My daughter just turned 9. She will attend in a fourth grade classroom. If this works the school is willing to discuss something of a similar nature for my twins who just turned 6. This would open the door for my other children as well.
I am sure money is some motivation. I have five children, that would account for what, about $40,000 from the state if all were enrolled even part time. The other thing is that the county next to us has a gifted and talented program starting in 6th grade for math and science and they are loosing a large number of gifted kids with parents who are willing and able to drive for out of district schooling or who just up and move from the area. They are discussing closing one elementary school in the district for the next school year because of decreased enrollment brought on by a huge loss in families to the area when multiple automotive plants closed this last year. I think they are finally feeling the pinch to try something different to keep students and we finally have a director of curriculum able and willing to think outside the box to see that happen. Up until now the superintendant wouldn't allow any gifted programs because he felt they were "tracking". He is very old fashioned in that belief and nothing could sway him.
I already got another call from the teacher today with questions about my daughter and I am really getting a good feeling from her. She has only been teaching for 9 years and is very energetic and eager to see her kids do well. She has an excellent reputation with challenging kids so we are excited to see how it works.
Has your son already been through all the Real Science 4 Kids books? Sounds like he probably is but my younger daughters liked them because they don't "baby" them with watered down information and have so many labs to do. They also like the Discovery channel streaming and the classroom lessons, I forgot what it is called. We bought it through homeschoolbuyerscoop.com. It goes through middle school and is mostly videos and demonstrations. They just finished properties of matter. I use it for all my daughters. BrainPop comes to mind as well since that is also visual and goes through some of the middle school levels as well. Have you used the Hoagies for kids site? My daughter was working with quarks and gluons(sp?) of atoms with some of the websites they suggested, again mostly video learning. We combine them to bring more depth to the real science4kids materials.
Last edited by melmichigan; 01/29/09 08:25 AM.
