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The Cons These must be considered, but please make sure to read the Pros as well. For us, they make the disadvantages well worth it. Restraints on Parents. Learning outside of a school environment can consume a lot of mom or dad's time. Most people probably picture that time being spent at the kitchen table with textbooks and worksheets, but from what ...

In a related question, a user linked this article. It might be relevant to your concerns about the social implications of home schooling. However, if your child enjoys his current school, then I would suggest simply adding in in-home supplemental education. Allow your child to pick subjects (or suggest a list of possible subjects, if you'd like), and do ...

These are the things that the Montessori school our son attends looks for: knowing directions (up, down, besides, in front of, behind, etc) body parts (arm, elbow, wrist, eyes, ears, nose, etc) counting (count to ten, count to ten with objects, determine number of objects in a pile, etc) Shapes (square, triangle, etc) Colors (red, blue, etc) following ...

Hah this is a really good and old question. Let me tell you something else first... School for a bright kid is not about teaching. And not about learning because if he is as bright and vivid as you say he will learn everything himself. A school for a child like him, is about learning the hard way in life unfortunately. It is about learning discipline. ...

I was a "gifted" kid growing up in a place where there wasn't much for me. I made it my mission for awhile after that to learn as much about gifted education as I could. There's only so much that traditional formal education can do for a really bright kid: traditional educational models are heavily rote, which is anathema to the active gifted mind. To ...

Well, formally speaking, I'm not in a parenting role but am gifted myself (16 y/o, from Israel). Just thought I'd give some input from my experience in that age. In the third grade I was accepted into a special program for gifted children at my school, where we learned all the subjects at a quicker pace but that wasn't the great part. The great part was that ...

The idea of children socializing one another is absurd -- I wish our society would get over it. As adults, it is our job to teach children how to behave socially -- otherwise you get The Lord of the Flies. That said, there are many other priceless lessons a child (especially a homeschooled child) learns from organized activity outside the home: How to ...

There are many reasons for prioritizing social development over academics. Just letting kids be kids-- learning social skills in an environment where they feel accepted-- is a critical part of development. If your child is happy at their current school, and their friends are nice kids - easy going, well mannered, the type of personalities that you don't ...

If you have some time to spend teaching your children yourself, and you have some money you could contribute towards their education, you could look into a homeschool co-op, or a part-time homeschool-curriculum based private school. These are both significantly cheaper than traditional private schools, and might offer an environment in which your children ...

From moving various schools myself when I was younger I would say that changing schools is a very big upset to learning - the child takes time to make new friends, settle in, understand the new curriculum etc. If you can supplement their learning at home I would recommend doing that - being a teacher you will probably be in a good place here to see what ...

You will not be able to teach a newborn baby very much! For many, many months, your child is going to be learning fundamentals like how to eat, how to focus eyes properly, how to roll over... you've got years to prepare for a solid homeschooling curriculum, so you do not need to have all the pieces in place by July. You can certainly do things to keep an ...

We're struggling with similar questions ourselves. Our children are still in grade school and we made a cross country move this year. One of our kids adopted wonderfully and is happy both academically and socially. The other has been struggling with both. We're fortunate to have a few school options (albeit at a cost given they are private schools). What I ...

The jury is still out on whether developmentally oriented activities prior to kindergarten have a long term impact. IMHO day care is over-rated as a teaching/learning environment. The high-end preschools do the activities and have curricula primarily to assuage the guilt parents feel at leaving the kids there all day. But really, it is just babysitting. ...

Have you just wandering around your local library? I've found quite a few books in ours with some pictures mixed with more complex text. Greek mythology works well - the stories are reasonably complex. We also used our library to get our daughter out of her comfort zone (in terms of themes). If she was stuck on Hardy Boys for too long, we'd try ...

Great question. This is not my area of expertise, but I contacted someone through my network that specializes in gifted and talented children and this is what she said: Some of my best friends are books by Halsted is a good book for the parents to have on their shelf. The parents can also go to shop.scholastic.com and look at books by reading level. I ...

