Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources Now what? - EPGY not enough

Sigh. On one hand, wow! On the other - uhhh, now what do I do?

Thanks,
Portia

Hi
Not sure about LA, but with EPGY math you can just
start the next course as soon as you finish one. So he
could move on right away and go as far as he can
(or is interested in).
Good luck!

Hi Portia,

I wish I could be more helpful after the kindness you've shown me.

A Civil War book your DS might enjoy is this visual encyclopedia produced jointly by DK and the Smithsonian:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Civil-War-Visual-History/dp/075667185X

Idea-wise, these themes/activities might fit in well with a discussion of the Civil War:
- Rewriting the endings to various key battles or changing key variables and imagining how results might have changed
- Reenacting battles
- Introducing basic game theory concepts: Prisoner's Dilemma, zero sum games, Nash Equilibria in pure and mixed strategies
- Introducing introductory cryptography and ciphers

You might like The Unschooling Handbook. http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0761512764

Hahahahahahahaha.... OHHhhhhhhhhhh, do I ever remember homeschooling.



I spent a long time carefully putting together "unit study boxes" for her once I had gotten over the "complete curriculum" trap. Don't do that.

Library, yes.

Free activities and low cost ones in your community-- check. (Parks and rec departments, community colleges that offer community/non-credit ed, etc.)

Throw away your concept of 'schooling hours.'

We have never met them. Ever. Except, well, DD does like to read. It's just that if I permit her to read for hours and hours-- filling up a "regular" school day with that? Then her learning rate begins to look freakish to the point that we actively hide it from others. To prevent this particular problem, enter the cyberschool... which we thought would be a good way to keep things from devolving into even worse asynchrony, and to keep from going broke, too... heheh... No more buying "fully inclusive Grade X curriculum" that only lasts a month! (No, instead-- fighting the school to get them to send you grade X+1 after just two months... Whee..)

Something to be aware of with kids like this is that their strengths are so strong that they can readily compensate for weaknesses (often in writing and written expression) SO well that they fail to ever work on those areas meaningfully as unschoolers. (This is actually the real reason that we cyberschool; DD isn't compliant enough for me to simply "assign" her things that are non-preferred.)

If we put out a "daily minimum" for particular learning activities and then leave her to figure out how to structure the rest of her day, that works better. It's like partial unschooling, really, but it's the best balance we found for allowing DD to mature for a longer period prior to college, to have a "real" childhood, and to keep the school from getting upset with us. DD has been "held back" a bit in a functional sense, which would sound ludicrous anywhere but here, given that she's a 14yo rising high school senior with a full slate of extracurriculars, near the top of her graduating class.

Just be aware that even as a high schooler, she only spends about 2-3 hr each school day doing what the school thinks she should be doing. We've learned to leave well enough alone there, and she's learned to keep her mouth shut about how little time it takes her, and to use her free time to do what she wants.

For additional math you might consider Edward Zaccaro’s Challenge Math for the Elementary and Middle School Student (the one with the dark blue cover); his Primary Grade Challenge Math (the light blue cover) will likely be too easy. In addition to EPGY’s 7th grade, you might want to take a look at Art of Problem Solving’s Prealgebra I and II courses. They have a diagnostic test to make sure your DS is ready, and you can register your DS for the courses or let him work on his own through the books with the aid of the free online videos on the AoPS website.

I am a little confused because I thought that the EPGY enrollment covered 6th grade reading/language arts and either 6th grade or pre-algebra math, so your DS still has two to three years of curriculum left. I realize that it would not take him two to three years to complete that curriculum with homeschooling but it may make more sense to decide on subsequent curriculum after he has mastered the next two to three years worth.

Furthermore, in a b&m school, that stuff covered in EPGY would be no more than half the curriculum. He needs history, science, health, music, art, and computer so the Civil War focus is a great idea. Rather than a canned curriculum, I would use the library and follow his preferences as to sources. Furthermore, with a 3rd grade reading/language arts level and a 4th grade math level, he should be easing into self-directed learning if he hasn't already. In other words, he is ready to feed himself rather than be spoon-fed at this point.

I'm finding this reassuring, too. Although we haven't started homeschooling yet, I suspect much of the stuff I'm planning in my head will need to be tossed in lieu of a more open-ended approach. At least I know going in that "school in a box" won't work.

Our EPGY subscription is about to expire, and we are debating whether to continue it or not. DS has plenty of math to learn from it, but I don't know if he'll tolerate the program.

The part that I neglected to mention about the time investment into "unit study boxes" is that THOSE were rifled, pillaged actually-- and discarded nearly as quickly as every other educational item I had tried.

So my admonition to "don't do that" was about both complete curriculum purchases and investing hours in making cute little shoebox games and what have you.

I desperately wanted to be that kind of homeschooling mom... but my DD wouldn't tolerate it very well.

Loose collections of things which were highly open-ended worked pretty well as "learning boxes." Just not in the way that I generally envisioned. Or for as long as I'd hoped.