Solutions for a child ahead of the class

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Forum -> Parenting our children -> School age children

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amother

Tue, Sep 12 2023, 8:40 pm

I need solutions for kids in upper elementary that are bored in class. Some subjects are too easy and the class needs more time spent on the lesson, so it's moving at a very slow pace. Skipping a grade or switching classes/ school are not options. Extra work sheets worked for a bit but get old and hard to keep up with.

Looking for other solutions I might not have thought of. My goal is for the child not to be bored and for the child to spend time learning and not just killing time. My child is unhappy and is the one pushing for solutions.

mushkamothers

Tue, Sep 12 2023, 8:49 pm

An entire voluntary unit that they can work on. Projwct based learning style. Based on their interest. Research, read, etc on their own and create presentation or deliverable.
Ex: titanic, family history report, create cookbook of world recipes...

amother

Seablue

Tue, Sep 12 2023, 9:04 pm

Find out if there's another kid in the class in a similar situation. If so, try to arrange a pull out or for them to work quietly together in the back. If your kid is twice exceptional and getting or eligible for speech, OT, social skills, etc, talk to the therapist about whether they can incorporate any accelerated learning or the like into the sessions.

How old is your kid?

amother

Tue, Sep 12 2023, 9:08 pm

amother Seablue wrote:

12 and not twice exceptional she doesn’t struggle or receive any services.

amother

Hosta

Tue, Sep 12 2023, 9:13 pm

amother OP wrote:

12 and not twice exceptional she doesn’t struggle or receive any services.

One common misconception and impulse is to give the gifted child more work. She shouldn't be punished for being born gifted. Ideally, she should get more advanced work sheets than the other kids, or be able to read a book or something if she finished her work quicker.

amother

Cornsilk

Tue, Sep 12 2023, 9:19 pm

Let her bring along a book to read when she is bored...I read my way through seventh and eighth grade.

amother

Tue, Sep 12 2023, 9:19 pm

amother Hosta wrote:

She has a thirst to learn, she loves going to school. She wants to use her brain and not have it idle for so much of the day. Extra work sheets are boring and finished too quickly. She reads so much we can’t keep up, so adding more reading time is just stress for all of us with finding new books.

amother

Razzmatazz

Tue, Sep 12 2023, 9:24 pm

Just have to survive through school. Once my kid hit high school the only thing that took the edge off of reading material was AP textbooks. Was like a dream come true for him. Read through bio, chemistry and calculus. Bh took the APs too and scored at highest level.

amother

Clover

Tue, Sep 12 2023, 9:26 pm

amother OP wrote:

As a person who was a very gifted reader as a kid...if keeping up with her reading is stressful, you need to get help finding new books. Try kosherbooks.org or some other list that you trust. Maybe see if you can get her enrolled in an online course she can take at school under adult supervision?

amother

Tue, Sep 12 2023, 9:30 pm

amother Clover wrote:

Did all that we are talking reading adult books, finishing one a day. It’s impossible. I don’t think the school would be open to online classes it’s not the type.

giftedmom

Tue, Sep 12 2023, 9:31 pm

amother OP wrote:

Brain teasers
And fill up their mind as much as possible out of school. It helps.

amother

Firebrick

Tue, Sep 12 2023, 9:32 pm

I was a gifted kid and I believe that gifted kids should be given more difficult work, but instead of the regular classwork.

amother

Tue, Sep 12 2023, 9:36 pm

giftedmom wrote:

Brain teasers
And fill up their mind as much as possible out of school. It helps.

She does tons out of school. But school is many hours a day and it’s getting worse every year.

amother

Amaranthus

Tue, Sep 12 2023, 9:44 pm

This thread is reminding me, in high school a group of my friends used to pass around books of logic puzzles that we’d do under our desks in boring classes.

amother

Lavender

Tue, Sep 12 2023, 9:48 pm

I wrote a book during class. It was a lifesaver.

Did puzzles, spoke a ton, and used every opportunity to cut class and do some exercise in the hallways.

The secretary and I had a wonderful relationship and she’d pull me out of class for errands as well.

AlwaysGrateful

Tue, Sep 12 2023, 9:50 pm

It's hard.

Ideally she can work on her own extra projects instead of the ones assigned in class, but it takes time and effort from either the teacher or the parent to arrange them.

That might mean designing a new invention in science class, researching how to obtain a patent, and filling out all the forms (which means creating diagrams, etc. showing how it works) as if she was going to patent her work.

Or writing her own historical fiction story in history or English class.

Or learning math that's not just what she's going to be learning later on. Things like statistics and probability, or combinatorics, something like that. Or solving logic problems.

Writing a play in Hebrew in Ivrit class.

Things like that.

my mama

Tue, Sep 12 2023, 9:54 pm

No solutions but coming from a former gifted child, it's really tough!

naomi2

Tue, Sep 12 2023, 10:01 pm

Can you find a more suitable school for her?

mushkamothers

Tue, Sep 12 2023, 10:08 pm

I used to have entire extra curriculum to do on the side. Starting in 3rd grade at which point things started going downhill. (In 2nd grade I was just going ahead in the workbooks)

Like a totally parallel literature book that was several grades ahead and I did the accompanying workbook and earned a secondhand Gameboy from RadioShack. (Wow I'm dating myself)

In 6th grade I left math class with 2 other girls and we just went ahead in the book and learned at our own pace.

In 7th grade I was mostly out of class. In the morning I went around and collected the teachers attendance rosters and brought to office. I can't remember but I think she also gave me random errands to do.

In the afternoon I didn't even attend math or science, I never learned basic biology. Instead I was the computer teacher for the school lol. Literally I was the teacher for all the grades below me- setting up the room, doing the typing games, locking it up etc. The school paid me with an iPod nano lol.

Some teachers were more accommodating than others, the principal for the most part was pretty good, to her credit, and obviously my mother orchestrated a lot of this. It was a very small school too, nothing too official with any resources to really offer.

Edit, the point is that any kind of busy work is just that. Worksheets, even books, crosswords. You need a long term meaningful project to pull out and work out in incremental chunks of time, or entire periods. Or whatever is available. You need something with an actual objective to work towards and that you can show off at the end. Btw this can be knitting or crocheting, for arguments sake. Something to both aspire towards and actually point to, that you did.

Last edited by mushkamothers on Tue, Sep 12 2023, 10:27 pm; edited 1 time in total

amother

Moonstone

Tue, Sep 12 2023, 10:23 pm

Hidato books, crossword books, any puzzle book

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