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Originally Posted by NoHiddenFees
:LOL Why indeed?
Last summer DD1 made an animal parade of all her HABA figures. Along one side she set up a row of trees and shrubs. A guest asked her what kinds of trees they were and she answered, using her sweetest voice, "A peach tree, and apple tree, [a couple more things], and that jackass bush. I was very pregnant at the time and actually hurt myself laughing.
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: We had to work so hard to watch our mouths around BeanBean, because the ILs are hyperconservatives. As it is, he saw Bush on TV once down there and said, "it's that moron, mamma!" Luckily MIL was in the kitchen and FIL was taking a nap. :LOL
Tired-- I was a late four when I started kindergarten. There was a morning class for the "younger" kids and an afternoon class for the "older" kids (the idea being that younger kids might still need a nap in the afternoon). The district I was in had a cut off date of September 30th, which meant that my brother made the cut but I didn't. We'd have been in the same class, and my mother didn't want that so she had me tested. There were about a dozen other kids tested that year; four of them "passed" and were put into the younger kindergarten with the other five year olds. I was put into the older kindergarten, with all the kids who hadn't made the cut off date the previous year and whose parents had held them back for whatever reason. Most of them turned six in September, one or two were six at the beginning of the year. I turned five in October. My mother tells me that they wanted to put me in first grade, but she wouldn't allow it.
In second grade, I started attending a teensy weensy little private school where I pretty much had my own curriculum. I was given a sixth grade spelling book, no reading book at all (because I knew how to read), a fourth grade math book and, after one month of playing catch-up, my own fifth grade Hebrew class. Over the following summer, my mom tutored a high school kid in algebra and my brother and I learned it along with him. I had a few really good years in terms of education, but I remember a lot of wasted time waiting for kids to catch up. Despite the fact that there were never more than three kids in my grade and eleven in my class, I did an awful lot of waiting.
: The wasted time is something else that really ticks me off about school. I don't think that most parents realize how little time in school is actually spent doing school work, especially for a child who can finish "an hour" of work in two or three minutes. I can remember just wandering around the classroom for hours on end, looking out the window because I'd finished my book and hadn't had room in my backpack for another. It was around the end of third grade that I decided that longer books were the way to go, and that Star Trek novels simply weren't long enough; I started reading anthologies. :LOL Boy, did I get some funny looks for that.
I definately hope to avoid wasting so much time with my own kids. I've heard people say that if I was really so smart, I'd have found something to do in school. They don't really get it; I did everything that there was to be done, and didn't want to play games-- I wanted,
needed to learn something new and there just wasn't anything for me to do. I was in the oldest class in my school, so I couldn't wander down the hall to find some older kids. I'd already gone above and beyond what they had to offer me. I never want my kids to feel like they ought to be learning something but they don't have the opportunity to do so.
If they finish everything I can throw at them, I will *find* something else for them to do. I'm not sure what I'll do if they don't prove to have the same voracious appetites for the written word that I do, but I'll think of something. Where there's a will, there's a way, and boy have I ever got the will!
It's very cool that your public school system has a special place for gifted kids. When I got back into public school for seventh grade, I was put into the top class, and given all kinds of extras but they weren't really enough.
For example: the class I was in took pre-algebra in seventh grade. Three other girls were in an algebra I class with me. It was all well and good, but I got a B in that class despite the fact that I only turned in homework once every other week or so. I loved the teacher, she was great, but the work just moved too slowly, and the class consisted entirely of material that I'd covered when I was 7, in the summer before third grade.
I was bored and remained bored throughout the year. I joined the chess club, and participated in OM and PJAS and Speech & Debate, and I was still bored. I spent a lot of time reading novels in class, and I was late for school more often than not. I just didn't want to be bothered. The whole thing felt like a waste of time. I'd have been happier in the library for those eight hours every day, and I'd probably have learned more.
I gave up doing homework entirely in eighth grade, doing only assignments which I found interesting. In general, these involved research which was (still is) one of my favorite things to do. I wrote my quasicrystal paper in eighth grade, and several essays for civics class. I missed a lot of school being sick and participating in "extra" activities-- that year I won several awards for "school projects" despite spending more time out of classes than in. I had a lot of fun that year, but that just reinforced the lesson that school is a waste of time-- all of the good stuff happened outside of class.
My teachers didn't know what to do with me, and I must have heard the "you have so much potential..." speech a hundred times that year. My English teacher told me that she was hurt by my refusal to do her assignments (I managed not to laugh until I was out of earshot, but it was difficult), my math teacher was oblivious and gave me a B because "she's always so quiet during class and she does well on her tests," and my science teacher (who was also my homeroom teacher) just didn't get me at all. I'd ask questions in class that would make his hair stand on end, and help other students to get A's and then turn around and not hand in assignments. "They're so easy for you, why can't you turn them in?"
But I really couldn't-- how could I possibly focus on the differences between different kinds of rocks when there were much more interesting things going on just a few blocks away in books at the library? I mean, the rocks were interesting for a little while, but I finished reading the textbook about two weeks into the school year and after that I just didn't want to be bothered filling in the blanks on stupid homework assignments.
Recently, I've learned that this phenomenon has actually been documented; far from being alone in this, I was just like hundreds if not thousands of other kids of similar ability all over the country. I was so relieved when I read about it, because it proved to me that I was right all along. I didn't fail schools, they failed me. I can do better for my own kids, by making sure that they've got something interesting to do. They don't have to wait until they're 15 to get to an interesting class with new subject material-- *everything* can be new before then.
They'll be busy when they need to be busy, and be left alone when they don't. I'm dead set on making things better for them, so they won't go to school; instead, they'll stay home and get educations.
my time with just DS while DD is in her class!
He's always been sensitive to the moods and tones of people around him, and I worry that it's all affecting him poorly. 
I'm still waiting for mine. :LOL
