Hi all! I am brand new here. My DD4 was just tested a few weeks ago, about a month after her 4th bday. I am a bit clueless to the results and didn't even ask for a copy. I think her IQ was 139, but I am not even positive about that. Just emailed the tester for verification. A brief history of our family- I am a teacher, laid off due to a school dropping half its students. I was pregnant at the time and now have a 3 month old DD. So, we are pulling DD4 out of preschool. I have had multiple conferences with her preschool teachers, heads of departments, and even the head of school for 2 years. It's the best private school in New Orleans IMO, and I am really upset at having it turn out so awful. I was basically told she would learn social skills and that was it. Now that I am unemployed and home with DD3mo anyway, we have decided to homeschool. I have taught school for 10 years and have a Masters in Early Childhood. Still, I feel overwhelmed at the thought. Any advice is hugely appreciated. I need information about structure, curriculum, computer games, sites, etc. She is ready to read but not past BOB books (self-taught) and DRA 6 or 8. She had mastered all kindergarten math skills before her 3rd bday. (Then came the 2 wasted years of preschool.) I have tons of materials that all seem too easy and I taught first grade, but the second grade books I looked at seem too hard. Could be lack of exposure? I guess I am needing direction. We are hoping for gifted preK placement for next year, but it's a lottery (Find out March 7).

Thanks!
Holly

Welcome from another new mom here. I wish you luck for the lottery, but maybe you'll enjoy homeschooling once you get a feel for what works with your daughter. I'm planning on homeschooling my son (currently he's 2y4m) for a few years to start off and I've gotten a lot of good ideas just by looking around on here, so I bet you will too. It's a great place for support.

Hi Holly. I'm from the North Shore and my DW homeschooled our DD for her K year last year, so we might have something to offer in terms of parallel experiences.

My DW took some classes in early childhood development but never went anywhere near the level of a Master's degree, and though she was wracked with doubts about homeschooling initially, she did a wonderful job. I think the biggest qualification is knowing your DD and being responsive to her needs, which means nobody is better qualified to teach her than you are.

The structure can be tailored, which is one of the most awesome things about homeschooling. In DD's case, her "school day" was only three hours or so. DW would review a language arts topic with DD, and turn her loose on some worksheets that reinforced it. Ditto math. Science ended up becoming a mixture of research and art, because DW would help DD put together a book about whatever they were talking about. They spent a lot of time on biology, and so my DD has little books they made full of facts on amphibians, another on birds, reptiles, etc.

And Wednesday was art day, all day. DD loved Wednesdays.

DW found a store for homeschoolers that carried all the necessary materials, plus they coordinated certain group classes. DD took Spanish.

Oh, and you might want to think ahead to homeschooling your DD through K, too. I don't know what this gifted pre-K might have to offer, but since your DD sounds like she's already ready to graduate from K, it may fail to live up to your expectations. I can't speak to the privates, but the LA public school system makes entry into the gifted program extraordinarily difficult at age 5 or less to exclude hot-housed children who have been endlessly drilled since 2 but are otherwise ordinary in their ability levels. At that age, a 139 IQ result won't make the cut. At first grade, combined with the kind of achievement results it sounds like you should be able to expect, it will easily make the cut.

Thanks, Dude. She actually made the preK/kinder cut for gifted here, so maybe that wasn't her fullscale # I saw. Why it is so secretive is beyond me. I mean, she is MY kid! LOL. Anyways, Hynes has a class that is gifted kids only. Hoping for that. Only hs now because I am already home with other DD.

I just checked the state guidelines, and they stipulate a pre-K or K child would have to be 2.5 standard deviations above the mean on an IQ test, which on a test using SD = 15 translates to a 139 IQ, if I'm doing my math right. So I guess your DD hits the cutoff after all, by the skin of her teeth.

At 1st grade a 130 IQ result gets your kid straight into the door, a 123 gets them in when accompanied by certain achievement test results, and a 115 will make the cut if accompanied by sufficient achievement results and a staff recommendation. So as I said, it gets significantly easier.

Our tester did say it was hard to qualify in prek. I wasn't sure what the qualifications were. Glad she made the cutoff. She is definitely not one of these that is skilled and drilled. I even own the 9 blocks and refused to let her play with them for fear of skewing the data. I didn't get out my tons of DRA leveled books because I didn't want to pressure her into reading before she was ready. When she taught herself how, I got them out for her. Curious what prek holds at this gifted charter school. They won't even let me tour it which does make one wonder.

Consider yourself lucky that you have the charter school option, because unless my DW was willing to drive for two hours every day, we don't. STPSD is unfriendly to the idea of charters.

Hi Holly - Welcome!

Can you say more about the overwhelmed feeling? What are your goals, fears, suspicions?

