Hi,
I wanted to ask some of you who homeschool. Of course, you want your child to get to stay a child and have fun too before growing up too fast ...

I wanted to ask some of you, how fast do you go? If your child is capable and enjoys the work, do you let them move ahead in a few subjects? All subjects? Are you expecting your child to be working on High School material early? And College material early?

The reason I ask is we're thinking of homeschooling. We have a child that is across the board gifted and very capable. We actually want child to be challenged as we see that child hasn't been this past year and has made child have a sense that things are most often easy. As both Carolyn K's articles and our psych-ed tester told us, the most important thing (1 of) would be to make sure child knows how to work/study hard at something, persevere, etc etc.

So, if we were to go at a good pace, we're thinking that there is no way we can keep child at elementary school. We may have to continue with homeschool and distance learning for high school material as child wouldn't actually be of high school age yet, etc etc.

I also think the model of distance learning via computers/home schooling is going to take off. It allows children/families that can to move forward. Wouldn't it be nice for your 16 year old to finish a certain amount of schooling and run a business and do this/that for a few years? I'm thinking it would be great to fail at a few businesses, work, try this and that between 16-20 before heading into college material -- or perhaps do it at the same time.

What do you guys think? Do you try to slow down the pace a lot so your child stays approx. the same grade as his/her age peers? If you have an older child, are they working on High School material while in elementary?

Hi Jesse

I contemplated waiting to respond to this, letting others respond first because homeschooling has been very challenging for us, so pls. take my response with a grain of salt.

My DD6 and DS2 set the pace. I would love to set the pace. I would love it if they would pull out their pencils and sit down with workbooks. Early in the year my DD declared that 'Workbooks are meaningless to me'. My DD has not been tested but is above grade level in most areas, in certain areas she is significantly more advanced. She is as strong willed as she is bright. She is tough. I have started from scratch 3 times in one school year. While I always aim to engage her, I find that it is extremely easy to slip into coercion. This was SK!!!! It has taken a full year for me to realize what works for her and what doesn't. When DD was in school (preschool and JK) she conformed and did what was 'expected' of her, unfortunately not much was expected of her, hence our decision to homeschool. Somehow amidst the chaos of year 1 homeschooling, she has jumped multiple grade levels in certain areas, but I don't think that I had all that much to do with it! The best advice that I can give is to be really flexible and adaptable, be willing to do things 'on the fly'. This is the beauty of homeschooling. It is equally important to be willing to let go of what doesn't work (even if you spent hours in prep and/or tons of money). This is the hard part of homeschooling. We don't work in any particular grade level, DD is technically entering grade one, but she is all over the map. I really try to emphasize perseverance, effort, mastery, etc. For us it has been a wild ride, very challenging for our entire family, but in the end an amazing experience. Just my 2 cents....

Annaliisa

Hi Jesse,

I agree with Annalisa that you'll find it's best to follow the natural pace that your child sets. That being said, my husband and I are not personally on board (at this early stage) with the idea of having our boys graduate several years ahead. Not only do we feel that it's important to keep our family home together until they get close to the age of adulthood, but we also think there are many social aspects to those years that are developmentally more important than graduating extremely early and starting their adulthood/careers that much sooner. ((Lots of very-early graduates do extremely well, though, so this is no judgment on other familiies' decisions!!))

It's a struggle, though, because DS1 just turned 6 and is already 2 1/2 - 5+ years ahead, depending on the subject. He is one of those ultra-fast learners, which means that we risk him jumping approximately 2 years further ahead every year (esp. with homeschooling, where you can fit much more into the school day). People keep asking us, "What are you going to do???", and frankly, we have no idea.

What we've decided to do for now is fill his education by studying "out" instead of merely "up." In other words, instead of merely focusing on standards, we're also heavily introducing history, language (latin/spanish this year), geography, more LA focus in the different subcategories, etc. For example, we're doing Story of the World, but take at least a week for each chapter (which he can read in 10 minutes) by reading at least 5-10 of the recommended reading books on each outside subject. We're doing two different curriculums for many subjects (REAL and Apologia for science; EPGY and Rightstart for math) that parallel each other but come from different angles. We're doing an immersion study in each subject, so we thoroughly study a topic in detail with everything we can find on it before moving on to the next chapter.

