What to do for 1st/2nd

[Mom2mthj]

I am trying to figure out what to do with my 5yo boy who is currently in kindergarten. He is doing MP1 enrichment at our HLS co-op, but is about a month from finishing All About Reading 4. He could be done now, but I am making him finish. We haven’t run into anything he didn’t just know. I bought FSR because I thought he would use it at co-op, but they haven’t been using it. I just use it for handwriting practice, but there is no actual reading instruction taking place with FSR. His weakest area is writing as a lefty, but it is coming along nicely. We have the core skills phonics which he will do, but it really is just busywork when I need him to be quiet or he wants to do school. He has begged to start spelling most of the year, so we started All About Spelling last week when I decided he could write his letters well enough to bother. He is in step 10 today. I am not tied to AAS, I just had it on the shelf. I hear a lot of just go through quickly, make sure there ar no gaps, but this kid sings along at church to hymns he has never heard before, will set his stories to song, does appropriate voices (like a deep voice for a man speaking) for an initial reading of most anything. He probably could use some work on vocabulary as he can read words for which he doesn’t necessarily know the meanings.

My concern is I really don’t want to get to the 3A core before 3rd grade, he is a 5 year old boy after all, but I need something to fill in with because the first grade phonics isn’t challenging for him and the second grade guides appear to be too much writing for next year. Any thoughts? I want his school time to be meaningful.

[howiecram]

Can he just do the Story Time Treasures, for the writing practice, without the phonics work? I think it is ok that the stories will be “easy” he is still young and I think enjoyable. Jen (formerly) in Japan always recommends the lowest “R”. There is also some grammar, etc being taught in them. He could then “read” for pleasure higher (but age appropriate) books.

[alihuyoung]

Hi! I also had a kiddo that I needed to "hold back" so she didn't get to 3rd grade before 8 years old She still asks to do extra math each day and would happily complete her whole copybook if not closely monitored. She just started MP2 a few weeks ago, about a month after turning 7, and she is thriving in it. She began her K year at 4.5 so I have purposefully slowed her down. I asked for and received lots of good ideas for extending her K year in this thread https://forum.memoriapress.com/forum...d-kindergarten I managed to drag out kinder for 1.5 years, then she did MP1 at 6, MP2 at 7. She kind of taught herself to read, so we mostly just breezed over the phonics parts of MP1, but still completed all the Story Time Treasures as scheduled.

Other extras we have done to fulfill her need for (what she considers) school:
All the enrichment activities in K, 1 and 2 (these can really be stretched and expanded if needed)
Piano lessons
Board games (Mole Rats in Space, Monopoly, Catan JR, Sushi Go, Sleeping Queens, Carcassonne, Memory, Boggle)
Puzzles (she can happily do a 300 piece puzzle while listening to a few chapters of Ramona, which brings me to...
Audiobooks (the more the merrier)
Baking/Cooking/Handicrafts
Architecture (measuring rooms in the house, drawing them to scale, building them out of legos)
Map Tracing/Drawing
Art (Online lessons from Art for Kids Hub and Chalk Pastels, Usborne Complete Book of Art Ideas
Foreign Language
Extra subjects from other cores. For example, since she will be young when she hits MP3, I pulled States and Caps down to 2nd, which beefs up this year and makes next year a little easier.

That all sounds like a lot but we don't do them every day, or even every week. I rotate through those ideas on days when she isn't challenged enough or just driving me crazy. Hope that helps!

-Ali

[enbateau]

Writing is always the tricky piece. My eldest was a gregarious, early reader. I was the one who second-guessed keeping her on grade level. Now that she's turned 8, I'm so glad I did. She is finishing up MP2, which she has breezed through with sufficient ease and enjoyment, especially now that we're hitting cumulative review as scheduled in the TMs. It is so easy to make it more challenging for our gifted kids. There are just some concepts that no matter how good of a reader or bright of a child only come with age. I'm overjoyed that through diligence and patience we've lined her up for 3A on grade level. There's no way I'd want her to hit that at 7. It's not that they couldn't memorize the Latin vocabulary, 50+ constellations, bright stars & asterisms, 50 states & capitals, Christian Stidies 1, all the players in Greek Myths plus attack the lit, novels, read-alouds and American history...it's doing it written and with a brain that's appropriately developed.

