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We are currently afterschooling daily for reading remediation for DS5. We will continue during the summer to beef up reading and writing. My hope is next year the afterschooling will be for enrichment. School offers a 30 min daily pull out which we are just now learning about and haven't started yet.

I'm curious why you may have decided on "just" afterschooling for your DC? Was it lack of other options? DC liked his/her school and it was "ok" so you wanted him/her to stay in school? Inability to homeschool? Other? What time do you and DC devote to it daily?

For now, K was academically challenging for DS. He was behind when we started, has worked hard to catch up, but the program is wacky for reading (I feel they're easily reading on a 1st+ grade level). Honestly, I think he wouldn't have been behind if they actually taught phonics in school, but that's JMO. He quickly picks up on the rules of phonics, but I'm the only one teaching him that.

But math I feel he hasn't learned anything in this year or has been challenged. Since our focus has been on reading remediation, I have limited the afterschool math focus. I don't want DS studying hours every day after school. Just with reading we tend to do 30-60 min daily, which I feel is a lot for K! DS doesn't exactly enjoy our afterschooling because it's a "lot of work", but I'm hopeful focusing on enrichment will be easier and more fun for him.

If we catch up well in reading/writing over the summer and can switch focus to math/science or other enrichments I think afterschooling may work. But I find it's difficult to include remediation and enrichment unless I alternate days or something.

Do you like afterschooling for enrichment or did you end up doing a different course? Did you feel you were teaching what the school should have been? Did your child resist doing a lot of work after being in school all day?

Any general experiences would be helpful, but especially geared for younger elementary with intensive parent support.

You're not wrong about the phonics. The research is absolutely clear on this point. While some kids can learn with just a whole-word method, most need a grounding in phonics to be successful readers. (That doesn't exclude also teaching common words with irregular spellings as sight words.)

I'm kinda shocked that your school is not using phonics. No wait, I'm not.

Both my kids are good at math. They did for awhile Singapore math workbooks after school. At one point, I remember that my younger son was in kindy or first grade, and although he is a very good reader, he had trouble reading the math questions in the Singapore math book well enough to understand them to do.
We abandoned that for awhile until his reading improved enough to understand the questions.
Your child is only 5, which is very young. If you can instill in him a love of reading, that is probably all you need at this early point.

We pulled DS5.7 out of Kinder after Thanksgiving to homeschool. He is a mathy kid but his fine motor skills (writing) and reading skills were lacking behind and he was getting increasingly frustrated. Since we're homeschooling now, we took a laid back approach to the reading / writing thing and are waiting for it to click for him. In math we're just letting him run with it (using Dreambox learning). He too is the kid that needs phonics rules. He could figure out how to read the words based on the rules but once he'd hit a word that was an exception to the rule and read it wrong, he'd get very frustrated and just give up and shut down when it comes to reading. And school was very focused on sight words. I don't push him into reading for now, I do ask him to listen / follow in text 3 books on Reading Rainbow every day and when he's playing video games and wants me to read something, I have HIM read it to me. I love to see that spark in his face when he realizes HE CAN read most of those words. But we are still trying to get over that aversion towards reading he got in the first 3 months of Kindergarten. We are planning on homeschooling year round so we don't have to rush anything.

I saw your other post explaining the whole situation in Kindergarten. I'm just curious ... wouldn't taking it slow and forgetting about the whole being behind be an option too? He WILL catch up at some point (unless there's a real LD that would prevent him from it at any age), he's still very young and reading / writing just might be too much for him for now. I just keep thinking (in general ... not just your situation) ... why do schools push kids so hard to spend so much time and energy on something when they are 5 when there's a good chance they'll learn that same thing many times faster and easier when they are a year older?

Do you read at bedtime? Both of my kids love books and reading because we read to them every night. When reading began, I used BOB books and when reading, pointed at sight words in books to have them figure out the next word. Once they could read, we had them read books like Dr. Suess Hop on Pop or One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. Phonics is really important to reading!

As for amount of time afterschooling, DS6 is now in 1st Grade. The school requires daily homework, but we have permission to determine what that homework is. We probably spend 30-45 minutes a day. My son is a slow writer, so whenever the work has a lot of writing it takes longer. We only do 1-2 topics, like a math day and then a spelling and reading comprehension day. We do the Brain Quest Workbooks which makes it easy to choose by subject. IMO, I think it is important to cover multiple subjects, things the child is good at and some they aren't. Focus more on what they are good at then what they aren't though, because if it isn't required, then it should be fun to do.

