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My DS4 doesn't read yet and he's not terribly interested in books, so I doubt that he's going to be one of the types of gifted kids who teaches themselves to read at 4.

He scores high on the visual spatial section of his test (The psychologist said it was the highest she'd ever seen.). I'm getting a (very expensive!) copy of "Upside Down Brilliance" soon and I hope that gives me some insight into his brain.

I'm thinking of homeschooling next year (He's currently in a Montessori program.) and sort of experimenting with different ways of teaching him.

It's been really difficult because he'll refuse activities that are "too easy" but also shut down when something becomes too hard. For example, he's been playing Dreambox, but has come to a point where his only activity choices are three things that he doesn't quite get immediately -- or want to take the time to figure out -- he just gives up.

I could plan 10 activities and he won't want to do any of them.

He doesn't usually do well with independent activities either, so he requires a lot of attention.

So just wondering if anyone out there has some suggestions for the type of kid who's not yet ready to totally jump into a project on his own and lose himself in it.

Does he enjoy being read to?
I would think that at this stage if you can inspire a love of reading, by reading out loud to him, then you can begin to introduce so many other topics. And if you are reading to him, you don't have to worry about too easy or too hard, because you are right there to wade through it with him.
I guess it would help to know what he does like to do..but without knowing, I would just focus a lot on reading aloud.

With my kids there was a huge burst of maturity and interest in reading and writing around 5 then they took off. I would not stress about it just yet.

He doesn't particularly enjoy being read to. He likes a bedtime story, but could do without reading throughout the day. It's hard to find a book that captures his attention, and I haven't really found a particular theme that will consistently work. He does tend to be more interested in science books, so I do tend to choose those. We are very lucky in that our library has subject packets for homeschoolers that include 3-7 books on the same topic, sometimes with other tools for learning. But it's hit or miss. I got a packet on music that he's not that keen on. But he does show interest in the Titanic one.

He really likes to do science experiments, especially ones that are explosive (baking soda and vinegar). Those can occupy his attention for long periods of time, but some experiments are pretty much 5 minutes of preparation, then 30 seconds and it's over.

With regard to reading, I've been looking into it and have heard from parents that it is kind of a developmental milestone that all kids reach at different ages. But once it clicks, it clicks. That made me relax a bit. He's actually really good with individual-letter phonics, but can't blend them together to recognize a word. For example, he can say cuh-aaa-tuh, but not recognize it as "cat". Some of the visual-spatial resources have said that VSLs do better with learning sight words first, so we've created a "word box" with words that have meaning to him (booger and Gangnam Style, for instance).

I struggled with him not reading and not having an interest in books for awhile because I was a gifted child who taught myself to read at 3 or 4 and was reading extensively by first grade. I love reading and always imagined myself reading a lot with my kids. But that doesn't happen with my son. Since hearing from other parents that the children tend to just get it when they're ready, I've eased up.

It just seems that the homeschooling would go so much more smoothly if he was able to read independently. We have a 14 month old as well, so it's hard to give DS such undivided attention all the time.

See if he'll take a paintbrush, marker, or pencil and see if he'll follow your lead in doing a "how to draw" project. You get your own pad of paper and he gets his own pad of paper and you follow the steps togeather. I think that covers a lot of early lessons because you're learning to follow directions, there are sequential steps in order, and it works out those fine motor pre-writing skills. It's also very forgiving if you're not exact your picture can still look very good, while early attempts at writing usually don't look great to the kid. I had good luck with having him draw with a pencil and then have him make it darker with a marker because that smooths out wobbly lines a little bit.
Also google "the big numbers song" on youtube if he can't count to 100 yet, or schoolhouse rock "count by 5s" if he can. And after that use bedtime math .com for a daily math word problem like "If you have two cookies and eat one how many are left." If he doesn't get the problem of the day reword it with a smaller number or replace the objects with cookies or candy.

