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Originally Posted by fourgrtkidos
Is he stupid? The public school people might say so, but I think he's gifted in a different way. Can you, an adult, take your neighbors 3 broken lawnmowers and build him one perfect new one from the bottom up?!
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Originally Posted by Suzannah
This is what Howard Gardner's work on multiple intelligences is all about. This, to me, is a child who is intelligent in a different way; unfortunately, school systems generally only recognize verbal and mathematical intelligence.
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:: Even so, I spent a lot of time bored and miserable at school. They can only do so much, you know? A gifted program with somewhat excited but not terribly bright teachers wasn't all that helpful to me. Sure, it got me out of class a lot, but so did in school suspension! :LOL I loved ISS, especially in high school; I just couldn't get over it! It was like "Okay, I'm late for school every single day because I don't want to be in class, so to 'punish' me, you're sending me to a room where I can sit and read any book I want and do logic problems all day? And I'm not expected to talk to anyone or answer stupid questions after attendance is taken? Brilliant!" I used to just grab something off the shelf that I hadn't read yet (or something that I had and loved) and a new book of logic problems and I was all set for a lovely day of doing nothing. It was better than staying home, because noone was hassling me to clean my room. It was perfectly quiet, and well lit.. if there had been a window, I'd have been happier than a pig in slop. :LOL
Someone please tell me that he won't be scarred for life by this! I love him so much, but I can't seem to get over the feeling that he's missing out on more than nursie-milk and extra love-loves. I feel so guilty and wonder if I'll be able to get pregnant again before NewBean is 10 without feeling so guilty...
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Originally Posted by eilonwy
"Okay, I'm late for school every single day because I don't want to be in class, so to 'punish' me, you're sending me to a room where I can sit and read any book I want and do logic problems all day? And I'm not expected to talk to anyone or answer stupid questions after attendance is taken? Brilliant!" I used to just grab something off the shelf that I hadn't read yet (or something that I had and loved) and a new book of logic problems and I was all set for a lovely day of doing nothing. It was better than staying home, because noone was hassling me to clean my room. It was perfectly quiet, and well lit.. if there had been a window, I'd have been happier than a pig in slop. :LOL
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Originally Posted by eilonwy
EliBean is doing very well, though I can't say the same thing for myself.. I'm tired, and huge, and hot and achey all the time. My sweet Bean has been very patient with me, but I'm just not doing a great job on the mommy front these days.
Someone please tell me that he won't be scarred for life by this! I love him so much, but I can't seem to get over the feeling that he's missing out on more than nursie-milk and extra love-loves. I feel so guilty and wonder if I'll be able to get pregnant again before NewBean is 10 without feeling so guilty... |
He was around 20 mo then. He also loved puzzles. He did maps of Canada and learned all the provinces and who we knew in each one. He did animals, planets, scenery, whatever caught his attention. He started with the 24 peice ones, but can now do up to 100 peices. We bought too many of the small ones because we didn't think he would go through them so fast (just to warn ya 
). Math with marbles and such ws a nice easy project too. Just some ideas 
| today he was walking around in a laundry bag flapping his arms and told me he was trunign into a butterfly. i asked if the bag was his cacoon and he said "no mommy, its my chrysalis" sigh. |
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Originally Posted by akirasmama
During the rough parts of my pregnancy I let Akira play (educational) video games. He loved the educational aspects and learned a lot from them. He learned problem solving, math, spelling, info on the planets, telling time, etc. It helped for the early days when I was so exhausted because he NEVER slept. He picks up things very quickly that way. He could turn it on and load the games and programs without my help so I could just rest on the couch
He was around 20 mo then. He also loved puzzles. He did maps of Canada and learned all the provinces and who we knew in each one. He did animals, planets, scenery, whatever caught his attention. He started with the 24 peice ones, but can now do up to 100 peices. We bought too many of the small ones because we didn't think he would go through them so fast (just to warn ya ). Math with marbles and such ws a nice easy project too. Just some ideas |
) and hung some on the walls. He gets so excited when he sees the National Geographic logo, and can point out all kinds of geographical and political features. (This is one thing which, while I know it shouldn't surprise me, really freaked me out. Who expects to hear a 16 month old say "National Geographic! Albany! Hudson River! It's water, Mamma!" 
