Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Looking for Homeschooling Advice - 9yr old

Hi --I'm new to this forum and also to Davidson. My DS9 was just accepted to DYS in August of this year. I can really relate to the discussion here regarding the 12 year old whose mom is looking for options--We can relate--including the weight gain and stress level issues.

My DS has been gradually accelerated in our public school system about 4 grades. He is now age nine and in 7th grade, 8th grade honors math (which he complains is too easy--science is too easy as well) and 4th grade PE. We have been working dilegently with the school to try to provide him more challenge, but are getting some very strong pushback and complete lack of understanding at this point. On top of that DS is very stressed in the middle school environment. To make a very long story short, we are now strongly investigating homeschooling (I am there, my husband is still getting there). I understand the deschooling concept and we plan to do that initially. However, our state/school district requires that you fill out a form that outlines what curriculum you plan to use for each subject area. How do you fill out this form and still "look around" for curriculum?

Also, I should mention that we already have some areas covered because my DS wanted more in certain areas. We are already doing the following:

Math - Art of Problem Solving (Intro to Algebra)
Music - private choir and piano
PE - Swim team
Spanish - private class
French - Rosetta Stone

So, I'm really looking for ideas in Science, English, Social Studies and Latin. My DS loves being in a class and interacting with others, so I would if possible like to provide him this at home. He is very out-going. Also, we have taken classes through Cty and they have been excellent, however, I'm not sure I want to pile on more on-line learning right away. Any suggestions would be very welcome.

Thanks!

Hi Julie!! Welcome!!

I don't know if you have been to your state's web site or not, but you can look up your state's academic content standards for a specific grade. <at least I know that you can for Ohio, where I am!>

Just type "academic content standards" and your state's name into the google search engine. If you want specific information, you can add "7th grade science" to the search. It might help when you are trying to plan curriculum for home-schooling.

I know that several people here have hired tutors for their kids, usually in math. I wonder if you could find an undergraduate or graduate student who would be interested in tutoring your DS? Or maybe a retired middle school or high school teacher? Just a few suggestions from someone who has not had to face these particular challenges yet.

We are not quite there on the whole home-schooling issue. We are still trying to work within our local school system. However, we may face in the future many of the problems that you mentioned. So I am interested in any responses as well. We have many home-schoolers here, so I'm sure that someone will chime in soon...

Hi, Julie! Welcome here--I haven't been here very long, but certainly appreciate all the wonderful insights that are on the forum, and hope that you will find some answers to your questions.

Your son is two years older than my oldest, so I don't really have specific suggestions for you, but I do have an idea or two based on our own homeschooling that might work for you at higher levels.

Harpo (7) loves the Michael Clay Thompson language arts curriculum (available from Royal Fireworks Press www.rfwp.com ). It comprises grammar, vocabulary, poetics, and writing; the books are intended for gifted students. We're in the second year of them, but they go on up through high school level--there are sample pages online so you can see what might work for your son. As a bonus, they're very reasonably priced (and you don't need both of the student workbook and the teacher edition).

For Latin, we are using Minimus Secundus right now--if your son has any prior Latin knowledge, the Minimus series will be too easy, but it's a nice/cute introduction for kids (and moms!) with no background. We also use Esopus Hodie (available from the American Classical League) from time to time when we're feeling ambitious, and Learning Latin through Mythology by Beverley Hanlin (Cambridge University Press, available from Amazon or whomever). All three of my boys learn best when there's a story attached--so these Latin series, as well as the MCT language arts books, work really well for them.

I've been looking into science materials more these days--mostly what we have done so far has been based on nature study, gardening, and lots of library books about chemistry, force and motion, and some messy kitchen table experiments! I've been thinking about Bite-Size Physics (www.bitesizephysics.com), which looks quite fun, but maybe isn't quite enough for someone in your son's situation? Also, have you seen "The Physics of Superheroes?" by James Kakalios --not a curriculum, but it looks seriously fun, particularly for boys! We have also done some of the TOPS science (topscience.org) modules--you might look into those, as they have lots of different topics and levels, and they use household materials for experiments (the authors were in the Peace Corps for a while, and had to teach science in Third World schools without benefit of lots of equipment--so their stuff tends to work well for homeschoolers).

Our social studies choices, at least as far as curriculum per se goes, are oriented toward Canada, so we're no good to you there.

Hope some of this might help a little--good luck to you!

peace
minnie

PS Just had another idea--Ray at Horriblebooks.com has gifted kids, and does special orders several times a year from Scholastic UK, Galore Park, and several other publishers--you might find some ideas there. He's a very nice guy, and the customer service is excellent.

I had a basic question to throw out there. Has anyone ever followed the school curriculum, i.e. using the same science books used in the local school? I just scouted out home-schooling science curriculum on google and was disappointed. Most of it does not follow our state's academic content and was of dubious content from an challenging/in-depth point of view. So I was curious if you could just buy the text book that the school is using and teach your kid at home. They would be assured to have received the same basic lesson plans as the equivalent kids in school. But you could tailor the pace of the material to match the gifted kid's needs. You could even choose to supplement the material in an effort to cover it in greater depth, which sounds heavenly! An understanding school system might even have a few extra books that you could maybe "rent" from them? <okay, that one might be wishful thinking!>

Has anyone ever gone that route before? Or do most people choose to buy packaged curriculum?

Let me pipe in real quickly about bite size physics. DD8 just did the online course with webex live conferences and it was SUPER AWESOME! Jim offers additional math work that coordinates with each of the physics lessons and they were doing some pretty advanced stuff in my opinion.