Talking things out in front of a bunch of sympathetic ears really helps, even if the fingers are doing the talking and the eyes are doing the listening.

Good for you for emailing to get more Info on the scores. Ask what sort of test it was (WPPSI is a common one, but not the only one) - see if there are subscale scores too.

Smiles,
Grinity

Welcome ! So, do you think that you're going to wait to hear on admission to the gifted pre-K before you decide on homeschooling? Either way, I don't know that I'd be hugely concerned about a formal curriculum for pre-K. Once you get to K or so, depending on your homeschooling philosophy, you may wind up getting more formal about it assuming you are thinking of homeschooling longer term.

You might want to take a look at some of the lesson plans on the Mensa for Kids website: http://mensaforkids.org/school_template.cfm?showPage=educational_activity_plans.cfm

and the homeschooling tips on the Davidson site: http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10453.aspx

There are a lot of resources out there for homeschooling and a lot depends on how relaxed you want to be about it and whether you want to buy curriculum or start with the free stuff online. There is a lot of free stuff!

Cricket,
Thanks for the sites. I will check those out. I don't want to buy a curriculum. I literally have thousands of dollars of materials for teaching her. I just lack a direction for what to do with all of it.

Grinity,
It was the Wisc and the Woodcock-Johnson that was administered. The only thing I recall off the top of my head was that she scored very significantly higher in several sections and much lower (all things relative) on others. Coding was the one thing she did poorly on. Tester said dd did not pay any attention to the fact that she needed to go quickly. The sections she did well on were the ones that typically boys score well on. Tester called them the engineering, architecture, pilot type sections. Scored 19 on 3 sections I think.

As for overwhelmed, for one, I am just now adjusting to having 2 kiddos and having dd4 at school is very helpful. I also worry about changing the relationship between us. Teacher is truly a different role. I am not concerned about academics. Honestly, her preschool class is just now counting aloud to 6. I can't suck any more than that! Lol.

Based on what you are saying, I'd expect that you'd want to take a look @ WISC Technical Report 4: http://www.ksde.org/Portals/0/Special%20Education%20Services/gifted/WISCIVTechReport4.pdf which gives you a way to calculate an alternate IQ score for kids whose speed or memory indeces differ significantly from their perceptual reasoning or verbal indeces.

If she got 19s on all three pieces of the PRI index (perceptual reasoning), first of all WOW!, and secondly, take a look at applying to DYS for her.

So it seems to me that in all those piles of materials must be some assment tools. It looks to me like the first step is to pretend say that she is a child placed in your classroom (pretend 2nd grade) who had been adopted from Russia and no one truely know what age or aptitude the child had. What would you do in that situation? Run some assesments and start recording observations about how the child did with various tasks. For kids without ASD one can pretty much assume that emotional happiness is a good indicator of the right level of the work. If yoour daughter appears to be enjoying herself and is willing to try new challenges then you can assume things are working.

If you haven't read John Holt's Unschooling that might be useful. In my observation, good unschoolers become very skilled at observing a child's behavior and coming up with individualized learning support.

Keep us posted....of course you will feel lost until you start trying so do start gently but get started.

Love and more love
Grinity

The assessment materials I have are for end of kinder which she could do nearly a full 2 yrs ago. The other testing items I have are only for reading. She is only about mid kinder. For math, she is about mid to end of first grade, but honestly I think that is only bc she has not had exposure to the concepts such as fractions. I bought a few first grade workbook this weekend. She was in love since we haven't had a workbook in 2 yrs. At that time her fine motor skills were not at the level of workbook, but she could answer all the prek items in it. I digress.

Cricket, what is DYS? And thanks. I believe it was the perceptual reasoning she scored the 19s on. I guess I should be impressed? Lol. This makes me feel super clueless.

Grinity, I will look for the Unschooling book. Thanks!

Do you have any friends with assesment tools you could borrow?

In the meanwhile you could collaborate with dd in ranking/organizing/exploring the materials you have to create a document and perhaps estimates of when to share the various materials with the baby and in what order. I think. Figuring out which materials can be used for the broadest group of children is very interesting.

Smiles
Grinity

I have a few thoughts from reading this thread a few times.

When you get her WISC/WJ reports, you might want to post the information here. There are some posters on the forum who are really, really good at describing a child's strengths/weaknesses just from looking at the IQ patterns. It sounds like your tester didn't give you much detail about your child's results; you might benefit tremendously from their insight.

Make sure you have a lot of the "hands on" materials -- art supplies like clay, legos, erector sets, snap circuits, etc. Your daughter may enjoy those. (as long as you can keep the little pieces away from baby)...

