Choosing Curriculum and Teaching a Gifted Homeschooled Child

One of the challenges we are facing as homeschooling parents is that our children are not always challenged by the lessons provided in the curriculum. Not to say that my children are gifted or not, but they do excel beyond their curriculum in the homeschool environment. Many times my daughter is not challenged by her school work and it is shown by typical acts of boredom including doodling, sloppy handwriting or complete distraction from her studies.

We are now just about through our second year of homeschooling. When we ordered our second curriculum last summer, we decided on Calvert for our "core" program. After completing the required placement testing for the new curriculum, Calvert encouraged us to move my daughter up a grade, from entering the fourth grade to entering the fifth grade. This made for quite a bit of discussion in our home.

While we were excited that our daughter was doing so well academically, after thinking it through we elected to purchase the fourth grade curriculum. Our thought process was that she could miss certain fundamentals or pieces of history taught in the fourth grade that could cause her to struggle through some material in the fifth grade.

In retrospect, our decision was the right one but has brought on a new set of challenges that we were not entirely prepared for. Some of the topics in her fourth grade curriculum are just too easy for her, i.e. phonics and language arts are good examples. Where other topics such as mathematics and history are more challenging for her.

Our challenge was to keep her engaged and learning everyday. We have veered off course of the curriculum we purchased. Instead, following the topic guidelines outlined in the curriculum we use it and many other resources to supplement her learning.

Higher grade text books

Usually elaborating on a topic, providing much more useful information, we use books from the fifth and sixth grades to supplement the curriculum we already have. It can be an expensive direction to go, but decided it was worth it for our family. The books will be used many times by our two children. Personally, I tend to stay away from text books that are older than a year or two, or have a newer edition, fearing they may become outdated.

The Library

An excellent supplement to any curriculum, the library is an obvious plethora if information on almost any topic. Even if you choose to purchase new, up-to-date text books, the library is an indisputable source of information. In the age of the internet where information is at your fingertips, the library is a wonderful place to share with your children, allowing to explore knowledge differently than the internet. Take your homeschooled children to the library when they are doing a research project, or writing a composition paper. Allow them to check books out to take back to the home-classroom or take the time for them to look at several books on the topic taking notes from many sources.

The Internet

Probably most obvious is the internet. For both parents and students, the internet is a constantly evolving source of information. My children use the internet in conjunction with other types of research. We encourage them to use the internet, yet also teach them to scrutinize the information and where it is coming from, always sighting their sources no matter how small the paper or big the project.

The internet is a life-saver for homeschooling parents. When looking for additional hand-outs, lesson plans and other material on a given topic, nothing beats the efficiency of the internet. The internet has saved me more than once from one of those "stumper" questions that get thrown out as well. "How do astronauts sleep on the International Space Station?" is a recent question I recall (By the way, it is a pretty interesting answer).

Time Management

Another advantage of homeschooling is that you can always go your own pace, whether faster or slower. When we hit a difficult subject that we were only scheduled to work on for an hour, we will take the day to understand it. If it were scheduled for a day, we may spend a week on a topic. Conversely, if the subject is too easy, we will not waste our time grinding out worksheets of a topic everyone understands completely. We will either take the topic to the next level, or move on to something else.

Challenging our children in a homeschool environment has become a greater trial than I had originally thought it would be. However, with the right resources for both the students and the parents, there really is nothing that stands in the way of their learning.