By homeschooling, we also have more time to let the students run with something. For example, right now my DS1 is writing a "novel" and spends several hours a day on it. When he's like that, I just scratch some of the other things off our list and move them to the following day.

Finally, we're also filling 1 full and 2-half days of our school week with co-op activities. There, we're studying science, fine arts, drama, robotics, geography, PE standards, etc. This leaves us less than 3 full days to do our "regular" work, so I suspect this should slow us down a tad!

Both my kids work ahead of grade level. WAY ahead of grade level in some subjects. It really isn't possible to keep my son at grade level, and even my younger in some areas (still figuring out my youngest). I go deep and wide and I only do "school" for a couple hours a day. They are free to explore and read beyond that on their own. Or they can climb trees and make snowmen. It's their choice after their work is over. So the work they are required and output is age appropriate. The input is at a challenge level for them. I do not try to race through material. If I need it deeper, we get more books, we invent more projects, we go on more field trips. I sign the kids up for extra classes - drama, circus arts, swimming, etc. We take the summer off to do free reading and explore outside.

Music lessons and structuring our days around practice have been great for us too. It's a great place to learn to work with a mentor, move at your own pace, and it's always challenging in one way or another.

One day we'll hit college level material with my oldest. We're hitting high school level stuff with him now at 9 without stretching ourselves. When we get there (dragging my feet), we'll come up with our next plan. We have many options locally to take college level classes.

So, I guess I'm open to all options for the future. But right now, we're all enjoying what we're doing! I'm not planning on sending a child to college to live early at this point.

And I agree with Gratefulmom . If you were to ask my DD what grade she is in, she'll tell you grade 1. We are using age appropriate titles for now, however, what we do in grade 1 is quite different from the local public school. I wholeheartedly agree with 'keeping the whole family together until they get close to the age of adulthood'. This is very important to us as well.

Annaliisa

The biggest lessons I've learned about child development is that it is a process over which we have very little control.

I absolutely understand why it is appealing to believe you can keep the child at grade level. I also appreciate the value in trying to "go wide and not deep." I understand why parents are wary of anything that seems to take away from having a full and long childhood. I understand these sentiments because I voiced them all regularly when we decided to start homeschooling our five year old kindergartner who is now a teenager.

Turns out that this process didn't evolve according to my agenda. The pace of development was startling. Even with very loose unstructured academics with very little parental direction, academics FLEW faster than I ever could have imagined (even faster than we were advised they would). This happened even with going very wide with diverse and time consuming interests like music. Kids are all different of course, but our efforts at trying stuff like using grade level materials like Story of the World resulted only in frustration for all involved.

For me homeschooling is 100% about having a happy child. For my gifted kid being able to have challenge and let his brain go at the pace it wants to go is at the very core of who he is and it is fundamental to happiness. Further, looking back I now see he was wise to allow himself to spend some time working at the outer edge of his ability because in that process he learned essential lessons about handling frustration and perfectionism which is a positive thing to have happen before adulthood.

So, my two cents, sure try to go wide, try to encourage a variety of interests, don't push or fuss about asynchronous development because it is normal. But, keep a close eye on happiness and allow for the possibility that the pace at which the child is happiest is not the one you would choose.

Hi Jesse,

I'm not homeschooling but do consider it as an option. Just wanted to offer you another view. I, personally believe you go at your child's pace. This is the complaint about public school, is it not? The reason most (not all) parents of a HG+ child homeschools is because the school could not or would not fulfill the need of their child. But does this mean you plow through the curriculum and have them through high school by age 10? Depends on the child and the family unit as a whole. If you choose not to go this route but still want your child to be challenged there is another option: enrichment. You don't have to stick to the school's idea of curriculum. If your child is interested in computers you could provide a more in depth opportunity for them. If you live near a university you might have some wonderful opportunities for him/her to be mentored by a student (grad or even undergrad upper class) and/or a professor. Other areas of enrichment: art, business planning, science, etc. Take art for an example. There are wonderful community coops with artists who would love to mentor a child and the businesses in the area would open up great opportunities. There are so many ideas when we think outside of the box.

