Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion New to the forum looking for opinions and advice

I'm not sure how to write a post without it turning into a long drawn out book about my trials and tribulations with my daughter. I will try to shorten it as much as I can. I will call her "K". K is 7 and going into second grade this year at a public school.
K started reading at 3 1/2 years old. And just a few months into kindergarten the teacher took notice and started her on the AR program reading 4th grade level chapter books, K did wonderfully with the books and that was great. The problem- all through kindergarten K did not learn a single new thing as I had already taught her all those lessons before she even entered kindergarten.
Then when the next school year started and she was in first grade (which she just finished) the reading and her attitude towards school went a little south. The teacher started her on 3.5 grade level books and K never moved up from there. This time all the students were enrolled in AR and the teacher was more focused on the amount of books read and the students would get rewarded for testing so often in the week. K started choosing books with big pictures and big words so she could try and keep up with the amount of books read that the other students were reading. Problem is they were reading kindergarten to first grade level books and they could read them and test the next day. That being said K never tried bettering her reading level all year. Not only that but all the material taught again she either already knew or she learned it very quickly. She was told to color when she was done with her work and so she spent most of her class time coloring rather than learning new material. She was enrolled in a Talented and enrichment pullout class but that only met a couple hours a week.
That leads me to where I need some advice. We at this time cannot afford private school. Do I keep things the way they are and continue to challenge her at home? Do I home-school? Do I get a tutor? She extremely shy so pulling her out of public school and homeschooling her might not be good for her, plus I have no idea how to home-school. Are there any other options for her? I don't consider her a child prodigy by any means but she learns and masters material at such a fast rate and on the school's state tests she scores way above the average I would have to look again to know the exact numbers. We live in Iowa by the way if that means anything

One more question: I'm looking for a good series of 4th grade level chapter books that have a lot of humor in them.

You mentioned that she isn't learning anything at school. How does she feel about this? Is she happy at school? At home?
Can your family afford homeschooling? Are there homescooling networks near to you?
I think homeschooling won't be a problen for a shy kid if you are willing and able to haul her to homeschooling activities. The social time is richer often.
A good place to start is to call the gifted coordinator at the school and ask for a grade skip. That will get the ball rolling for IQ testing and maybe choosing teachers who will be more thoughtful. Read through the posts here about advocacy and homeschooling. Look at your state education website to see what the state policy on gifted student is. Join your state gifted association and attend their programs and ask around. Call the flagship state university and see if they have someone to advise you.

That AR problem has happened to many gifted kids. Lots of gifted kids who are not prodigies need modifications in their educational plan.

Keep posting and letting us know how it goes.
Grinity

Try the Mrs. Piggle Wiggle books. They are charming and funny in a very innocent, old fashioned way. I read them to my kids and some chapters made them collapse with laughter, especially a chapter in one called "The Fighter Quarrelitis Cure." (BTW, I was looking for level 4 AR to see what books are at that level and saw a whole list of Berenstain Bears books. Seriously? They also are delightful books but 4th grade?) Any, Mrs. Piggle Wiggle is around AR 5.

Grinity: She enjoys gym, music, art and recess at school. However she complains about classroom time and being bored. Thanks Grinity for all the advice I will look into all of that and talk with my husband. I really wasn't sure on what steps I should be taking. K, at 7, is my oldest. I also have a 4 year old.

Fwtxmom: Thanks I will look into Mrs. Piggle Wiggle! She is currently reading Bad Kitty by Nick Bruel and it is so cool to watch her erupt in giggles while silently reading lol

I'd also consider a grade skip or at least requesting a meeting with the GT coordinator for the district to do an Iowa Acceleration Scale on her to see if she'd be a good candidate for a skip or subject acceleration.

My oldest's best year in language arts pre-skipping was 3rd and that was b/c she was placed in an accelerated 4th grade language arts class for that part of the day with a really, really good teacher. She got to skip out on all of the drill of third grade LA: cursive practice, reading logs, grammar, etc. and instead focus on learning how to do research reports and develop presentations on the material she had researched, read unabridged classics, and generally just learn something.

FWIW, I don't consider my dd a prodigy either but she's done really well with grade acceleration, subject acceleration, and more atypical interventions that not everyone in GT/enrichment programming considers.

In regard to good 4th grade level books, these aren't necessarily funny, but my dd loved the old Choose Your Own Adventure books when she was reading at about that level. I know that they've reissued some of them and I don't know if they are the same as the old ones, but it became a bit of fun haunting used book stores to find CYOA books that we didn't already have in our collection. If I think of anything funny at that general reading level, I'll post it too.

