Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Moving and switching to homeschool

We are moving at the end of the month and my children who are 5 in preschool (just turned Jan 11) and 6 in k (just turned Dec. 27). My 6 year old is doing first grade work at home and for homework which I give her. My 5 year old is doing her big sisters homework and showing it to her teacher. Since we are moving and I dont want them to miss a day of school I have started the process to enroll them in k12 and they are allowing them to go into k and 1st because of thier ages. I have homeschooled a bit before but never with this program. Has anyone else used it and if so what are your thoughts on it for advanced children?

Are you homeschooling using the K-12 individual courses, or doing something like AZ Virtual Academy, which is online public school?

I'm looking at Connections Academy, which is one of the online public school providers for our state, and there are definitely some public-schools-have-more/different-rules concerns. But in my state, you can homeschool with no oversight just by saying you're going to.

I am doing the online public school one. It is free and I cant afford anything else right now. I just dont know if its going to be best my oldest has some issues being around other children and treating them correctly. So it may just be for now. But I know educationally I can teach her better at home than they can in school but she has absolutely no social skills. This is the first time we have ever homeschooled online though so I am not sure. I just was wondering about others experiences. I liked the look of Connections Academy we have it here in California too. But I wanted to try K12 first.

If your oldest has absolutely no social skills, you might want to consider getting her evaluated to rule out Asperger's, NVLD, vision problems, or other issues that might make it hard for her to pick up or act on social cues. Giftedness does not rule out the possibility of these kinds of problems, but it can help kids compensate for them, and make them harder to diagnose.

You might also want to check out this book, and make sure any professionals who might be involved with evaluating your child have read it, too.

Thanks. She has started picking up some of the social skills, she is really overly friendly and doesnt know when to stop but I will look into everything. I dont want to not to miss a chance to help her. She trys to hard to be liked. I dont know why when she is behaving well and playing nicely everyone loves her but when she is overly friendly no one wants to hang out with her.

just an idea also, it could be intensity

many gifted ppl are intense/passionate about what they are doing, thinking, feeling and other children (or adults) may not know how to react to the intensity other than to withdraw...

best wishes

"Overly friendly" could come off as "insincere" or "pushy". If she is not picking up that this behavior does not have good results, or if she can't tell that she is making people uncomfortable, she may need more explicit instruction in how to read social cues and body language. Role playing or play-acting where the two of you take turns showing different emotions in response to different situations, especially without using words, can be helpful to teach kids who don't necessarily have an automatic grasp of these things how to read people's non-verbal signals.

Thanks for the ideas. I am hoping all goes well we are finally moved and I am getting thier work set up for school and then we are going to go talk to girl scouts hopefully it will help give them a social outlet and they can make new friends.

Congrats on the move - Yippee!

My friend took movies of her extraverted PG daughter interacting with cousins and then played it back with her daughter alone so they could go frame by frame with my friend asking leading questions....

"How do you think X felt when you did that? What do you see X's body doing that might give a hint? What do you think will happen next? What do you think X is wishing right here?"

I think this could also work with recordings of regular TV programs.

Youtube also has some interesting information about 'social stories' aimed at kids on the autistic spectrum, but perhaps useful to many kids - see


My favorite book for helping parents help their children develop age appropriate social interactions is Friends Forever: How Parents Can Help Their Kids Make and Keep Good Friends

It helped me know what realistic expectations for my child, and my child's agemates were! Then it gave me so ideas about rules to teach and enforce.

Smiles,
Grinity

Those videos look great. I am going to try them with her. That should help.