I agree and very much plan on my kids having access to college level coursework when they need it. We're lucky enough to have many local options for that.

When my son left K and we started homeschooling, I had lots of ideas and lots of advice in my pocket. Much of it concerned not letting him tear through subjects at the speed of light....

One year later, my son is about to enter a math and science magnet school as a 7th grader. Going wide didn't work, going deep didn't work, nothing worked! He seems to have one speed when it comes to learning, fast!

While it sounds good in theory to have your child do all sorts of activities to slow the pace, it will depend entirely on your child. Finishing high school early doesn't mean they have to go off somewhere, there are always options. My DS is studying the stock market now and working at odd jobs to earn enough money to start a portfolio. So maybe the "tween" years will be spent on making money, who knows?

The only problems I have had with my DS9 were when I tried to slow him down, to fill gaps instead of letting him work at his own pace.

I'm a big fan of deep and wide. I use that every chance I get. Foreign language, extensive music education, extensive creative writing, and ad savvyness are all on our school schedule for this coming year, and they are not things that would be so thoroughly tackled in our local public school. This is my big trick for trying to slow down.

But he's way ahead in most subjects. There's no getting around it with him. He will be taking college-level classes by the time he hits a traditional high school age. <shrug> That's how it goes. With online options and community colleges, he won't be going away to college. He'll just be doing harder work. We can handle that.

Frankly, there isn't any other option.

But, yeah, I slow him down every chance I get if I can do so without sacrificing his happiness. But especially in science, that's hard to do. He's starting high school science and algebra this year, and he's a young 9. It still freaks me out, honestly.

Oh, I'll add that avoiding pre-packaged curricula seems to help us a lot with the deep and wide. Most of the pre-made stuff I've seen--and naturally, I haven't seen it all--hits things rather perfunctorily. I've had better luck with putting my own "courses" together. FWIW.

My own belief is that there is no such thing as "college level work," or "high school work," or "junior high" or "elementary" work. Those are arbitrary categories invented in the recent historical past that probably don't fit any children particlarly well.

If it were me, I would teach them as much as they want to learn -- hold nothing back. You don't have to ship them off to college just because they are done with "high school work." They can keep learning more stuff till they're old enough to move away from home, and they'll still be challenged by a good quality college.

I agree, but to get access to that arbitrarily designated college level work, one often must go to college, or at least use a curriculum that considers itself to be college-level.

Categories exist because people categorize things. That includes the people who create homeschooling materials.

BTW, I was not grade-accelerated in school, and I still found my first year of classes at a well-respected liberal arts college to be almost completely review. And that's after I tested out of most of the freshman course load, so even the sophomore stuff was pretty basic for me. I'm not entirely convinced that a kid will be challenged at college if he gets way ahead.

The best thing would be that a student could take more college classes, I think. I would have loved to have taken more courses than I got to take in college!

On this topic, has anyone heard of Cal's Early College High School program?? It comes from a Gates foundation. The description doesn't talk about gifted children, but at first read, it sounds like an interesting option for GT too!

http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/gs/hs/echsgen.asp

Early College High School
The California Department of Education partners with the Chancellor's Office for the California Community Colleges to support the Early College High School (ECHS) Initiative of the Foundation for California Community Colleges.

Early College High Schools are small, autonomous schools that blend high school and college into a coherent educational program:

They are designed so that all students can achieve two years of college credit at the same time they are earning a high school diploma (within four to five years of entering ninth grade).
Students start college work based on their performance.
By reaching out to middle schools or starting with the seventh grade and providing extensive support, Early College High Schools ensure that all students are ready for college-level courses in high school.
Early College High Schools are designed for young people who are underrepresented in postsecondary education, including: students who have not had access to the academic preparation needed to meet college readiness standards, students for whom the cost of college is prohibitive, students of color, first generation college-goers, and English language learners.

Early College High Schools serve the developmental

They just started a program here that allows kids entering 11th grade to test into a program in which they go to the CC for their final two years of high school.