Popped in to say welcome! I'm fairly new, and everyone has such great information.

Cricket2...I was obsessed with those books as a kid. In a world pre-World of Warcraft or Club Penguin, it was as close as one could get to a customized story. My how things have changed! ....well, there was Oregon Trail on the giant Apple computer in class, but I always seemed to die of dysentary.

Oh yeah...forgot to mention books: I know they may be dated, but Judy Blume has a special place in my heart. Tales of the 4th Grade Nothing and Superfudge are funny.

Sideways Stories from Wayside School are really funny, or so I am told. Not sure of reading level, but around there, I think.

Try the Cricket in Times Square series (George Selden). Lovely stories, humorous moments.

DeeDee

Poetry books by Jack Prelutsky. In 2006, Prelutsky was named the first Children’s Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation. He has written poetry specifically for kids about topics that are in their lives. His most well know poem, "Homework Oh Homework!" is great! It is so funny, it is in his book,
"The New Kid on the Block". Also his book, "Pizza, Pigs, and Poetry: How to Write a Poem " is great ! and gives humorous background info of his real life experiences as a kid that he has used to write some of his poems, along with some of his poems and writing tips.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1/187-6456790-0456238?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Jack+Prelutsky

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Prelutsky

Two excerpts;

Homework! Oh, Homework!
I hate you! You stink!
I wish I could wash you away in the sink,
if only a bomb
would explode you to bits.
Homework! Oh, homework!
You're giving me fits.



I'd rather take baths
with a man-eating shark,
or wrestle a lion
alone in the dark,
eat spinach and liver,
pet ten porcupines,
than tackle the homework,
my teacher assigns.




Homework! Oh, homework!
you're last on my list,
I simple can't see
why you even exist,
if you just disappeared
it would tickle me pink.
Homework! Oh, homework!
I hate you! You stink!



Jack Prelutsky

Wonder Why Dad Is So Thoroughly Mad

I wonder why Dad is so thoroughly mad,
I can’t understand it at all,
unless it’s the bee still afloat in his tea,
or his underwear, pinned to the wall.

Perhaps it’s the dye on his favorite tie,
or the mousetrap that snapped in his shoe,
or the pipeful of gum that he found with his thumb,
or the toilet, sealed tightly with glue.

It can’t be the bread crumbled up in his bed,
or the slugs someone left in the hall,
I wonder why Dad is so thoroughly mad,
I can’t understand it at all.







Jack Prelutsky
Pizza, Pigs, and Poetry
How to Write a Poem

For Virginia Duncan,
my wonderful editor


My Father’s Underwear
I’m going to admit something to you. When I was a little boy, a looooooong time ago, I was not the best-behaved little boy in the history of the United States of America. It’s true! Every once in a while…actually pretty often…okay, every day, I did something that made my father mad at me.


My father was a wonderful man, but he was only human and did have his limits, so he got mad at me, and I’m sure I deserved it. When my father got mad at me, he did not run around and jump up and down and get all bent out of shape and yell and scream and cry and tear out his hair (he couldn’t do that anyhow, because he was bald) and get hysterical and throw a tantrum. No…that was my mother’s job.

My father was just the opposite. He suddenly got very quiet. His eyes narrowed, and his face grew serious, with the Western gunfighter look that says, “You got till sundown to ride on out of town or I’m a-comin’ for you.” His voice got very soft and very deep, and he simply gestured to me with his index finger and said, “Come here, son.” Uh-oh! I knew that when my father said “Come here, son” in that certain special way, I was in big trouble.

You may wonder what I did in that situation. I did exactly the same thing that most of you would do. I denied everything. “No, no, Daddy!” I said. “I didn’t do it. I’m innocent. I’ve been behaving. I’ve been a good boy…but I know who did it. My brother. He’s right over there. Get him!” Amazingly, sometimes that worked. Sometimes it was even true. But of course my brother did the same thing to me, so it kind of evened out. Sometimes I got punished for things he did, sometimes he got punished for things I did, sometimes we both got punished even though we didn’t do anything, and sometimes we didn’t get punished at all when we deserved it. It all evened out.

One of the things that I did to make my father so mad at me was to pin his underwear up on the wall. Before I did that, though, I decorated it. You see, my father wore really boring white underwear, and I wanted to make it pretty, so I painted it with finger paint. Then I pinned it to the wall. My father didn’t like that at all.

