be a challenge that is good for a year or two, but in an immersion program, once your child has gained some fluency, which can be much sooner than the other children might, the pace of actual instruction in the other subjects can be problematic, so if you are contemplating a placement where academic instruction will be in the target language, you might want to think carefully about this. If it is an afterschool sort of thing, and you aren't relying on it for learning other subjects, it might be a good challenge for a while, and it is certainly useful to have as many languages as you can manage to learn.

We did Kumon for both of our and had no regrets. It built a great foundation for them to accelerate.

Our under-achieving DD9 LOVES her extra-curricular science club for girls. It is run by student mentors at my alma mater and is, hands down, the coolest program I have ever seen for young kids. DD glows when I pick her up. I could write paragraphs about the fun things she does and learns (one day they met with scientists and learned all about their research... DD's favourite was the 45 minute presentation on diarrhea!).

I am all for extra-curricular if it is something that lights the spark that is missing at school. If it was something she struggled in, like math, she would shut down completely... just like she does at school. All of her activities this year are aimed at boosting her self-esteem and making her happy in the hours outside of school. It doesn't begin to make up for the not-so-great fit that school is for her, but I want to preserve that slowing dying spark at all costs.