This is common here and the cost is covered. We'll probably need to make that leap sooner, but definitely looking forward to possibly 2 years tuition free!

Hi everyone, thank you SO much for all your comments. We really appreciate it.

In terms of college material, we were not thinking of sending child away early, though on certain days that has crossed our mind and if child were to work/study, it would be online or locally, etc.

We were kind of thinking like Kriston and passthepotatoes, that even if we went deep and wide, there is only so much deep and wide when the material obviously will be above grade level, eventually. And no matter how deep and wide, once a certain section is covered, it has been covered. We are thinking of doing a lot of other things that wouldn't normally have been possible in a regular classroom, ...

It seems true that much needs to be classified to determine "what grade level" a student is at. We feel a sense of restriction but also that we have to still "play" partially with the system so that when High School/College courses begin to appear we can confidently say to an administrator that we have or have not done something. (Future proofing, I suppose...)

Also, being able to give the child the opportunity to work at the edge of what they know will finally allow the student to develop perseverance, learn to manage their own frustration, learn about hard work, organizational skills, learn about what they themselves are capable of ... and this, for us (at least now, in our ideal state of mind) is what we're hoping for.

We (hubby and I) really thank you for taking the time to comment. I am sure we will return to this thread often ... As I think more about this in the next little while, I will post back here.

Well, I have an eleven year old who will be taking college coursework beginning sometimes when she is twelve.

She began telling anyone who would listen to her that she was going to go to college when she was twelve.... when she was two years old. Now, this might only be moderately alarming... but for us, it's TERRIFYING, since she also has a life-threatening hidden disability that has required a lot of us as parents in terms of management. (Complicated, I know...)

We will have managed to delay her graduation from high school until she's 14, but there's no doubt that this was not what we'd have chosen. We tried NOT to 'start teaching' her too young, in fact... but it was pretty clear that if I didn't teach her some phonics, she was going to go with whole language reading skills instead.

But once she learned how to read, it was like we had lit the fuse on a Saturn V rocket. No way was I ever driving this bus. Ever. She went from phonetically controlled readers to Harry Potter under the covers with a flashlight-- in about ten months-- and never looked back. By the time she was six, she had been reading the daily newspaper for a year.

She is omnibus gifted, which is a definite bonus-- it has allowed her to still be educated via a "school" (she's effectively been accelerated four grades) which means that we don't have (and hopefully won't have) the same issues convincing our local community college to let her enroll at 12. It isn't as though they have to take our word for it. (We got a lot of that kind of push-back when we homeschooled. Maddening.)

As complicated as this makes things, it's also very definitely the right thing-- for her.

My long way of saying this is one that you don't really GET a vote on. Not really. Not with a HG+/PG kid-- they regard anything else as punitive.

Tks for digging this out, howlerkarma. It was good reading.

For us, we don't have a clue about grade level. I just think in terms of topics of interest and we dig as deep as DS8 wants. So subjects are just called by their names- algebra, calculus, whatever. Science is even easier as they're delineated by subject group. DS just goes for it and we hunt down books, information, by topic. I don't/can't do anything at all about direction and rate or depth of learning but I do help with resources (exhausting!).

We have annual grade level exams to hand in as part of the requirement for homeschooling, but I don't envisage this to be an issue. At some stage, ds will have to take the SAT with an online hsld but that's a couple of years away. We'll enjoy ourselves in the meanwhile .

I second the 'thanks for digging this up'. I just reread my old post, we must have been having a really good day LOL! And Blob, I always appreciate your perspective. We don't follow any particular grade around here either. However, today I did go over some of the grade level expectations with DD7 while she was taking a bath!!!! And I wonder why she is so intense.... I periodically do this just to calm myself down because it seems like we haven't been doing much 'school work' lately. To add fuel to my fire, I've been having all of these conversations with adults who insist that their lives would have been better if they had been pushed a little harder by their teachers and parents. I spend so much effort trying not to push that hearing an alternate viewpoint really rocks my world. Needless to say, our pace is slow in areas of low interest!

Is everyone here aware of Academic Earth?