Once I put a bug in his coffee cup, and another time I put breadcrumbs in his bed. I did lots of other stuff too. I made a list of all the things like that I could remember, then picked some of them to put in a poem called “I Wonder Why Dad Is So Thoroughly Mad.”

Jack's poetry reminds me so much of Shel Silverstein....I have many of his poems STILL memorized. Thanks, BarbaraJean!

Unfortunately, also appalling racism. The Chinese character is a capering caricature, bowing to and "young master"ing a small child. It's a shame, because I agree that the book is otherwise lovely.

Yep. That chapter was the subject of much conversation at our house, about dialect and caricature and perception of "others" and all sorts of things like that.

I still think these particular books are worth keeping. (Unlike the Bobbsey Twins, which I jettisoned wholesale; the racism is much more pervasive throughout the stories there.)

DeeDee

Yes, we read all kinds of books like that, but have spent many years laying the foundation for recognizing the framework that setting creates in terms of normative beliefs that we may not share or espouse as "true" in our own home. A side benefit of this early exposure is greater tolerance and an automatic evaluation of author bias and motivation in ANY material; that skill is a treasure later in evaluating primary source material in high school and college. Just noting that.

Huck Finn is the classic challenging novel this way, of course. I find it ironic that the attempts to 'sanitize' this particular novel seem to miss the teachable moment there entirely. As Atticus Finch gently explains to Scout... "It's common," which is a great introduction to what that word means, and how it is lovely in that context to have used it so ambiguously. But I digress.

------------------------------------

I think that the rubric used for 'AR' is full of baloney, myself, and interest is often the larger necessary component for a precocious reader (I second "Sideways School" and "Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle" by the way). Some other reading material at this approximate level and which is both more-or-less appropriate and interesting to 6-9yo kids:

Beverly Cleary's work
Edward Eager's work
Enid Blyton's work
L. Frank Baum's 'Oz' books
The Series of Unfortunate Events
Spiderwick Chronicles (series)
Mary Poppins books (again, older series, so some gentle discussion may be in order)
Little House books
The Boxcar Children (series)
The Great Brain (books)
Time Warp Trilogy (series)
Redwall
Erin Hunter's books (ugh... but my DD was obsessed with them for years)



Most of these are series. There's a good reason for that. LOL. Voracious readers, especially young ones, seem to just devour individual books in such short time that it hardly seems worth the recommendation if there isn't at least a sequel. Series mean that at least you can just remember the author. I'll make an exception for a pair of books by Kate diCamillo-- Despereaux, of course, but also Edward Tulane. Both are very appealing to younger kids, but are beautifully written.

Another place that I recommend parents look when they have a 6-10yo with a Lexile way beyond age-mates is the ALA's Newbery award lists. These have the advantage that they are instantly recognizable to educators everywhere, and they possess a practically unassailable seal of approval as to 'quality' of material. (Yeah, I know-- but it's an easy way to get kids appropriate material without going through a lot of hoops with a teacher who is skeptical about out-of-level reading.)

There are now over 90 Newbery winning books, and hundreds of honorable mentions since 1922! For kids under 10, it's probably good to preview anything nominated after 1975, since those can deal with more emotionally challenging and distressing content.

It's a challenge to keep a bibliophile child 'well-fed' and happy, but it's also completely worth it!

Hi
I second the wayside stories, and also the my weird school series by Dan gutman, he also has one about aliens in the same vien. If you haven't seen the a to z mysteries or the capitol mysteries those are good too. My DS also really enjoyed nonfiction and advanced picture books which have lots of information. The magic school bus original pictures books are great and then the chapter books. Howler Karma NASA has a great list and recommendtions - although I can't get my DS into most as he likes futuristic over old fashioned and the language seems to deter him for some reason!

DeHe

Wow, what an amazing amount of responses and suggestions!! Thank you all so much!! I have a lot of ideas now!

barbarajean: those poems are so funny!! K does have a couple shel silverstein books, her favorite is "Dont Bop the Glop" so those poems would be right up her alley.

The Belin-Blank Center in Iowa has school year weekend programs, summer programs, evaluations, counseling etc. for gifted students. They are also involved with supporting gifted students in the Iowa schools.

The Belin-Blank Center
600 Blank Honors Center
University of Iowa
Iowa City, IA 52242-0454

http://www.education.uiowa.edu/html/belinblank/

PS I'm glad you enjoyed the poems.