When you try to force bright children into material that is at or above their ability, they can reach burnout. Traditional Spelling 1 is excellent for the gifted reader who needs to work on encoding. I like the idea to pull in more Enrichment. Since he's already done MP1 Enrichment (my fav), you could look at K and just go deeper, or do the a highlighted review of science/ history concepts with different books for research. Then, let him read slightly above his reading level for his own leisure. I let my eldest read her own science books. She now has a great lexicon of science and history terminology. Also, anything for which he struggled this past year in writing could be redressed next year.

[Jen (formerly) in Japan]

Hi Dorinda.

Here you illustrate that situation where a young child seems to have academic skills all over the place. Here are my thoughts.

You have a busy life with the olders, so I know you are hoping to keep this youngest aligned perfectly in a grade level core package. However, it does appear that your child is wishing for more than is currently in his core level package. I think that as long as you MENTALLY track his grade level by his "weakest R", you could consider allowing him to move forward in other areas. Because, and I experienced this with my youngest, eventually the pieces did re-align back to something resembling a Core package around 3rd or 4th grade.

Basically, if you allowed him to get a little ahead in few areas in which he his strong, you might be looking at something closer to 3M when he is around 7 yrs. This happened to me. But then, he stalled (!) over.... yes, the writing. So we 3M'd that year, and then the next SY I jumped over to 4NU which is similar to 3A. Presto, back on track.

I guess I am saying that almost similar to the high school years, you might have to customize for your child, if you have the patience for that, but that it is entirely possible that the subjects can be managed and re-aligned to hit that 3A sequence at around 8 yrs. And so what if he has "done" part of Greek myths from the previous year? The states and caps? Those are the type of subjects that review and reinforcement are helpful in young students.

Of course, you could keep him in solid cores on the track he is on and add for more enrichment. Without over complicating, I am suggesting that as long as you keep your eye on his writing level as his actual grade placement, there are opportunities to move forward now, while recognizing that most students eventually settle into a solid placement anyway around the level of 3A. At least that is what happened to my youngest who was reading at age 2.5 yrs, and chapter books at age 4 yrs. Eventually the workload of the Core centralized around the 4NU/3A level when he was 8 yrs.




Jen

[MBentley]

I'm in this boat too. I have 3 boys that have 16-17 month age gaps between them. So effectively, I have a 2nd, 1st, and Kindergartner. All boys. (Baby girl is only 2) These boys are like the 3 Musketeers. So pulling the other 2 away for school nearly drove my young son to insanity. In the beginning, at 4, I tried to occupy him with coloring, other books, movies...nothing. He wanted to "go to school" with the rest of us. So I decided that fighting it was worse than making him struggle a bit. I went ahead and started him "in school". I bought him his school desk, and I bought some penmanship books and some preschool writing workbooks that I picked up at a Mardel Book Store. Later, I picked up a copy of Handwriting Without Tears. The pages don't require a great deal of explanation. He did the best he could with it. On the upside, before we started official kindergarten, I was able to see that he was also left handed. (The irony that 2 right handed adults created 3 left handed children...Sheesh) I also was able tp get months of work in trying to correct his pencil grip. When he finally turned 5, I started him on Horizons Phonics K. (I hadn't come to MP yet). Those people love their worksheets. It's effective, but it makes his brain hurt. I also started him on R&S 1 for math. None of this was "started" at the same time. I just kept on adding and adding in. Basically, because he is so young, I don't push to finish the work every day. If some work takes more than one day, it's just not a big deal. Effectively, I'm stretching K out over 2 years. He's slowly learning to sit still, try to read his instructions on his own, and finish his work. It's a maturity thing more than scholastic ability thing. He refuses to quit squirming and wiggling and making random noises and talking during the read-aloud time. But...I kind of feel like this is dress rehearsal for the real work to come. He doesn't know that. As far as he's concerned, he's in K. His birthday is in Sept so there is no way to avoid a non-traditional school year. I am just using this time between 4 1/2 and 6 as time being "banked" for future use. Or not. It may take us that long to get it all in, even starting early. That doesn't really bother me. I think it was causing him more stress to be excluded than it was to have to really apply some brain work.