We afterschooled because there were no other options where we lived. I hated it as an option because I strongly believe kids should spend a significant portion of time in unstructured play, which we had to steal from to actually teach our child. School took a massive six hour chunk out of the day which was not only pointless, but caused stress (boredom is very stressful) and that spilled over into our home life. There was also so little physical activity at school that there was no way we could afterschool on weekdays.

Had we not been able to move, I think we would have tried me going back to work and hiring a tutor to homeschool. School was worse than neutral for us.

We didn't afterschool at all with respect to academics in early elementary. I was frustrated (personally) that ds wasn't given challenging work at school, but at the same time I didn't feel any need to teach academics at home either. Instead we read a lot to ds (even after he had started reading and was light years ahead of grade level), and we followed his lead re the things he was interested in (science - he loved visiting our science center, watching Nova/etc videos, things like that).


I went back and re-read a few of your earlier posts, because I was confused by what was going on here re reading in your ds' class - but I think I understand after looking back at your earlier posts. I agree with you that the method they are using to teach reading might be incredibly frustrating for a lot of children. I wonder if part of the issue here isn't simply this year's teacher and her approach to teaching/testing etc? Whether it's just this one teacher or an issue with the school system you're in, I imagine your ds is extremely frustrated at this point, so honestly, If it were my ds I'd probably *not* worry about afterschooling, other than what I absolutely had to do to appease the school and make sure he wasn't held back for a year (which I only mention because it was mentioned in your earlier post).

One question I have - when you mentioned you feel that your ds' K class is reading on a 1+ grade level - does that mean early first grade level or end of first grade level or 2nd grade level? I think how much focus I put on spending time trying to help my child read at home would depend on where that bar is - because honestly, the difference between close-to-end-of-K and 1st-grade-beginning-of-the-year isn't much, and you might find that if you just left your ds alone he would get there on his own over the summer.

If it seems like your ds is continuing to struggle with learning to read, I'd also consider that it may be something going on that hasn't shown up on testing yet due to age or compensating with is other abilities. One of my children did struggle to learn to read and it took quite a few years (into 4th grade) before we really understood what was going on with her reading challenge. Once we did, it was *much* easier to find a program that worked to help her develop fluency etc. When I tried helping her on my own, pre-diagnosis, nothing ever really clicked. I realize (from reading the earlier posts) that you've already had your ds tested with a psych eval, but also think you noted that there was dyslexia in your family, so just wanted to throw it out there that it might be too early to really tease out if there is truly a reading challenge or not.


I agree - I think 30-60 min is a lot for a student in K... when our kids were in elementary school the guideline for after-school work was 10 minutes per day per grade.. starting in first grade, plus 20 minutes per day of reading (which could be all or part parents reading *to* their child). Our school staff has always maintained that the best way to help your child become a good reader is to read to them, even after they've started reading.


I'd try to remember life is not a race. Try to remember that some of the after-schooling and subject acceleration etc that you read about on these forums is happening because the *child* is chasing it, not the parent. When we did afterschool, it was child-led. If our children had not been happy about it or eager to do it, or if they resisted, I would not have pursued it at all.

I also suspect that if my children had been in the type of school environment you've described, with a ton of focus on levels and testing, they would have been stressed out by school and wouldn't have wanted to afterschool, even if it was completely different and fun etc. When they were in K-1 they came home from their mostly non-stressful school situations tired and hungry every day and really needed a break. Now that they are older and have their own goals, they do some of their own after-schooling after finishing their homework at night... but they still need that after-school break. The difference now that they are older and self-motivated to do the after-schooling is that they will return to it and happily do it. When they were little, once they'd come home from school and had their much-needed after-school break, it was a lot tougher to expect to get them back onto an academic task.

So I suppose my advice is, if your ds is resisting, give the academics a break for now and find some fun activities that he enjoys that may spur his imagination. Continue helping him with reading if it's absolutely necessary for school, but if not, consider giving him a break and just reading to him through the end of the school year and early summer, then see where he's at developmentally re being ready to really learn how to read.