LMS, you are raising a clone of my son. Both my husband and I were self-taught readers by age four or so, so it was surprising to me that neither of my kids were. (My EG/PG daughter with a VCI of 166 didn't fully emerge as a reader until 7, but was reading three or four grades above within six months.) At four, my son knew all his letter sounds and could sound out words and even recognize some sight words, but he wasn't reading or anywhere close. We used Dreambox too, and my son stopped a couple of times because it got too hard or unappealing, and I had to help him over the "hump."

I suspect he may also be a VS learner. He hasn't been tested except for the Peabody Picture Vocab thing, which I understand is a quick and dirty IQ test. According to his standard score on that, he is highly gifted. We have always homeschooled, and I tend toward relaxed homeschooling, if not outright unschooling.

My son has a strong personality. He has a mind of his own. It is a lovely trait in a way. He tends to get fairly obsessed with things and pursue them passionately, and then move on to something else. Here are some of his passions starting around age 5, and up until now: chess, animation, computer game design, drawing, Tolkien, foam weapon design, Dav Pilkey, building backyard forts, writing novels. These passions tend to circulate. Some go away, and then come back.

If I were to make him do something when he was younger, he would fight me hard. I think I handled this by seriously restricting access to things I didn't want him doing -- TV and video games -- and when he got hooked on something I found to have academic value, I let him go as long and hard as he wanted to, and even supported it.

Now that he is older, we do have more "have tos" in our homeschooling life, and he is grumpily compliant.

I will say this about the reading in particular. I really wanted to raise a kid who loved books, and when he was a toddler, he wouldn't sit still long enough for me to read to him. There were a couple of strategies I employed that worked.

First, I set aside some special reading time that included a caloric incentive. I would make some herbal tea and offer a small plate of cookies. We would sit down together, and while he ate his snack, I would read. Because we did this every day (or nearly every day), it became a bit of a ritual.

Second, audiobooks. Lots and lots of audiobooks. At that age, we listened to Lemony Snickett, Junie B. Jones, Wayside School, and Geronimo Stilton. (My son loves humor.) We downloaded them from the public library for free, and both my kids had their own MP3 players. We listened to a book every time we were in the car, and I always put on a story CD at bedtime. To this day, we still listen to books in the car, and my son loves to fall asleep listening to the Norse legends.

Because I wanted to discourage screen time, I would also plug him into an audiobook when I needed to get something done. The Harry Potter series gave me hours of work time!

This past summer, my son turned eight, and he still wasn't a fluent reader. There were some really funny patterns too. He would get hard words correct, but not be able to decode "parties." I dragged him around a bit trying to get him diagnosed. (Hence the PPVI.) He tested at 7th grade for reading comprehension, but only low fourth for speed and accuracy. It was all above grade level, so everyone was telling me not to worry, but I know that that kind of discrepancy can go along with stealth dyslexia.

He saw a developmental optometrist last summer who diagnosed him with far sightedness. We did vision therapy for about four months, and now he uses glasses to read. His reading is much, much better. However, he still misreads words fairly frequently, and is a bit of a reluctant reader. I am going to have him fully assessed for dyslexia in a couple of months.

In the meantime, I got him a Kindle Fire for Christmas. I used the parental controls to lock out games, internet etc. and it is a device we use only for books. You can make the type face larger, and change the background color, something that can be helpful for dyslexics, apparently. It also has a "cool" factor. We download books and audiobooks from the library, and he can go into my Audible library and download any audiobook I have ever purchased. He uses it every day for either audiobooks or books.

I think your son is young enough that you don't need to worry to much about "forcing" him to do much. The reading may come soon, or it may not, as in my case. My last bit of advice is to take a look at Readings Eggs. This is an on-line reading program that is similar to Dreambox. My son didn't hate it, and it did help with phonics. I believe there is currently a discount on it at homeschool buyer's co-op.

HTH!

I'm always amazed at how different gifted kids can be from one another. On a typical school night, I read to Hanni for an hour or more. On a weekend day, up to 3 hours. (I want to grab her teacher by the lapels and say "Teach this child to read for herself! Now!") I really started to get it that this wasn't normal, or even the default way to be gifted, when Helen's school sent home a reading log with about two lines for each day. I promptly threw it in the trash and started keeping a Word document.

