Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments My imperfect homeschooling exeriment

I try to remind myself that the main reason we're homeschooling DS8 is because the school we have here couldn't challenge him and he was acting out. So I'm finally learning that if he acts out for me, it might be the challenge level.

But finding sufficient challenge for these kids is a hard job! It's no surprise that we've all had a rough time with that. How do you find the right level of material for kids who teach themselves the math on the pre-tests? It's not easy!

He sounds so much like like my kid. He loved playing Trivial Pursuit, but at age 11 it is Cash Cab and Who Wants to be a Millionaire or Jeopardy or online quizzes. He loved learning about everything so he watched a lot of educational history and science shows, spent a lot of hours online reading Wikipedia and looking up any words or phrases he didn't know. In school, my son would have had to do a lot of writing and coloring and would not have had the time to learn as much as he learned at home, but I still spent many nights worrying about reaching his potential when I had so much trouble getting him to do anything that involved writing. On a good day at age 7, I could get him to do the two hours of work that I asked him to do. Most days were not what I would call good days, but we got through it. Sometimes I yelled out of frustration and told him if he didn't do his work I would have to put him back in public school, but it wasn't long before he told me he didn't believe I would really do it because I cared too much about his education. He would reluctantly do the writing but it would take him such a long time because he had motor dyspraxia/dysgraphia.

If he got through the writing, he got to play video games and he really liked online role playing games. He would often make up stories to go along with the games. He would tell me the stories but he wouldn't write them down because writing was such a problem for him. He did type a script for me once for one of his stories, and it was good enough that I decided not to push him on writing, but math was a different story. I did make him do at least a little bit of math every day but sometimes it was just online math games or mental math or I would have him write out one or two problems (I picked the hardest ones) and then I acted as his scribe when his hands got tired or found the writing too frustrating. He is so happy to have finally made it to a point where he is allowed to use the calculator more because it makes math a lot more fun for him. He also told me he would have liked math more if I had let him do more word problems when he was younger.

Bronxmom, I have a DS7 who is very similar. I have finally figured out (after 1-1/2 years) that he is a Discoverer. He does not like to be 'taught' anything! He needs to learn and figure it out on his own, specifically without me in the room. So when I need to 'teach' him something I use pudding. We are working on spelling and cursive and using pudding, whip cream, ice cream, etc. He loves it! We only do <10 mins a day on what I deem important for him to learn. Can u video tape this for documentation? We also form letters/words with playdoh. Homemade playdoh with scents added in work awesome! (like allspice, cinnamon, etc)

I also took Kimck's advice and only make him do 1 worksheet in math and LA a day. Surprisingly I am filling up his folder with tons of stuff he is doing on his own. Lately he found mayfly nymphs and has been obsessed with them so I had him write 1 sentence a day on them, draw a picture and write spelling words on them. Then I took the words and made word search puzzles, etc with his words. Slowly I am beginning to accept the process.

Oh and on the really bad days, I like to remind myself what the PS told me, "Gifted kids don't really need much anyways. They are fine on their own." ((Humor alert-sarcastic smiley inserted here))

I'm jumping on board a bit late, but Wolf is in an Independent Study program and his teacher sat me down one day and really opened my eyes as to how much learning he was actually doing. I was worried that we weren't "doing" enough "school." She made me count up all the time he spends every day doing educational activities, TV, video games, books, playing out doors, martial arts classes, "actual" schoolwork, talking to me about science etc... We over doubled the hours he needed in a day and so little of it seemed like actual "school" to me but it all counted.

Can you let him dictate some, not just writing, but math and other stuff as well. Can he do projects that don't involve writing, but still show mastery if that's what the powers that be need for proof?

We have "School Meetings" on a regular basis. The kids love having a certain measure of control in the way they're educated, and tend to work a whole lot harder when they've agreed beforehand.

I think I'd like to introduce him to my daughter!!!

Hi Bronxmom, I am very late to to the thread. We are not alone! It doesn't help that these kids are very verbal and know how to push our most explosive buttons .

Kriston is right - the only thing we can do is change ourselves. I remind myself that associations have a very strong impact on learning, and if the association is negative, it will be tougher for them to want to learn. The positive is that as parents, we can totally change their associations once we sort things out. So hang in there!

BTW, we actually stopped homeschooling because I was exhausted trying to find the appropriate challenge/methodology that would take. Sadly, school is worse despite the flexibility the Gifted Board promised us. But strangely enough, our afterschool curriculum is going wowzers because DS feels he needs to do something everyday to get his brains going. I can't see this as a long term solution (it's eating into his reading and down time). We'll have to rethink our steps going forward ...