Best wishes,

polarbear

HAHA -->

So sad. I mean, you can memorize "look" as a sight word, but isn't it just easier to know what "oo" says in that instance vs. another? DS5 already understands this logically but doesn't know the rules so it's all guesswork. And I'm looking for phonics instruction for remediation geared toward much older kids/grades because they're just doing this so young, but in the wrong way (IMO). Good for a challenge, but makes me really wonder about the other students too. Another downside I complain about is DS's habit of guessing. Even CVC words he just will guess at randomly instead of sounding it out because I'm sure that's what they're emphasizing. I sometimes want to put an audio recorder in DS's backpack to really hear what they're teaching. Maybe they are doing this and DS isn't getting the rules at school?

Thank you for your experience. It's a great question we've been debating with. I would love to homeschool and we did briefly due to multiple moves at the beginning of the year. Our long term goal was always public school. I LOVED school as a student from day one until now and DH and I wanted that experience for our DC. Our HS was very unsuccessful, I think for many reasons. But now we are gun-shy to try again, though honestly I'd love to and think for a lot of students with asynchronous learning it's maybe the best option. I'm going to treat summer as more of a homeschool trial and see what happens. Regardless, I want him to be much more comfortable with the required reading/writing expected in the (likely) case he'll continue to the G/T program at public school.

The schools are competitive where we live. I think it's a mixed bag. I certainly don't want DS to burn out or dislike school. He used to hate it, but now his opinion is generally positive (as his reading has improved I think it's gotten easier for him). I'd also like him to have some challenges too. That's why I'm debating afterschool in general. For a subject he loves (all things science), we could do projects, read books, watch educational shows, etc all day long and I know DS would love it. And I'm hoping that's what I could focus on as far as afterschool, just science enrichment.

But if his reading is behind, we will do remediation. My other debate is if math in school is really not keeping up with his knowledge and he gets bored, do we do that as well?

ITA with reading at this young age and allowing them to mature, and the only reason we're playing this game with the school system is because I certainly don't want him held back (which was explained as a possibility in DS's case if his reading didn't improve). Because how would retention really help? I think it's part of the school testing domino effect. I think that spreading more advanced phonics over the summer DS will jump ahead or at least be a stronger reader and I'm hopeful we'll keep ahead of their requirements. I'm also thinking ahead of spelling as it seems like spelling seems to be left behind these days too.

We do reading aloud all the time, it seems. I read aloud during snack times, DH reads at bedtime, and DS reads when we practice. I have him practice one or two easy readers per day.

I think that's a better balance to switch up topics. I think because the school is so focused on reading then I have too. I like the BOB books, and Nora Gaydos. I need to get some of the easy Dr. Seuss books out, but DS has most of those memorized so it wouldn't be reading per say.

Our afterschool used to be computer game based (reading eggs, dreambox, etc), but is now more mom interactive because I felt the reading eggs was so random and we needed to start covering some specific phonics topics immediately. Dream box he liked but got a little hard with the fast number recognition so we stopped for a while but may start over the summer. He also really likes little tablet math games (addition for knights or monsters, etc), so I don't think I'll count that toward our time.

Thank you. At least we read a ton around here. I hope he learns to love it. Most of the books he picks are superhero fluff though I check out Newbury and other award winners for some good variety.

This is my concern, spending so much time in school but needing to "do school" afterwards. Why not just homeschool? It's still an option but a likely small percentage chance at this time because of our specific situation. I also try to focus on unstructured play after school, so we have no extra activities besides what we do together.

When DS was still in public K, I tried to do some afterschooling with him but I felt like I was punishing him for something that wasn't his fault. Why make him do school at school and then again when he gets home just so he can have that level of education he needs? I do keep track of where public school is at and now that he's homeschooled we only spend about 30 - 60 minutes / day with school activity and he's still where he should be for the most part. Except for writing. I completely pulled back on writing knowing his fine motor skills were really behind and he spends a lot of time during the day just drawing freehand. Anything he wants. He needed that extra time to learn to use the pencil properly. He's now on his own starting to do a little bit of writing here and there without any prompting from us

Thank you for your thoughtful post. I'll respond in a few posts as I don't know how to do multi-quotes.

I think this is one focus we can do. We do read a lot, and I can read things that are fun, educational, or both, instead of making DS do extra work or anything like that. He loves science, so science kits are a super fun thing for us, plus Legos. We read Magic School Bus, Max Axiom, etc. And for me they are enjoyable too.

They use the Accelerated Reader program. IDK if the teacher is also a cause of concern, but the program itself I really am starting to loathe. I think it's a school-wide reading program for them, however, and it is a curriculum. Sorry my posts have been disjointed, but you do have the right synopsis. I didn't want to overload one topic with all our history so I left out (too?) much.

