Math: We pretty much followed our plan. Joey is now taking Grade 4 Accelerated Math with the John Hopkins Center For Talented Youth (JHU-CTY). We are going slower with traditional tools but we have started with Grade 3 Singapore Math and have now added Beast Academy 3rd Grade, the elementary program from The Art of Problem Solving (which came highly recommended). The graphics are a bit distracting for his age, but he is doing ok with that and is getting more comfortable every day. Joey also did participate as a homeschooler in the Continental Math League (CML) meets for 2nd and 3rd Graders. He did well, but did not get maximum points, so we are doing one of the review problems every day, and will try again next year at the same level until he is ready to progress from there. JHU-CTY offers a course to prepare for the Math Olympiad For Elementary School Students, which he will take if not this year, next, even though he won't be eligible for this type of competition for years. We will also be looking at other math competitions (I will have a post or a page on those soon), but probably not until he is actually physically in 1st Grade. One thing I learned from asking other parents of highly gifted children is that they enter them into the age-appropriate categories to give them a maximum advantage, as opposed to entering them into the level to which they are normally accelerated. So we will do the same..
Language Arts: We have finally gotten Joey's reading tested, using a great program called Total Reader, and his lexile came at 910, if we let him look up words in the dictionary (he has started being able to do this on his own), and 750 if we don't. The latter score is toward the end of 3rd grade (see correspondence chart here) and the former somewhere in 5th grade. We are almost done with the Kumon workbooks (Reading, writing, simple sentences, etc) and will soon start with the Michael Clay Thompson curriculum, which looks really promising and I believe will take his skills to the next level.
Science: We have started Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding: A Science Curriculum for K-2 and let me tell you that I absolutely love this program. It is concept-centered, rather than experiment-centered. What that means is that instead of introducing concepts through what I call 'wow' experiments, which in my opinion can be very distracting, it starts with the concepts, then illustrates with very simple and targeted experiments or observations. The concepts are organized in a map from simple to more complex. If I had written a book on how to teach kids science without underestimating them, I would have written this book. Joey is also in camp at the local Science Center this summer, but it is always so hard to tell whether there is actually any learning going on.
Languages: we are continuing with our formal French program (all the details are here) and so far, so good (we have hired a tutor who comes in every other week to check on his progress)! Joey will also be in an immersion French camp this summer for a week. While he still resists speaking French to me, although he is bilingual, he is clearly absorbing the material. For Hebrew, we are done with Shalom alef bet!: A pre-primer for Shalom Uvrachah and with Shalom Uvrachah: The New Hebrew Primer, so we are moving on to the Hineni series, which comes with separate workbooks, until he is a fluent reader. We will also supplement with the Artscroll Children's Siddur to make sure he starts becoming solid on the basic Jewish prayers and blessings. Once Joey can read Hebrew fluently, then we will devise a program similar to what we are doing in French. I will have a separate post to teach Judaics for those who might be interested.
Geography/History: We are still sticking with Replogle 12" Intelliglobe; there aren't enough hours in the day to add anything else!
Other: I will have separate posts on all of Joey's 'engineering' activities!
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