They offer free online streaming videos of college lectures from a number of different institutions. These are a great resource to handle the issue of higher level work for kids who might not be able to keep up with the social, emotional, or organizational demands of enrolling in college courses, but who are ready to absorb the material.

The Open Course Ware project has a huge college course repository as well.

Academic Earth is amazing. The Open Course Ware link looks great too. My Canadian addition is Big Ideas You can subscribe to the video or audio podcast versions via ITunes. It's a personal fav...

Welcome HowlerKarma,
Your DD sounds like a wonderful kid. I am wondering if you are planning to send her to University for her undergraduate degree when she is older? If so, I would strongly urge you to find a way to delay her formal graduation from High School until she is old enough to 'go off' to college. She can take lots of community college classes while she is still officially in High School, but it is a little bit complicated.

Have you considered joining Davidson YSP? They sponsor an email list for parents of kids who have done or considered early college. This might be a very good resource for your situation. They have considerable experience with various colleges, questions of dorm living, etc.

Welcome and More Welcome,
Grinity

HowlerK,
I would make some inquires NOW. I've heard stories about CCs not being thrilled about taking kids under age of 16, and I don't think a High School Diploma is nescessarily going to help. A lot depends on the individuals who are making decisions. I've heard of situation where the Parent was expected to sit next to the child during class, and I don't get the picture that that is going to work well for your family.

Love and More Love,
Grinity

We have brainstormed a TON of different options over the years-- but she's also a very strong-willed and determined little creature. In other words, we're in some ways providing 'drag' as far as we are able...

luckily, we're in a good location (geographically) to have this be a smooth transition for her. She can live at home and attend community college coursework at 14, 15... and then smoothly transition into an excellent public university (and even transfer credits directly-- the two institutions have virtually 100% reciprocity arranged) for an undergrad degree.

We aren't too concerned about where she does an undergrad degree, and we know several homeschooling families locally that have had their kids follow that same path beginning at 13-15 years old. So there is some precedent for it.

While I would like it better if DD didn't graduate from high school until she's 16 or so, she would never in a million years tolerate that. Honestly, we've done pretty well to slow her down as much as we have, and it has definitely not been easy since both she and the school have wanted to accelerate her at least one more year. As parents, we said "NO. Really-- just... NO." We are somewhat hopeful that we might be able to convince her to do a gap year.

Dorm living in her case would be virtually impossible even if she were chronologically more typical, just due to the nature of her disability. Pragmatically, I mean. Oh, sure, I'm pretty savvy on the legal aspect of things, and we *could* no doubt extract accommodations to make a dorm placement possible... but there's what looks good on paper, and then there is what happens in reality. Call me a cynic, but we've learned that it's generally wiser to anticipate that others will make mistakes, and that in light of that, it's better not to give them the chance. It's a part of the management that DD has to learn in order to successfully navigate life with her particular disability. A lack of trust is actually a healthy thing-- as bizarre as that seems. Fortunately, her executive function is not at all delayed. Long explanation, and vague, I realize-- but 'disability' here is completely medical and episodic in nature; the real problem is that she's always vulnerable to the actions of those around her.

She's fortunate that DH and I both have professional experience in a variety of environments in academia-- so we have good insider info and better perspective on what's necessary/optional/not recommended as a pathway. DD has also spent a lifetime on college campuses, so she has no difficulty with inappropriate conduct in the environment.


DYS is absolutely an option, however.

Wow - you are wonderfully situated! Can I move to where you are? (humor alert)
It's so great that you have local connections and local models - priceless!

I get what you are saying about strong willed kids, and I personally think that dorm living well, has plenty of pros and cons.

I often giggle to think that in just a few years families will be able to buy the opportunity to have genetically engineered kids like this, and I would love to see the faces of those folks when them meet their strong willed kiddos. Fantasy and reality can be soooo different.

see you @ DYS!

Love and More Love,
Grinity

Definitely true, what Grinity posts above; absolutely make inquiries to BE SURE that an institution has no "issues" with a very young registrant. Many will. Some of those concerns have to do with the limitations placed on institutions of higher learning-- they are often specifically prohibited under the law from acting in loco parentis. When dealing with children under the age of sixteen or so, this has profound implications for the institution from a liability standpoint, and sometimes from an insurance one.