That's a good question. I'm not an educator so I don't know what is expected of a K at the end of K. I think they are already in mid to late first grade work, but I know the expectations have changed all over with the core curriculum. All my prior experience is with my own childhood, and we only needed to know the alphabet at the end of K. The accelerated reader program is on levels, and they need to read level 4 with a 94% pass rate to get a satisfactory in reading. A recent level 4 book had words that included: Roger, asleep, hide, coat, boots, woke, where, here, they, look, sea, pirate, down, jolly, we, said, are, plus CVC short vowel words, plus consonant blends (sh, th, ch).

His reading is improving quickly, but I'm not excluding any LD as of yet. I know his age can make diagnosis difficult and something may show up later that is now not present (officially).

BTW, I do not think that we will be HS our son all through the high school. He's too much of a social butterfly who actually likes the idea of school. We are just trying to bridge the early elementary years where we're dealing with uneven development, our personal issues with common core (not taking into account normal development of little children), no differentiation at school where needed, plus health issues on top of it. For now the plan is maybe around 3rd grade we might be ready to give it another shot.

Thank you for this insight. I'm leaning more toward just catching up DS over the summer to be a stronger reader/writer and make up for lack of phonics in school, and then letting afterschooling be geared toward fun science projects and games that are educational.

Displaced, is that Dra level 4? Our public school also requires children to read at Dra level 4, and some even level 6 by the end of k. I don't know if this is a result of common core standards but it does seem like a little much at kindergarten level. Re: after schooling, is partial homeschooling an option for you? I keep dd4.5 home one day a week and she has a lot of fun and learns a ton in that one day. I agree with polarbear's advice here ( she always has such detailed and helpful answers, thanks pb).

This is how I feel too! Which is why I'm still considering homeschooling. If I'm just teaching him afterschool what I feel he should learn in school, why waste those 6 hours per day?

Our problem before was a lack of knowledge on my part with what the schools required, that he was behind and I was doing remediation, and that we were planning on homeschooling a year but stopped after only a limited time. Therefore, the time I had allotted for him to get on pace with the other students was non-existent. DS also needs a lot of writing practice but I've stopped focusing on that because the teacher flat out said if he can't read at the correct level, he will fail. Writing is not as pressured.

I'm hoping our summer homeschooling is nice and progressive. It will either help solidify that homeschooling would be easier/better, or even if he's just on level/above other students for 1st grade and then doesn't need remediation anymore that would be wonderful. It's hard to guess what the schools aren't going to teach in the future. Will I find myself teaching spelling because he just comes home with spelling lists every week without guidance on how to spell? Will I teach cursive because the school won't?

I think older kids, either gifted or not, have so many more options once they're in high school. Here there's dual enrollment (I almost wrote duel!), early admissions, IB, AP, etc. Public school originally was meant to give a certain minimum of instruction to the masses. I think this philosophy has not changed well with our desire/need for individualization in schools.

I believe it's also written Dra as well. IDK how homeschooling would work partially, or if that's an option. There is virtual school here, which I considered. Some say it's too restrictive, some say they can use it similarly to homeschooling. And it would help me understand what they are requiring by the end of certain school years. I also don't know how acceleration would work with virtual school here, or if that's possible. ITA re: polarbear's thoughtful posts

I currently homeschool DS8 and afterschool DD6, although I use the term afterschool very loosely. Here is some examples of what I do:

-We listen to Story of the World (history) during car rides; DD sometimes listens to the previous volume in her room.

-DD has an IXL account for LA and a Khan Academy account for math; I don't push these, but she works on them sporadically, usually on weekends.

-Because DD is particularly interested in history and geography, I tend towards getting books on these topics from the library (either that she can read on her own, or that I read with her).

And of course there are the things we naturally do as a family that I guess some would consider enrichment. I read to both kids frequently (often during snack), we go to museums/aquariums/zoos/historical sites, we have educational iPod apps, subscribe to quality kid magazines, watch Cosmos, etc. I don't consider this afterschooling, I consider it parenting.

As far as when all this happens, it's usually not after school (except for the more passive stuff like listening to me read). DD is generally too schooled-out to do anything like school when she gets home, and would much rather draw or play or do crafts.

Is there a way you could combine remediation with enrichment? For example, you could work on writing while doing fun science experiments together.