I'm with Jen on this one when it comes to getting a kid to work too early. If they are early, then you have time to really slow down where you need to. For that matter, maybe the pace has to be cut in half. The pace doesn't have to be constant if you get there too soon. Let's say that you end up with a 7 yr old in 3rd grade. What is truly the worst case scenario? They probably will need some subject's pace cut in half. But, will they need all of them? What about Math? Science? CopyBook? Art? Music? Poetry? Literature? Some can move forward at a prescribed pace while others become 2 day efforts. What it really screws up - is scheduling. What do you do with a kid that is moving at pace in some subject areas and not in others? I'm just treating each subject as a standalone subject. He may be ahead in some and not in others. Some days he can do more work, and some days he can't...or won't. On those days I just stop halfway through the pages and we do the other half the next day. I think Jen may be right in that it will all align at some point in the future.

[Jen (formerly) in Japan]

I'm with Jen on this one when it comes to getting a kid to work too early. If they are early, then you have time to really slow down where you need to. For that matter, maybe the pace has to be cut in half. The pace doesn't have to be constant if you get there too soon. Let's say that you end up with a 7 yr old in 3rd grade. What is truly the worst case scenario? They probably will need some subject's pace cut in half. But, will they need all of them? What about Math? Science? CopyBook? Art? Music? Poetry? Literature? Some can move forward at a prescribed pace while others become 2 day efforts. What it really screws up - is scheduling. What do you do with a kid that is moving at pace in some subject areas and not in others? I'm just treating each subject as a standalone subject. He may be ahead in some and not in others. Some days he can do more work, and some days he can't...or won't. On those days I just stop halfway through the pages and we do the other half the next day. I think Jen may be right in that it will all align at some point in the future.

Just to clarify: as long as the student's weakest area remains the focal point of his school work, I find nothing wrong with allowing him to move ahead in some areas that motivate or challenge him. As soon as the homeschooling parent finds herself skimming and orally assisting a student in order to be able to check blocks in the planner, the decision has overreached its usefulness. I'm pretty sure Dorinda already knows this, though.



Jen

[MBentley]

Just to clarify: as long as the student's weakest area remains the focal point of his school work, I find nothing wrong with allowing him to move ahead in some areas that motivate or challenge him. As soon as the homeschooling parent finds herself skimming and orally assisting a student in order to be able to check blocks in the planner, the decision has overreached its usefulness. I'm pretty sure Dorinda already knows this, though.



Jen

Completely Agree. Couldn't have said it better.

[Mom2mthj]

Thanks everyone for the great suggestions...

Christine, I purchased STT this week and will be mixing it in with All About Reading for a change of pace.

Ali, we are planning on starting piano this summer or fall. Maybe his ambidextrous tendencies will help ;-). We love games and puzzles...my husband teaches him stuff like 31 and 99 which both work on math skills, but games don’t really happen during school because of his older siblings. We love several of those on your list.

Jen, thanks for the idea about starting 3M early with a follow up with 4NU. I still hope to be able to fill in until he is actually 3rd grade, but I appreciate the permission to consider it an option. I am actually toying with Sonlight A along with the MP copybook, Prima Latina, and Spelling next year. Time will tell how it goes. I am trying not to plan too much.

Thanks again!