I have to agree with noelicus that, at her age, she's still "practicing" handwriting rather than just using handwriting as a means to an end. If I recall correctly, your daughter is 6 which is, perhaps, a little young for typing. Plus, there's the question of whether or not her fine motor skills are refined enough to learn to type correctly. I mean, if ...

The first schooling all children get is homeschooling. Depending on where you live and the way the parent(s) employment is arranged, they might have no teacher other than a parent for 6 weeks, a year, 4 years or more. The majority of children then go on to get some teaching from a trained professional (daycare worker, nursery school teacher, primary school ...

You are obviously getting a lot of answers, this is a tough one. I taught preschool for two years and middle school (in what were supposedly highly rated, academically rigorous schools) for eight. I also taught twice exceptional kids for three (these are the ones that are often the targets of school "socialization" and most often bullied - sometimes even ...

I suggest reading at least the first chapter of "Have Space Suit, Will Travel" by Robert A. Heinlein (the rest of the book is a bit entertaining, if dated, but the first chapter is pure gold). The suggestions there are more for high school students than grammar school students, but the philosophy is the same: Public school is crap. Especially for bright ...

Well you could always try for after school classes or tutoring, like Kumon or some such thing, that would provide the extra challenge over school while still giving your child some social interaction. I'm not all that much in favor of the Tiger Mother approach either, though my wife does some of that anyway since she is Chinese and pushes the education, but ...

How do you know that they are stuck in a boring school? In particular I want to point out the word "stuck". Could they attend a different school? You could help them to get extra education at home. Did you consider home schooling? You could also try putting them in front of http://www.khanacademy.org and seeing what happens The Montessori method is ...

Since he enjoys school, treat it not as a place where you child learns new stuff, but rather as a place where he socializes, finds new friends, learns how to treat with authority, etc. To educate him, I'd suggest you to find a hobby group (chemistry or math or robotics or whatever) that your child likes, so that he will develop even further.

I have taught and met many, many homeschooled children. Many of them I have found to be incredibly intelligent, polite, and socially well-rounded. I have met a few who are lacking in one or more of these areas, though I have found this to be due to negligence on the part of the parent. Should you decide to homeschool, I believe that you have to make ...

(I think that you have gotten some excellent answers from others, and am not trying to contend for "accepted answer". I thought some added information might be helpful.) Identification can be important in planning to provide for gifted children's needs. First, you may have an inaccurate sense of your child's abilities. The term "genius" is subject to a ...

mmr is right, life skills are as important as academic skills. We also started a "word wall" around age 2 or 3 -- depending on the child's interest -- so they could start to recognize some sight words. We did simple things -- their name, "mommy," etc. -- and worked our way through the Dolch Word Lists (which are available online, e.g., ...

Yes. But you can supplement their learning through other means than basically homeschooling after school! Fostering a culture of curiosity, exploration, creative play, conversation, critical thinking and active inquiry at home will go a long way, probably further in the long term. But, as you are a teacher, I'm assuming you know this!

I think you've answered your own question when you say to do both. From personal experience I don't think cursive is necessary any more. I'm young enough that I never use it. Handwriting ie penmanship is still important for me of course, but not cursive. The only exception is that sometimes I find that I can write faster in cursive so this helpful for ...

A search of several educational databases is not turning up any articles to directly address your question. As you note, most people using home-schooling internationally are expatriates, so searching sites focusing on expatriate home-schooling may yield some helpful testimonials. Your best bet might be to initiate conversations with a few schools to find ...

The short answer to your question is yes! Life is a learning environment. The best thing you can do at home with your kids is learn things together. Especially dangerous things because they won't get any exposure to dangerous things at school anymore. And they can learn a lot of great things that will make their academic experience richer and their ...

We practice “hackschooling”. It’s a term we made up for avoiding the baggage of saying that we homeschool. One, our kids are hardly every at home so it’s misleading. Second is that homeschooling has unfortunately developed a reputation of being "pushy" and having a root motivation of trying to avoid exposing and/or socializing the kids with worldviews and ...