): They're cheap, but they're not cheap enough! :LOL I did pick up a huge pile of interesting toys at a yard sale for $5 (at the end of the sale when people are like "please take this huge pile of stuff so that I don't have to bring it back into my house!") which Eli adores.. Duplo blocks and a thing that's a yellow board with holes in it and different sized gears that you can arrange with handles and whatnot. He loves it, and frequently brings gears to bed with him. Gears, cars, books.. I've awakened to find each (sometimes all) of them embedded in some part of my body. :LOL
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Originally Posted by grnbn76
I'll never forget taking my dd to the doctor once...the sign on the desk said "Outpatient Records". My dd was 3yo then, and there was another little girl (bigger and older than my dd) who was pointing at the letters and saying letter names. The only one she got right was the "O". (like this...o q r g h...)
My dd just got a disgusted look on her face, walked up to the sign and spelled it out...O u t p a ...and said "Don't you KNOW that? You're big!" The poor girls mother about died, and I wanted to crawl under a rock! |
: : I'm sorry to laugh, but this struck me as hilarious.. probably because I was the same way as a little kid. I can remember saying and doing such things often, before the "Even an Epsilon" speech my mother gave us. | The very best money we've ever spent in our entire lives as parents has been on the math manipulatives box from Saxon Math. It's about $50, but it's a huge tub full of flashcards, counting bears, dominoes, geoboards, tangrams, a scale, clocks, etc. My kids can sit and play with the "math toys" for hours upon hours. They can play together, at their own levels, or my older dd can teach my ds new things. It's amazing to watch, and they love it. You can often find them on homeschool resale boards or on ebay....I'm telling you...excellent money spent! |
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These attitudes are exactly why I'm so hesitant to start a secular homeschooling group around here while Eli is still so young. The thing is, I rarely hear comments like that in real life. People who've actually met Eli can tell that he's not being coerced, I guess... either that, or they're too polite/shy to say anything to me. I'd like to think that Eli's babyness speaks for itself, and that it's just very obvious that he's a healthy, happy, loved little man who happens to be intellectually more advanced than his age-peers. Maybe when people look at him and talk to him, they don't see a little tiny robot being forced to do things he's unwilling and/or unable to do, but a healthy little boy who's parents actively encourage his explorations and his attempts to acquire new skills. Maybe that's what it takes; they'd have to meet EliBean to understand where I'm coming from. 
More later, I gotta go now!
He doesn't share his abilities with her because of that.
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Originally Posted by akirasmama
She was pretty surprised though, she thought (well, still thinks) that we are exaggerating his abilities
He doesn't share his abilities with her because of that. |
Um, no, that wasn't what we meant by not saying "NO!" I still have to remind them to use sentences, or at least real words, and that drives me nuts. 
) Maybe it's some combination of the two. I don't care. I'm not the least bit concerned about the fact that some of the time people can't understand what Eli's saying. I know how smart he is, and I know how far from average he is, and I know what I need to do to cope with that and to help him cope with it later in life.
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Originally Posted by eilonwy
I know how smart he is, and I know how far from average he is, and I know what I need to do to cope with that and to help him cope with it later in life.
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Originally Posted by Britishmum
One of the things I find frustrating is the notion that my child is no different to others, and that all things will even out in the end. Maybe that is true in some cases, but it is frustrating to feel dismissed like this.
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:LOL In this state, you don't legally have to enroll your child in school at all until "the semester during which the child will be 8 years old by the end of the second week"; for us, that's January of 2011. So, I don't have to file an affidavit of intent to homeschool until January of 2011, but I'll file early (1 July, 2010) to keep my school years on track. The school year technically begins on 1 July and ends on 30 June every year, and since I want to be able to take huge spans of time off, I figure that doing it year round makes the most sense.
The other kids just don't "get" him.
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Originally Posted by akirasmama
I plan to register him next year. We will get a certain amount of $$$$ every year for supplies/programs, etc from the gov't. He already knows all the requirements for kindergarten so we can spend the money on things that will suite his needs. Plus, the supplies will be ours to keep so we can use them with ds2 too.
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I haven't worked out what I'm going to do about that yet.|
Originally Posted by eilonwy
I am just totally not an unschooler. I'm the parent who's got five different growth charts, all meticulously filled out and up to date at every doctor's appointment; I like to see progress. :LOL I'm way too tense to unschool, and I'd find myself forcing my preferences on my children for certain which really isn't fair to them.
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I am exactly the opposite. Self-prenatal, UCbirth, no weights or measurements, no doctors, no charts, no records. I hate that stuff. I guess no school just falls in well with the rest of it I drive my ultra-organized mother crazy (maybe that is why I do it, part of the big rebellion :LOL) Thankfully Akira hates our interference, so we are a good fit as a family 