If you love Prelutsky's poetry, check out John Grandits' two poetry anthologies:

"Technically, it's not my fault..." (about a gifted 8-10yo narrator's experiences)
and
"Blue Lipstick." (about an older sister)

The title poem in the first of these is like a perfect homage to being an HG+ kid; the poem is about the reason why dad's car has a concrete block sitting where the windshield used to be.

It begins:


It goes on like that, with the type getting progressively smaller and smaller.

There are also poems devoted to imaging the school bus as a human-eating dinosaur that regurgitates its prey at school, one about multiple choice tests (in the context of being gifted), one about invasive species, etc.

Which is why I wouldn't recommend it to an unsuspecting parent as a humorous book appropriate for a 7yo, without a heads-up about the content. We got an enormous box of (mostly Newbery award / honor) books from ebay when DD9 was 6 or so, and I read every one of them before handing them over, but I wouldn't necessarily do that for a book that had been recommended without reservation.

At our house, that particular book isn't read. My kid is already aware that white people see Chinese people with their expectations more than with their eyes, and I see no reason to rub it in. Fortunately (or not), there are plenty of books suitable for conversations about the pervasiveness and general acceptability of racism, that don't carry the additional emotional burden of targeting her.

I agree about the series idea, and about Despereaux - lovely and funny.
When I was a kid, the series thing wasn't as entrenched - except for Hardy boys, Nancy Drew, Little House and 'Shoes if I remember. So I created my own series by finding an author I liked and reading everything I could get my hands on by that same author. I still do.

heads up. the little house book oringinals are pretty racist in parts.
the first book has lots of songs from PA that might have offensive lyrics about darkys etc and then there's Ma's constant comments about only good injun is a dead one.
I didnt remember this from when i read them as a kid. It was a bit of a shock reading them out loud to DD. but at least i could edit as i went. I was glad i didnt just hand them over as approved reading materials when she was little.
i was kind of sad as i remembered them so fondly from my childhood as books with good parts for girls in them.

Yes-- I did remember that. The blackface scene in particular stuck with me all these years, the idea was so repugnant to me even at seven.

The other thing to note about the Little House books is that there is definitely corporal punishment in them-- of a nature and magnitude that modern kids (or parents!) may find downright shocking.

I should probably have mentioned that until DD was about ten years old, we vetted all of her reading material because of her dramatic asynchrony and because of her penchant for reading materials published prior to 1980. I really encourage parents of gifted children to do that if we can possibly manage it.

It's only been in the six to twelve months that I don't vet reading material for her at all, and she's just turned 13. She's also never been particularly emotionally OE/sensitive, I'd say, so I've allowed her to read material that other children (even gifted children) probably should NOT read at similar ages.

I can only recall restricting a few books, and those for (as alex'smom also notes) quite specific reasons that relate to my DD particularly. A Taste of Blackberries was one of those books. Otherwise a good book, but not one that I needed my five year old reading. She read it when she was about 11 and it was still pretty overwhelming.

I have been told that Enid Blyton is also racist in some books--can anyone speak to this?I haven't read her.

I must say, I just got out the Little House books to read aloud to DS4 and am not feeling very inspired to "do" them again. The racism is pretty bad, and Pa is sort of a lunatic IMO. I guess once was enough to revisit my childhood nostalgia. I'll see if DS asks for more, I guess. I need to refresh my memory on good chapter book readalouds for 4yos...he's probably not ready for really advanced stuff yet. We did My Father's Dragon and that was a smash hit.

I don't recall very well-- it's been at least four years since I've looked at any of those. DD was most fond of the "Noddy" books.

I loved listening to James and the Giant Peach and The Secret Garden from my first grade teacher.

Yes, true. Noddy is the best known series with that problem, but I believe I've heard that editions sold these days have been sanitised. I vaguely remember a girl called Carlotta in some series I used to read who was "gypsy" and portrayed in a way that today I expect I'd see as racist towards Romany people. But tbh I think really what's true is that Enid Blyton draws on every kind of stereotype - she doesn't use racial stereotypes more than other stereotypes! - but the racial ones are what's shocking today. Roll on the day when the gender/class/region/job stereotypes are equally shocking or perplexing...

The new versions of the Enchanted Forest and Faraway tree have been sanitised a little (ie the girls don't do all the housework) but they are wonderful reads and DS4 loves them. He also enjoyed the Wizard of Oz, dragon Keeper series (can't remember the author), Roald Dahl - well anything really