Ditto. DD7 goes to school because she LOVES it. I'd love to homeschool because she's an amazing interesting learner but - at the moment anyway - school is hot because she has lots of friends and because she still thinks she's going to school to learn and she's very enthusiastic about learning. I can see that misconception slowly starting to wear thin however!
She does a one-day-a-week pullout gifted program which is really excellent, and the rest of her actual education is through her love of reading whatever fiction and non-fiction interests her (lots of library books, and lots of quality fiction and interesting history/science reference books at home), Ask magazine, BrainPop Jr, Monopoly, Snap Circuits, chess, Scrabble, geocaching, watching cool documentaries, YouTube (Vi Hart, space station), doing crosswords, traveling, hiking, star-gazing, visiting the planetarium and all those places Knitting Mama listed, badge-work for Brownies, long conversations with DH and I full of hard questions, sometimes I wantonly pull her out of school to join a science workshop run by the local homeschooling group … etc etc.
But I too hesitate to call it after-schooling because it's ALL DD-driven as and when she feels like it. I wouldn't set up anything formal - and admittedly she's ahead in all areas so there's no need - because her learning is part of her playing and I want to keep it that way.
There is also a lot of definitely non-educational stuff in the mix, which is just as important She doesn't distinguish between playing Polly Pockets or setting up a station to study weather patterns - it's all entertainment. Which I love (I made the decision to test one vacation when I suggested making pompoms, and she wanted to dig through DH's tool kit to find parts to build a seismograph, lol). That's much more awesome than replicating school at home.
Basically, that was all a very long-winded way of saying, if he's not really enjoying formal after-schooling, and it seems to me that you're doing quite a lot, you could try sneaking the learning into the playing, like sneaking vegetables into a smoothie

huh. I was positive that I responded to this thread already.

anyways

We afterschooled our oldest from when he started preschool aged 3. Initially it was because he was missing the stuff he and I used to do at home before he started. I had no idea that it was such groundbreakingly different stuff to the gifted school he was in - it was a bit of kid friendly science, some fun reading games when he asked for them, a bit of fun writing games when he asked for it, art, gardening, stories, map fun activities etc.

so we did that stuff as he asked for it after school and on weekends. When he started waking me at 5am on saturday's to do maths or writing I started pre-preparing stuff that he could cheerfully do on his own while we slept. haha.

By age 5 he refused to do anything outside of school aside from throwing very angry tantrums - total loss of desire to learn. Of course we ended up out of school (K at that stage), into 9 months of therapy followed by homeschooling.

When I hear how much time and effort other parents here but into homework, extension work, extra lessons - I am so so grateful for the decision to homeschool. We do less time on formal learning than they do on homework! and we get to play so much more now.

I always say to parents who ask - if you afterschool because the school is lacking in something, then you may as well homeschool - cause you are already; you're just ALSO dealing with the stress of school and its incumbent issues

My #1 had a similar experience until the school--which was a very accommodating small private school--ran out of ways to differentiate and keep #1 meaningfully in the home grade, even after one early entrance, one grade skip, and placement in a multi-age/grade classroom. At that point we could have stuck with the school and had our child in entirely individualized classes (literally, as in the only student in each class-within-a-class, working alone with periodic teacher check-in), search for another school (slim pickings in our area), or homeschool. Since, by then, the majority of real learning was occurring in afterschooling, it was definitely a relief to get rid of the time-wasting and exhausting six-hour b&m school day.

Thanks for your list of things you do. We also do quite a bit of that, though I wish we spent more time going to museums and such. Usually weekends are made up of friend/familial obligations and vacation stuff.

I hesitate to mix "work" with science pleasure. I think as he matures, doing some writing will be okay with science experiments. But then I'd have to correct his handwriting the whole time and I'm pretty sure it would spoil all the fun

Thank you for all the great educational activities and ideas in your original post.

Thank you for your experience. I also feel this way sometimes about school. I wonder what they are really teaching if I have to go back and teach things I feel they should have there? Or maybe they're teaching a lot differently (for example I'm pretty sure I'm teaching phonics to read and they're teaching reading some other magical way). It's such a hard decision for us to know what's best.

In a way I wonder if it would be easier to decide if DS was bored all day, knowing he wasn't learning anything in school. But he has such asynchronous achievement, and is most knowledgeable about subjects I don't see emphasized in school (science-based), which makes me pause.