Jim is starting a new session in January and I highly, highly recommend it. He also records the sessions so the students have it to refer to later. Let me know if there is interest and I will contact him and ask him if I can post a link to one of the sessions here.

E-beth, I would encourage any homeschool parent to contact the local district about additional curriculum. As a taxpaying person, you may be entitled to a lot of the stuff they have at no extra price. Not textbooks, per se, but you never know what is available unless you ask. Really, nicely, of course.

'Neato, I would love to look at Bite size physics, just from a curiosity point of view!

And I would like to point out to Julie that you are one of the partial homeschoolers here, aren't you? That is another interesting possibility that exists!

incogneato--that's great to know about Bite-size Physics. I've just been browsing the site on and off for the last week or so, and thought that it looked really good--it's terrific to hear from the voice of experience!

minnie

PS--Another thought about Latin--if the resources I suggested look too young for your son, I know some homeschoolers who use either Galore Park Latin Prep (a very grammar-oriented course) or Lingua Latina (an immersion course).

I really can't recommend the actual online webex conference course enough. From someone who isn't easily or often impressed, I have been so impressed with this program.

The material he goes over is awesome. I'd say at least high school physics, but he transforms the technical into non-expert speak. My six year old will watch with interest, big sister gets it on a different level and some of the kids participating were clearly more advanced in physics concepts.

He gets kids and is very funny and engaging. All the kids participating seemed to love it.

I'm another fan of Bite Size Physics -- Science Jim is fantastic!! Also it's not too "heavy" so if you're worried about overloading the schedule too soon, it could be a perfect choice.

For more substantial science (and more topics than physics...) I really like the regular textbooks from Singapore, especially at the middle school level. I imagine the US textbooks are good too, but the Singapore ones match up rather well with the math, and since we've used the math since the beginning, we used the science too. We're doing Interactive 2 this year, which is the 8th grade level book, and it's light enough for DS that we can cram it into the last four months of the school year after Lego League (Sept-Nov) and the Science Fair (Dec-Jan). Next year I plan to pick up the three "O-level" books, which are meant to cover two years of study (9th and 10th) of physics, biology and chemistry... and use those for either one year or two, depending on how they schedule out. Then I think we'll start on the APs with US college texts. I've not generally been impressed with homeschool-specific science offerings either... but we've not had to resort to those anyway.

For Latin, we use Lingua Latina and I adore it. DS tolerates it. It's definitely hard. Very VERY hard. But there's only been one chapter that we actually had to stop and work on for more than two weeks, so other than that he has kept up the pace. Generally I've heard the one book is considered two years of high school Latin (18 chapters/ year), and can be taken even slower for younger kids (12 chapters/ year). We're on schedule to do it at the high school rate, so far.

If you just need to declare a curriculum, and not worry too much about whether it was completely thought through, you could probably come up with a book list for English ("read, discuss, and write about: ___") and maybe "Current Events" for social studies. Those would be vague enough that you could certainly accomplish them for your required reporting, and flexible enough that you wouldn't be tied to something you decided was not quite right later.

Thank you to everyone who replied to this post. I have followed up on many of the resources and I feel much better that there are excellent options for this year in the subject areas that I listed.

I was particularly impressed with Michal Clay Thompson's Language Arts curriculum. I was already familiar with The Word within the Word, but did not know that there were so many other resources available. There seemed to be a lot of good "developing the gifted mind" sorts of books as well.

I also wanted to mention that Singapore Science does look good--I have used some of the Singapore Math books with students that I tutor and they are good--not a lot of repetition, but good conceptually. The science looks good, but does not follow our state's content standard for 7th and 8th grade. So, I followed up on a thought from ebeth--using our school text book. This was interesting--I went out to gettextbooks.com where you can do a search by ISBN number--our 7th grade science text is availble used (2004 addition--there are more recent additions) for about $7.00--including shipping! I'm thinking that we could get the book and also supplement with Singapore and things like bitesizephysics (also looks neat!) I can't remember who asked, but we would be interested in this class--January might just be the right time frame for us--assuming we make the homeschooling leap soon. I feel like we are very close.

Please post anything additional you think of--I still haven't figured out Social Studies, but after looking at the (Ohio) state academic standards, they seem so general, that studying about any culture, etc. would meet the criteria--maybe this is another place to get the text book to use as a guide and fill in with more interesting activities, reading, etc.

Thanks,

Julie

Hi, Julie,

Another thing that occurs to me is The Teaching Company materials ( www.teach12.com ). They sell DVDs and/or audio CDs of university professors teaching popular courses; they cover lots of different subject areas, and you might find something there that looks like a good fit.

minnie

Or why not just ask your son what he'd like to study and hit the library?

Do be warned, most homeschooled kids score lower on the social studies part of the Iowa than on the other parts, since it's so much more content-based than skills-based. My child could run rings around most children in knowledge of the Norse, but he hasn't yet studied Native Americans as extensively as they have, so he didn't get the perfect or near-perfect scores on that section as he got elsewhere.

<shrug> Not a big deal. Just know that it's coming.

4th grade S.S. in our school covers our state, Ohio. GS9 is finishing up a report on Native Americans. They've done a bit of studying about the land forms. This book, Ohio plants and animals / Marcia Schonberg, complemented their S.S. books very nicely. She has other books about Ohio, covering people and history that complement his S.S. book. These were all available at our local library. They're a nice overview of Ohio, written at 6-7th grade reading level, middle school interest level. And if you find something you want to study more in-depth, go for it! GS9(that stands for Grandson 9 yr old) goes to public school but we do a lot of life-long learning activities on weekends and after school.