DYS is Davidson Young Scholars: http://www.davidsongifted.org/youngscholars/

Good luck with the lottery. It is always nice to have choices. If you do get in, is there a way you could sit in the pre-K/K class for a long visit. That might help you decide if it is a good fit. The trick is these kids can learn SO fast, what works this month may not be a good fit in September...

And, I think you're in a great place with your child. She is young and you've already figured out so much about her. That's not so easy when you have another little one in the mix.

Thank you all for your insight. I actually discussed with dd what she wants to learn about when at home. Her 4 year old answer? "I want to memorize all the Taylor Swift songs!" Uh. Ok. Not exactly what mommy had in mind. Lol. Not to mention, I think she mastered that objective already. Haha.

I was told I will not get full-scale results. How can this be? I paid $550 for private testing for no results? Not sure how to push that issue.

Supplies. Is there a way to post pics in this forum? I have tons and tons and tons of supplies. I have a spare house (Don't ask. Lol.) in which to have school. I have separate areas for dd4 and dd3mo. It's awesome. Now if I let her do what she wants to all day, she will do art projects of her own determination for hours on end and be irritated when we have to clean up. Puzzles are also big. She can do 200 pieces independently, but I prefer the 100 so it doesn't take so long. Then I wonder if I am doing her a disservice with that opinion.

She isn't so into building things, i.e. legos. Gave her marshmallows and toothpicks. Showed her how to build structures. Let her go to it. What did she make? About a dozen ballerinas. It was a nice reminder that she is still just a 4 year old girl at the end of the day.

Oh good grief. So it begins. I called the district office to check our status. Lady tells me they have been closed for Mardi Gras so she doesn't have my dd information. I tell her it was faxed on the 15th. She acts like it is absurd that I am bothering her. Tells me my 30 days for the IEP start after she approves my child's test scores. When I asked about services for this year, she said that is all up to me. Said they could put her in current preK spot if room. But realistically, if it tales her another say, 2 weeks, then 30 days, then 10 to service, is there a point to doing some of April and May? Also said most people just do the testing to get in for next year. I knee this, but want to start out strong. Advice?

I think that at age 4 letting her do art projects all day long is wonderful. Develops that small motor, and the visual motor. I like the idea of letting her do the 200 piece puzzles if she enjoys it. I'm wondering what's hard about how long they take. Perhaps your Mom-Gut is telling you that she needs some growing experiences with being flexible enough to 'stop and start' a project. That way you don't dread the bigger projects. So don't pick her very favorite sort of activity, more like an activity she is 'ho hum' about, and explain that the lession is gracefully starting and stopping. Maybe she gets a treasure hunt clue, or a new art material everytime she stops and does 10 jumping jacks, and then starts up again smoothly?

The great thing about homeschooling is that you can let her do art projects all day for 4 months and (she won't fall behind) and then she'll suddenly get interested in something more obviously academic. Or come back here and I'll give you idea how to teach mathmatics using Taylor Swift lyrics. Reading too.
(Did you know you can download all the song lyrics off the internet?) Blow up a favorite verse and cut it apart and get her piecing it back together. Then she can count up if there are more words or more syllables...how many more? Does the average difference change from song to song? .....it (can) goes on and on. Just keep practicing that on and off switch ((wink))

Smiles,
Grinity

It sounds like you have an amazing space for your dd's learning - so if it was me, I'd let her do art all day long and give her the large challenging puzzles, let her leave her art or puzzles out for as long as she's interested in them, even if it's for several days. If she's into Taylor Swift - is she also into music? Does she have some things she can do musically such as a keyboard or piano or kid-instruments, something to shake etc?

Maybe you could have her illustrate a book made from a Taylor Swift song? Or make up a dance? FWIW my girls and their neighborhood friends are huge Taylor fans

Best wishes,
polarbear

Ok. I got actual results today and am more confused than ever. I swear this tester lady is nutty. She told me verbally that dd4 tested as high as possible in 3 sections, but looking at the results she sent, the highest score is 17. Clearly one of those things is wrong. I am guessing the 17s are correct. So, here is the breakdown.

Wisc III
Info 17
Vocab 14
Word Reasoning 16

Block Design 17
Matrix Reasoning 14
Picture Concepts 17

Coding 11
Symbol Search 14

Full Scale IQ=99.5%
Verbal 99%
Performance 99%

On the coding I understand they have to draw something? My perfectionist took way too long to do this. She may have the best writing in her preschool, but it takes her forever bc she wants it to be perfect.

Woodcock Johnson
Letter ID/Word ID 95%
(This is not indicative of her abilities. The first word on the test was "on" and she said "no". When she realized she couldn't fix it and knew it was wrong, she refused to do the rest. Other words were words I am 100% positive she knows, such as "dog" which the night before she had told my husband spells "God" backwards.

