Giftedness, Curricula, Brain Cramps

I have a brain cramp. There is a whole world of stuff to read about and soak in. The rabbit hole just keeps getting deeper…

Recently, a friend of ours from church (who I think is close to being a genius?) talked to me briefly about the possibility of Ethan being “gifted”. There is SO much to learn, so many studies, that have to do with that word “gifted”. He introduced me to this site and I can’t stop reading article after article (mostly because I try to read everything I can get my hands on when it comes to my kids!).

Sure, I admit I always thought Ethan was bright, but considering the possibility that he is even moderately “gifted” and might need to be homeschooled based on a slightly different approach (advanced, accelerated, what not) is new to me. Some things I read about the very young strike me as resembling him, even down to the behavioral problems that might actually be his advanced way of problem solving and interacting. He’s always been a very perceptive kid, esp emotionally and socially, and I noticed early on that his musical and language abilities seem high for a boy his age. He also draws amazing parallels to seemingly unrelated material sometimes, with events that happened up to two years ago that were never once recalled by us, and displayed great concentration and understanding of things I assumed were too complex for him. But then I thought, ah well, every mom thinks that about her kid! lol

I don’t know. There is so much to learn and then I also, of course, must ask myself what value is there in defining him as gifted or not gifted? And most of all, I hate the thought that using that term implies that other kids aren’t gifted or that some how those that might be are being elitist and snobby and so on. I don’t think it makes one kid or person better than another, but perhaps recognizing it (or simply not denying it) does help in bringing each individual to their full potential. If it turns out that Ethan is not, based on testing, studies, and how he continues to progress, I won’t feel one ioda less about my amazing and beautiful child. But if it turns out, he does display such characteristics, might that help me parent and educate him based on a better understanding of his abilities? Perhaps so.

Anyhow. How all of this fits in with all I have learned thus far is the brain cramping part. I am really starting to like the Charlotte Mason curricula. With doing a little reading on it, I decided to value truly good children’s literature and get rid of some of the fluff in his collection. I began looking for books that were more complex, even chapter books. Just in the last 2 months I began reading books to him that had one page with a picture that correlated to about 500-700 words on the page, (as opposed to age appropriate books with about 3-5 sentences per page). To my amazement, he follows the story, stays intrigued, and never wants to stop unless he is passing out. Today Ethan was read to sleep by his grand aunt Lally a fairly short Dr. Suess book before bedtime, and I went in to tuck him in. He, very genuinely, looked over at the book we started yesterday “The Velveteen Rabbit” (which is surprisingly long, in my opinion! lol) and said, “I wish we could read from that book about toys and how they become real. I really like that book. I really like all of our books.” It was so cute!

With unschooling, I’m finding myself all confused. I love self-directed learning, I totally get the value of it. But what do you do with a kid who turned 4 not even a month ago and has been begging you to teach him to read for a year? It’s self-directed, but they need you, at least at this age, to make the resources of learning available sometimes. I had been so busy with the pregnancy and new baby that I put all of that on hold. About a month ago, I sat down and did a little phonics card game with him and was surprised that he knew the phonetic sound of every letter and matched up all the cards perfectly. Who taught him that?, I wondered. So we got out the Bob books again and he is really whizzing through it in just one week. Once he really gets down how to strand the phonics together to make the words, he’ll take off. Same thing with writing. At Posie’s yesterday he was writing on the chalkboard and I was chatting with the owner. He wrote his name on the chalk board and then asked me to teach him to spell some additional words because he wanted to write “Ethan’s Coffee Shop”, lol. It was an adorable request. But he is also very decent with his penmanship as he wrote out the phrase, and the owner remarked that it was impressive that he had only just turned 4.

Additionally, we picked up a little book on the coast last week to keep him occupied. It’s one of those that you go from dot to dot with numbers so in the end your dots make a picture. I’ve again been surprised at how quickly he picked up on the correlation between the numbers. When I didn’t give him any tools beyond what was age appropriate, he was barely counting to 20. I realized he seemed ready for more after seeing him navigate the dot to dot (1 through 50), so I put up a chart on his wall last week with numbers 1 – 100. We counted through them together twice, and counted through 1- 100 on his abacus once. A few days later, I heard him count to 100 on his abacus by himself almost seamlessly. Had I not followed his leading, I would never have discovered that he was incredibly bored with numbers 1-10!

I’m not not not bragging about Ethan. I know there are true genius babies out there and what I’m saying here about Ethan isn’t newsworthy… HOWEVER

If Ethan is to be a home learner, if even for just this year (because who knows and I only want to take it one year at a time and see how its going for both of us), then my attention to his general learning curve and ability to self-teach is as valuable as 1 on 1 time with his teacher (who’s attention is spread between 20-30 mixed ability, same aged children, yikes!).

So I have rambled, (hopefully without any hard feelings, because I can imagine that the topic of “giftedness” might feel slightly insulting which is not in the least bit in my intentions, I can assure you!). But, my brain cramp about Ethan, education, intelligence, learning, and curriculum is not even minutely better for it!

Good thing there is no rush

P.S. In case you’re interested, here’s a thing on Parenting your Gifted Preschooler.