We had the first of those conversations when DD was just eight years old, so we understand what they have as concerns, and what we will need to do to reassure them and work with them so that it's possible.

We also know other families that have taken this same path forward with the same institutions.

Our very first step is going to be a "history" of side-by-side enrollment with a parent in a community/non-credit course or two starting this year. Art, Tai Chi-- that kind of thing. DD is fine with that and so are we. Next step will be for-credit foreign language next year-- again, side-by-side with a parent. This is also fine, since it's something we not only don't mind doing, it's something we've planned to do as a family anyway.

That's a strategy that we've crafted with input from the institution's administration, other families that have done similar things, and DD herself. If she were not okay with taking a class or three with mom and dad, then this would be a lot less likely to work. She's also (by virtue of the aforementioned disability) entirely accustomed to mom and dad being just, well, "there" like flies on the wall at most extracurricular activities.

Anyway. Grinity has some excellent points here. Hopefully I've clarified why this is likely to work out well for my DD-- and the considerations that we've had to apply in formulating this plan.

Heehee.... yeah, well... higher ed may be mighty fine around here, but there's an EXCELLENT reason why we aren't in any local brick-and-mortar schools. K through 12 is a different story.


(We're in an "orange" state... and while they theoretically have to have a plan to identity and "serve" GT kids in schools... let's just say that there are few things missing. Like actual differentiation, for starters. Or identification-- GT kiddos pretty much have to be like mine to get noticed as "gifted" candidates. Er... nor is there any funding, come to think of it. )


___________________________________

Back onto the thread topic, however...

our experience has been that homeschooling absolutely accelerated the rate of learning. Because there was no good (ie-- healthy) way to fetter DD's natural inclinations to use her learning strengths to best advantage, we found that her progress was at least 150-200% faster when homeschooling. Even as compared to what she's done since, I mean. She literally went from preK material into Singapore 3B and reading at about a Lexile 8-10 level in eighteen months.

I honestly believe that if we'd continued homeschooling, several things would have resulted:

a) DH would have had me involuntarily committed (kidding-- sort of)
b) DD would have been in need of college-level material at about 8-9 yo (we've so far managed to delay that by about three years, we think)
c) we'd have gone completely broke.

Like annalisa, I spent so much time, money, and energy on materials that DD either refused to use at all, or enthusiastically used once. (Ask me to share my horror stories about "shoebox math centers," go ahead... )

DD loved school materials and workbooks. The problem was that she'd hit a wall with it (well, that's what it looked like to ME, as an experienced educator, anyway)... next thing I knew, she and I would be in an all-out power struggle and she would do NOTHING at all for weeks. Then, without warning, the rest of the workbook (or whatever it was) would be just plain obsolete from a learning perspective. Just *boom* and mastery. I don't know how she does that, but she still does that kind of thing.

When I enrolled her in school {virtual charter school-- that is an important consideration here}, we placed her as a third grader, but I really had no idea what her actual placement should be. I only knew that she got very nearly perfect scores on the CAT5 for second grade two months previously. She then raced through the entire third grade curriculum in about five weeks, working at her own pace. The following year, she finished 4th grade by winter break, and then we had to tussle with the school over them sending her 5th grade, which they finally did-- unfortunately, she had some medical problems that prevented her from working in March and much of April, she only had about five weeks to work and only got about halfway through. We all agreed that having her repeat that for the first half of the following year would be a complete losing proposition. I think my exact words were a horrified "If that's what we're doing, someone ELSE needs to be doing it with her, because I'm not going to put myself through four months of forcing her to do things she's done previously."

We made DD promise to do her best to NOT work ahead-- to stay in synch with her (GT) classmates beginning in 6th grade. She's done that... though not without some pretty significant grousing on occasion.

We do a TON of enrichment.


This works because we control the school environment... and they control the absolute 'required elements.' We control the "how" of learning, however, and the basic pace. No drill-and-kill, and no problems allowing for the organizational skills of an 11yo.