Applied Math Problems 99% Grade 1.3
She topped out when she could not count money. When asked how much several pennies and a nickel was, she replied "Not enough to buy anything."

So, input?

OK, I'm no help on the scores, but this is HILARIOUS! You gotta be impressed by the droll sense of humor! She sounds pretty special to me

I'm confused too. First, was she really given the WISC-III, not the WPPSI-III? The subtests you post are on both the preschool version (WPPSI) and the child version (WISC), but the WISC also has two other subtests, so I'm guessing the WPPSI. Plus, the WISC-III is very outdated and wouldn't likely be used now.

I missed her age on my prior post; the technical report I posted is only usable for calculating a GAI on the WISC-IV, not the WPPSI or the WISC-III.

She technically could have hit soft ceilings on those 17s by getting some of the easier questions wrong and some of the harder questions correct, and not missing enough in a row to discontinue to subtests until they reached their end.

On the WISC, the correlary subtests with the highest g loading (most related to intelligence) are generally considered to be vocabulary first in the verbal index, followed by information, and then word reasoning. Vocab is also one that is most subject to exposure, though. For the perceptual or performance index, all three of those subtests are considered about the same in g loading with matrix reasoning coming in the highest, followed very closely by block design, and then picture concepts as somewhat lower. Coding is usually considered to be a poorer measure of "g" and symbol search falls at about the same spot as picture concepts (just a tad higher) in measuring "g." This is all, of course, for the WISC, but I'd imagine that the WPPSI would be similar.

My apologies. It is thw WPPSI-III.

And Cricket, DD was 4 years, 1 month at testing.

It's so easy to be confused with all the info that comes back with these tests - but really, it looks like most of your dd's scores line up nicely and most likely make good sense.[/quote]


Her coding score really isn't that far off from her other scores, and I *think* most kids have some little bit of deviation in subtest scores. I've always been told that anything less than 1 SD is not significant.




If you don't have them, I'd ask for the actual scores for each of these - percentages can apply to a range of scores.


I'm confused here if you've put the correct percentage down (95%) and then are saying it's not indicative of her abilities - 95% is very high! And it's right in the same range as her ability scores, which I would interpret to mean she's a child with high ability who is testing at her ability level - all that is good.


That is just soooooo danged cute!!! And true!

Hope that all helps a bit -

polarbear

Polarbear, what I mean by the woodcock-johnson not being indicative is that she *only* did letters and no words at all, but knew every word the lady showed me.

Can any of you clue me in to what coding actually is?

The coding is a timed subtest where the child copies symbols.

momto2ms - my DD did the WPPSI III at 4yrs 9mths. She "soft" ceilinged 3 sub tests (information, vocab, word reasoning) exactly as cricket described - by making silly mistakes along the way, or giving half answers (she doesn't like to talk to strangers) but she reached the end of the test before hitting her actual limit of ability.

She had Object assembly substituted for Matrix Reasoning, which the psych declared spoiled as she was tired and difficult at the end of the 1st session (it was done painfully slowly over two sessions). She hit the hard ceiling on that one, but the maximum score for her age was 17, not 19.

And then she did two repetitions of each coding item, refused to do anymore and watched the timer for the last half of the test. She scored a perfect 10 - in half the available time. It is possible that she chose to stop because she finds visual motor skills hard, because she does struggle in this area. None the less her score reflects what she could do in half the time, she was not told she needed to do as much as possible or as fast as possible, just how to do the task, it was clear to me that she felt she had demonstrated mastery (she did have 100% accuracy in what she did).

Six months later she was retested by a gifted specialist using the SB5, who was a) able to engage her and b) fast and snappy. her VIQ didn't go up much (2 points I think?) but everything else came into line and so she had a FSIQ 8 points higher, more even all around and more useful portrait of her in general.

Her WPPSI scores were very similar to your DDs:

Word Reasoning 16
Information 17
Vocabulary 17

Block Design 17
Picture Concepts 13
Picture Completion 13
Object Assembly 17

Coding 10

Mum,
That is so interesting. Their scores are similar. How old is your dd now?

Our tester gets no points for personality. Lol. Dd talked her ear off, but she certainly didn't offer much info. I am sure dd soft ceilinged (Is that a word? Lol) considering the tester told me she scored as high as possible on 3 sections. I have a kid who is very "lalala" so I am not shocked at any timed sections with low numbers. And they took NO breaks. She took the entire test and the woodcock in just over an hour.

She's 5yrs 7mths.

Week one went well. She discovered workbooks, which she loves. We did Mardi Gras bead art, coffee filter art, glitter, etc. We read lots of books. I introduced chapter books with Freckle Juice and an American Girl book. Things went a lot more smoothly than I thought they would. Thanks for the support from everyone!