Posted by Nan in Mass on 10:50 Jan 15
In Reply to: How has having a gifted child changed your curriculum? posted by Old Dominion Heather
I added lots of extras - chess, puzzle books, music, drawing, extra languages, lots and lots of good reading, lots of nature guides, gymnastics, lots of extra library books about non-fiction subjects and a few extra magazines, electronics kits, tools and materials, magnets and other types of building kits, extra time to design and carry out his own science experiments, Robotix, computer programming, etc. Of course, he doesn't do all of this every day, but it is available for him when he feels like doing something. Some things, like chess or languages or science projects, I've added to the school schedule when he said he wanted to learn something. I make sure I ask periodically what he'd like to learn. One summer he wanted lots of 5-minute mystery books. Now he's working on Basic programming. I try to encourage him to think up things he'd like to try. My children have always thought up their own activities in history, for example. My older one made a model reed boat when he read Gilgamesh. They are always wanting to try things or make things or cook things they read about in science and history. It doesn't exactly make for a neat house but it is worth it. They'd rather make up their own than follow anyone else's. I let them modify assignments, too, if they can think of a better way to do it. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I let my children have an active daily part in choosing what they will and will not do to learn. We aren't particularly efficient that way, but they are cheerful, willing students as a result, who still, at 13 and 17, are cooperative and like homeschooling. Definately worth some loss in efficiency. I try to make sure he has other adults in his life who will talk to him about things - Irish history or engineering or music or philosophy, and encourage him to call other family members when he has a thought or a question or makes a discovery - Can I call grampa and tell him about my perpetual motion machine? Can I tell grammy about the cool bird on the birdfeeder and take a picture to show her so she can tell me what it is? And as he gets older, when his older brother is gone and he doesn't have that input anymore, I'll send him to take some of his classes at community college, especially the sorts of classes he won't get in his engineering school (he's very obviously an engineer). I'll aslo try to make sure he has opportunities and projects outside our homeschool as he gets older. His older brother travels. I don't think he'll travel, but he'll probably find some other way to expand his world. He's talking about buying a sailboat and going cruising when he's older, something he does with us. Projects, big projects, are good. You just have to take advantage of the flexibility of homeschooling in order to fit them in.
For academics, I loosely stuck to TWTM because that left lots of room for exploration. I just have been very careful that he was really understanding his Singapore math and that he had plenty of good literature to read, especially children's classics and some grounding in myths and classical history so he can read classics in high school. TWTM literature/history lists do that well.
This got long. Sorry! Hopefully it will make you feel better about continuing what you are doing and just adding extras when you need to.
-Nan