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    Joined: Nov 2012
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    So with public school not working out, we decided to follow the neuropsych's suggestion to homeschool. We reached out to a woman named Kathi Kearney who we were told does consultations and I have seen her name on NAGC. Has anyone worked with her? Do you have any other recommendations for setting up a homeschool curriculum? We bought a book by Cathy Duffy that goes over traditional homeschool curriculums but it seems that the recommendations are not necessarily for kids that think differently. Any suggestions for any other books or educational consultants? We are dealing with PG 10 year olds who are 2e.

    Thanks so much

    Last edited by Laurie918; 09/07/15 08:00 PM.
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    You've received great advice above. I'll just add that you may wish to take a look at Gifted Homeschoolers Forum (GHF).

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    ditto above.

    Just want to add: give yourself and your kiddos the freedom to do nothing at all for a couple of months. Especially for families where school was the source of a lot of stress, some time deschooling can be extremely valuable. (Remaining in compliance with reporting laws, of course!)


    ...pronounced like the long vowel and first letter of the alphabet...
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    Such terrific advice already!!

    My only additions are to recommend some soul-searching and thoughtfulness that ONLY you can provide. Recognize that you're the expert on your children, and that this makes you uniquely qualified to know what will-- or won't-- do, long term.

    View most things as a short-term investment, and shrug off the inevitable misses as "oh well, we tried that and found that we didn't care for it ourselves."

    Look for good pedagogy in materials, no matter WHAT the educational philosophy behind them happens to be. One of the strengths of WTM/Classical methods is that the approach is so reliant upon whole literature, for example-- no redacted, abridged "reader-ready" selections.

    It may, for this reason alone, be a good idea to follow aeh's advice and give yourselves until Christmas to figure out just what it is that "school" is going to look like for your family from here on out. Well, at least what you're interested in trying. I wish that I could recall the name of the author or the title of the book that I used back in 2004 when it became obvious that we were heading down this road ourselves. It was a basic overview of all kinds of different educational philosophies-- everything from Charlotte Mason to Waldorf, and lots of things that I'd never even heard of. That's actually saying something since I grew up listening to a primary educator and her friends talk shop all around me re: educational philosophies. Knowing the landscape will help you make good choices-- and feel good about those choices. It'll also give you the background to answer your kids' questions about why some choices are "out of the question" while others are open to discussion at your home.

    With PG kids the ages of yours, too, you'll need THEIR buy-in for anything that you try. The nice thing about gifted children is that many of them are completely capable in their more rational moments of telling you quite honestly that while they might LIKE to live the life of Riley with poptarts, video games, and no bedtime or standards of personal hygiene, they do know that wouldn't be a good idea in reality.

    Know, also, that for the majority of PG learners, an eclectic method is likely the only thing that truly works out for long. This is likely (IMO) to be even more probable in situations where 2e issues are also in play. The uneven development and learning needs are just NOT well-met by most "complete curriculum-in-a-box" models, which are written for which kinds of students, again? Riiiiight. Average ones, in the average zone in most developmental milestones, with average learning rates.

    Once you realize that most curricular choices, even when homeschooling, are simply not intended for YOUR children, then that frees you up to use what you CAN out of those things, buy them cheaply (used and Amazon are my favorite words there), and send them on when they've outlived their usefulness to you, even if that is "two weeks."

    I kept a journal during our homeschooling years. I also tracked what DD read. She dumped books that she'd finished into the "book box" and I kept a hand-made log in there that I filled in with ISBN #, author/title/pages/level (if appropriate) and genre. That log was a pretty convincing bit of evidence for what she spent her days doing when she wasn't doing "seat work" that outsiders would recognize as such.

    If your kids are readers, I'd encourage them to go wild at a weekly outing to the library until you figure out what else you're going to do. Use that time to decompress, recover from any hard feelings about "school" and decide on some initial forays into more formal methods (if you choose to go that route).

    Good luck!


    Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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    Welcome to homeschooling! You may turn out to love it. We have. You might take a look at the book, Deschooling Gently. Keep us posted about your journey.

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    I gave returning to home school for my younger son a good consideration for middle school when I was investigation middle schools and I couldn't find many options. I did find one he was accepted into so I didn't go that way but here were my thoughts:

    1. I would find a way to continue his foreign language instruction...tutor or online class or combination of both.

    2. I was thinking the lit selections would alternate between my pick and his pick and we would run it like a book club (many books have discussion questions online to get the conversation started). More points if big brother and dad read book too.

    3. Math would be (free) state online class because he truly could do it in half the amount of time and part of what is so boring for him is the pace of classes.

    4. 6th grade world history would have been tons of fun for us to study together and participating in history fair project.

    5. Science would have given him a lot of choice here...if he wanted to take 6th grade science online from the state school at a fast pace, advanced learners can start the next class they take after sixth grade class as a physical science high school class. Or he could just pick science topics to explore for 4 weeks and make a plan and direct his own learning (with helpful links from me and books from the library)

    6. Writing was going to be a writing workshop at beginning of week with various small and longer assignments (plus I was going to look at Writing Strands curriculum)

    7. Elective I wanted to take one of his passions (mythology) and have him study it in depth and take the national mythology exam. After that was over another passion of his is cooking so maybe a cooking class. (And maybe that could have alternated each day rather than by semesters as long as he was ready for the exam)

    8. And finally I wanted him everyday to have one hour to work (not play) on what he wanted to work on...and keep a notebook on his work. Projects, research, reading, things for scouts, etc. I think at Google they call it the genius hour.


    And 1-7 might not have been daily and I think having him plan on Sunday what he wanted to accomplish in each area for the week would have been the key.

    He reads all the time so plenty of time for that and plenty of time at the library.
    Add two sports and he has PE.
    And add various field trips to the theater with the homeschool group and park days with the homeschool group...and random other things that come up....voila I had it all figured out....for the first two months...not sure if we could have kept all that up long term.

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    This may turn out to be the best thing for your kids and you! I also wholeheartedly agree that you should take some time to have fun and read and see what is available in your community. Don't jump into a standard curriculum and make everyone miserable. My son is 8 and also 2e. We pulled him out of school in first grade and sanded up basically unschooling. Currently he is interested in coding. Before it had been the Apollo program and space, world history and wars, and of course Minecraft and video games. He plays baseball and loves his kung fu classes.

    I do sometimes have him do a bit of writing practice as he has major problems with handwriting. The school special ed person said he is probably going to do best typing and using technology and not to stress handwriting. Impossible I his old ps setting.
    We are having a great time homeschooling although it does not look the way I thought it would (doing "school at home"). We gave up on the idea of following curriculum. He learns so much anyway and we aren't making ourselves miserable.


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