Right there with you on the refusal thing (see my separate post). Also, the not doing well with independent activities. Here's hoping for Tallulah's "burst of maturity"!

I'm now at the same point with my second as I was with my first. They hit five and wake up to the world of academic skills, zoom through and hit the third grade wall, where no materials are interesting to a child under 8 and you have to wing it to find the intersection of interesting and challenging.

I think there are kids you can homeschool and kids you can't, and that I have one of each. Have you done much reading about different methods of homeschooling? And teaching pedagogy and stuff? We afterschooled for a couple of years so I read quite widely. There are a lot of really interesting techniques and ideas and it helps to look beyond arithmetic and reading to all sorts of learning. You can learn a lot from something as simple as that experiment where they gave children a toy and either showed them what it did or said "I wonder what this does?". The ones who were shown didn't discover any new functions. The ones who got a question found lots of new stuff.

For example if he likes chemistry experiments teach him to bake. You can learn about yeast and rising agents, how they make gas bubbles (cool balloon experiments), how flour feeds yeast, but sugar even more, salt hinders yeast but tastes good in small quantities, baking powder works in any mix, baking soda only in acidic mixes. What about sourdough? Wild yeast? Yoghurt? Explore yeast breads, pancakes, scones, bannock, pikelets, crepes and make a big wall chart.

Then you can learn about gases and breathing, gases and plants. You can buy a molecule set and make molecules. You can expand on the acid base theme and make some red cabbage indicator and explore the liquids in your house. Layer oil and water and molasses in a jar. Not all five year olds get conservation of volume so you can have some fun with that. Mix food dye with shaving cream in a ziplock. Make gak from borax and glue.

I'm really into simple machines at the moment. A building kit of straws and paper and tape and foil and string and paperclips and a book about simple machines combined with some rube goldberg videos and apps (casey's contraptions!) could make a great independent activity. In fact, now that I say that, I'm going to use the idea over summer. You can also use magnatiles and straw and string and pattern blocks to explore lot of geometry. There's an app called foldables which would be fun.

How about maps? You could print out a map of your area and fill in information, like playgrounds, the routes of walks. Draw a map of the kitchen. Have scavenger hunts. Go geocaching.

Use the socratic method to help him think scientifically and creatively. What do you think will happen? Why did that happen? What will happen if we leave this out? Why? Can we replace it with this?

Time-wise, in a kindergarten class that's in school from 9-3 they spend an hour eating and playing outside, and hour doing art or PE, an hour in transitions to and from various things and arriving and leaving. So really, there's about three hours of academic instructional time in a day, almost none of which is one on one or tailored to the child's interest. So long as you're aware I wouldn't worry about not having six hours of intense academics.

You've received lots of good suggestions already - I would add something onto Tallulah's great advice. Thinking through my children's kindergarten days, the main focus of instruction *outside* of reading didn't require the children to be reading yet (since most weren't). The kids worked on learning-to-read for about 30 minutes in the morning but that was it - in the afternoon they had a wide swath of time devoted to learning about science or social studies etc type topics that were led by the teacher and usually included some type of art or project work or something experiential. Their teachers also read *to* them everyday and encouraged parents to read aloud to them at night - and their teachers were insisting that we read aloud to them at night all the way through 4th grade even when our kids were reading really high level books on their own. The other part of my kids' Kindergarten days were spent with pull-outs like PE, art and music. The thing I always wished they had more of (and they did too!) were field trips - that's one thing I think I'd work in as much as I could if I was homeschooling a young child - my kids just soaked up so much learning from simply visiting any place at all and seeing something new

Good luck!

polarbear

I don't have much to contribute, but I'm in roughly the same place with my son who's three and a half years old. Homeschooling for kindergarten is probably in our future, and I'd like to do some casual learning activities this fall when he turns 4 to get a feel for what he likes and how he learns best, but he's also a nonreader with no interest in that (for now). He gets frustrated with most activities because he doesn't have the fine motor skills to make them turn out the way he wants.


I really like this idea. We will be living in the States for a year starting this summer, so I hope to see as much as we can.