Just correct his handwriting occasionally, not each time he makes a mistake. Or just have him do a tiny bit of writing, that you correct if necessary. But I know what you mean about mixing work with fun; it can be a delicate balance!

What's best is surely the things that keep our kids optimally enjoying the adventure of life and lifelong learning. If it's not happening in school and it's within your ability to provide this, then I'm pretty sure I cannot see how choosing to NOT do so is a good choice. Sometimes it's really hard to accept that we need to step outside of the norm. We are conditioned from young to colour within the lines (so to speak) and it is even suggested to us that we owe it to the greater good to fight the good fight.

And while I am happy to be an advocate for more appropriate education for ALL kids, I only owe it to my kids to ensure that they absolutely have access to what keeps them happy, healthy (emotionally and mentally as well) and enjoying their lives as they learn what keeps them happy.

It also makes my life easier without a doubt!

Amen to that!

And BTW, displaced, there is no other magical way to teach reading! 30 years of reading research says kids either learn to read using a phonological approach (which includes but is not limited to phonics), or they learn to read in spite of the other approach.

I think asynchronous achievement was definitely a major part of our decision to homeschool #2. Plus how stressed out #2 was by spending a whole year in preschool "not learning" (quote from four year old).

We don't even really "after school", we "after dinner", because I'm a FT working single mother and consequently, DD is at the afterschool program at her school until about 6pm every day. And they don't really do any academics, unless you count learning the basic rules of chess. Homeschooling is not even a possibility, and since DD is also 2E, private school isn't either (even if we could get financial aid, but likely not).

We are moving to a new district next year, and I'm hoping all their talk pans out and they're really more flexible and accommodating than the current district. That's really about all I can do, at this point. Though I'm getting an au pair next year, too, and hopefully can find one with an interest in science and/or math.

In answer to the question "if you are after schooling because the school isn't doing the job why not just homes hook (paraphrased)". The answer is money. I am a single mother who doesn't earn much and am unable to change that due to health and day are issues. If I don't work there is no income (well there is benefit but I would be expected to have the kids in school and look for work full time). My income does not stretch to care now subsidised pre school care has ended and I have no-one who will care for them for free/cheap. The kids go to school so I can work. When they are 14 and allowed to be left by themselves things may be different but that is 7 years away.

Afterschooling was our gateway to homeschooling, although we never intended to homeschool. We assumed that dc should and would be in school. But our frustration with the limited enrichment and teach-to-the-middle vibe in public school led to more and more afterschooling. Eventualy, afterschooling took over!

For us, afterschooling and extracurricular activities are the main mode of learning. My kids are used to it. We certainly wish that they could learn what they need to learn at school, and do other things at home, but this hasn't worked. My DS had a reasonable K and 1st grade (the teachers were really good at differentiation). But since we moved to a new district (supposedly a very good one, too) things just never worked out in public schools. We have no gifted program and in-class enrichment is way below my kids' real levels. The local gifted, private schools are also not at my kids' levels. So it kind of just evolved into the situation where the kids go and have some fun with friends at school, try not to get in trouble with the teachers, and the majority of learning happens at home.

This will change soon, though. Our district finally started allowing students to take above-grade-level courses online for acceleration. I think DD will sign up as soon as she is old enough. DS will go to a HS with a strong academic focus and there will be lots of choices within and outside of school.

Afterschooling is not ideal for us but we just didn't have better choices.

This is exactly how it worked for us. Afterschooling and weekend schooling became what Aiden lived for, until he got so tired of doing busy work and then coming home and doing more that it all fell apart. Shortly thereafter we switched to homeschooling.

We do a little bit of after-school enrichment at home with DD6. Usually one challenging word problem a day, and then this year a focus on ancient history. We are using Story of the a World as a starting point, but spend most of our time with the books in the recommended resource list.

We keep it casual. For example, yesterday we read two stories that featured the Nile River (to coincide with one of the Egyptian chapters in SOTW). They both had Nile crocodiles in them, which prompted DD to look up more about them. When she read that they were the 2nd largest extant reptile, she had to find out what the largest reptile is (saltwater crocodile). And so on.

So yes we do go down rabbit holes, but I am okay with that.

We also supplement Spanish. Right now, she likes Duolingo.

Up thread you mentioned looking for a resource to teach your little one phonics - on another gifted board parents have mentioned loving Uncovering the logic of English, by Denise eide,