Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Horizontal diversification

Since I accelerated, I have been a big fan. But lately, after reading the posts, I am starting to think of horizontal diversification rather than vertical acceleration.

Thinking of the Chinese model where they learn a lot, I thought if she learns quickly, why not more of different things?

I have written that she is going to take Mandarin this fall. She already takes piano, ballet, gymnastics. I missed the Science & Nature program at the museum this year, but there are many programs I am committing to for science. So she can read and spell and do math beyond the K curriculum, but she is a young K already with a 9/28 birthday so why not expand the breath?

Yes, it is nice to have intellectual peers, but there are bound to be some in the circle.

Comments, opinions?

Ren

I totally agree. This has served us well for seven grades so far. There are so many subjects and fun things to learn out there.

That's pretty much how we have approached homeschooling so far. There is so much to learn out there and unless the kid is really dying to move faster (and some are- I think that I might have actually finished college if I had been allowed to start at 15), I think deeper is a great way to go. It's not possible in every situation or with every kid, but I think if you can get the right combination of the two, it's a valid alternative to radical acceleration. The only subject we really struggled with was math, because it's such a linear subject and Ds7 is so intuitive once a concept is presented, I felt like we were hurtling forward almost out of control. It was hard for me to step back and look for other ways. But once I did, I saw (thanks to a lot of help from this board) that even with math there are other ways to go than up.

I agree as long as long as "horizontal" does not actually mean more of the same work, which is how some schools define the term.
We are happy as long as our DD is learnig something.

Good point about the underchallenge during the 6 hours at school. Though, as for being chauffeur. I got a new bike with a child carrier. I plan to do my exercise as I take her to piano or gymnastics and then home.

During the 6 hours, there is lunch and outside time. Gym, art. I do not see any need for her art to be accelerated...;) But I am now thinking how much she does know, besides the reading and math. Like geography, science.

She was in swim camp and while they were having snack, some guy came to clean one pool. The instructor said that she left the group and went over to see what he was doing and kept asking questions until she was called back for the rest of her lesson. So we will see what happens, if she has problems, they said they will accelerate.

Ren

Yep, I agree that it's highly individual. In two of the gifted books I own, it talks of 2 different gifted programs being required. ONe for the gifted students who like to go deep and slow. The other is for those who need to go fast, forward, and deep. My son was just so burnt out after 7hrs at school (includes bus time), there wasn't much time for anything else since he already had travel soccer 3 days/week. He just wanted to be home and build with LEGOs and then the evening fight over homework would begin.

It really depends on the kid needs to be looked at on the individual level. I know gym and art was so not enough for my DS and specials were only 2x/week with gym 2x/week. Art is not his thing anyhow...it's math, science, history which is a core part of the day spent unhappy.

I'm with Master of None and Kcab - I want this stuff to happen at school. We do things on our own, but DS really does need playtime/downtime, and, as kcab said, 6+ hours of school eats brains! Also, I want to be able to spend our home learning time on things that cannot be learned in school - like how to cook, how to use power tools, how to garden, how to sew.

So what are the magic words? How does one convince a harried teacher to invent ways to sneak in something meaty for the whole class and not just send one kid to the corner with a book? I'm not sure it's possible, what with so much of the curriculum being out of the teacher's control. But could I someday get one teacher to try one project? Hmmm... that might be possible, given the right teacher and the right suggested project, but I'm afraid I'd never be able to make it snowball into the world I envision.

So I continue spinning my wheels....

What about kids that are agressive about their own curriculum? Anybody out there? Has anyone's kid told the teacher they know this, ask more questions than the teacher expects, tells the teacher they are bored?

The teachers told me last year, in preschool Montessori, that DD was telling them she was bored but with Montessori, they found new things for her. K will be different.

Ren

I agree that it's a very individual thing.

On the one hand, K has more play and fine motor skill work and less academic stuff. Grade 1 is pretty focused on academic stuff and so might be a good one to skip, especially for someone who's beyond parts of it already at the start of K anyway.

With our DD, DH and I both realized that skipping K was necessary for her. Her fine motor skills are beyond the K level anyway, and she loves to write. So going straight to first will be a good match for her desire to write and she'll get better at the lowercase letters. I think a problem with NOT skipping can be that the child self-learns stuff that could have been learned in school instead, if it had been presented earlier, via a skip. A lot of our kids will still be ahead after a skip in some areas, but at least most won't be ahead everywhere. If a skip is delayed or doesn't happen, some wind up being too far ahead in every respect and don't learn study skills (or even the concept of needing to study).

I never skipped a grade but spent most of elementary school wishing I had. I enjoyed kindergarten (arts & crafts, stories, etc.) but was bored silly in 1st grade. So K was a good fit for me.

We did a lot of extra stuff with DS9 (sports, afterschooling, trips) when he was in 1st and 2nd grades and wound up feeling tired all the time. Now we try to make most of the extra activities "organic." This is to say that travel time is at a minimum or non-existent (e.g. gymnastics next door to the school). League sports are out, for example. No way am I driving 30 miles to a soccer game on Saturday morning.

As for the aggressiveness about wanting to learn, I haven't met many teachers who go out of their way to help. A couple spring to mind, but the hit-or-miss aspect of it all is frustrating. I told DS9's pre-K teacher that he could read, but she just looked at me blankly. His K teacher was very helpful in that regard, though. The next good one was last year.

Val

Thanks. The posts are very helpful. I guess there is this anxiety. Although I think it is going to be fine. For someone who has done 7 countries in 8 days, I am not worried about being a chauffeur. I only have one and we do live in Manhattan, so I bike 1 mile to Mandarin from school. Two miles to piano (where her ballet is also), but that is 2 blocks from home.

And since I am someone who has gone to London for lunch, I look forward to traveling with her. She was great when we went to Central America last year, excited about seeing Mayan pyramids. So I have 3 trips planned post Christmas.

And since we spend our summers on the beach, she gets great experiences here, like yesterday the neighbors went for a walk on the inlet and found all kinds of stuff, including a sea horse. So she held it etc.

Everything counts. The tennis lessons, the gymnastics. What I am finding is her understanding of the world expanding. And the piano lessons -- as painful as they are for me, since I must practice with her -- is so valuable to teach her perseverance. Everyone knows how easily things come to these kids. There are times where she is so determined but also times, she dismisses when it is difficult.

Strange the comments about K is mostly play. Here, kids must be reading at the end of K, or there is a request to send them to remedical reading in the summer. This was an Upper West side public school my friend's daughter went to and she had to take the summer reading. We are in NJ for the summer and they have 10/1 cut-off and parents are holding back kids with summer birthdays because they think K is like grade 1 and their kids are not ready. I cannot imagine holding DD back, even if ND. In NYS you cannot for public school. You start late, you go to grade 1 and catch up, expecting you went to preschool when you were suppose to go to K.

So I am willing to be chauffeur, I am willing to travel everywhere and plan trips to the Liberty Science Center on Saturday mornings. And practice piano with her every day. We used to have date night but that made me too tired, since I still had to get up the next morning. So now we all go to the Harvard club on Friday nights to go dancing and have dinner. DD loves it and actually there are a few families for Friday night so it is nice. So no date nights. That is our sacrifice. But we do get them on the cruises, when DD runs to the kids' club after she eats her dinner.

Ren