Creative Homeschooling: A Resource Guide for Smart Families

By Lisa Rivero

For a comprehensive guide to home-based education, that does not promote any particular curriculum or religious view, this is one book parents should buy!

Parents will appreciate practical advice on getting started, adjusting to new roles, designing curriculum that is both child-centered and fun, and planning for social and emotional growth. Parents will turn to their favorite chapters again and again.

Features interviews and tips from many homeschool parents as well as long lists of resources.

-Reasons to home-school

-How gifted children learn

-Positive changes for the family

-"Big Ideas" thematic approach

-Traditional and classical approaches

-Curriculum resources

-Record keeping

-College planning

-How to get started

-Interviews with parents

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gifted Unlimited
• Release date: Apr 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781935067320

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

The Decision to Homeschool

We didn’t always homeschool. Our son enjoyed a child-centered preschool, followed by kindergarten and part of first grade at our local public school, where he was in a once-a-week pull-out program for gifted students. In the middle of first grade, he switched to a small private school for gifted learners, which he attended for one and a half years, and where he made some dear friends and I was introduced to the social and emotional aspects of giftedness.

In each educational setting, he experienced many of the successes, failures, and challenges familiar to other intense, sensitive learners and their families. His kindergarten teachers were enthusiastic about teaching young children and responsive to his social and emotional needs. When a school-wide assembly proved to be too much stimulation for his sensitive ears and eyes, a teacher’s aide kindly asked if he’d like to help her get the classroom ready during the assembly time. She later told me that he talked more in that half hour alone with her in the classroom than he had all year. When he stood in front of his classmates at age four to make an impassioned plea for unconditional acceptance after the class read the book Rainbow Fish, his teacher understood and accepted his heightened sensitivity and sense of justice. He didn’t seem to mind that so little of the academic work was challenging; he continued to learn other things on his own, on his own initiative, at home.

His first grade teacher told us at the first parent conference that in spite of having entered kindergarten one year early, he knew everything she planned to teach that year, so her goals for him were strictly social-emotional. We soon learned that this meant trying to cure his perfectionism and to curb his intense emotional reactions. I would later learn that being out of sync with classmates—seemingly younger in terms of emotions but ahead of others in intellectual and conceptual thought and performance—is a common experience for gifted children. At the time, however, I didn’t understand why he no longer enjoyed school. He began to fear having his name written on the blackboard for misbehavior, even though this disciplinary act never once happened to him. He also began think of the classroom as a place to show what he already knew rather than as a place to explore new knowledge. As months went on, we saw his drive to learn for the sheer joy of learning slowly but surely fade until it was nearly gone.

Second grade at a small, private school posed yet a different challenge. Like many gifted, creative learners, our son can be simultaneously an introverted learner and an extraverted socializer. David Willings (1980), in The Creatively Gifted: Recognizing and Developing the Creative Potential, calls this personality the introverted swashbuckler, a type often misunderstood by peers and teachers. Introverted swashbucklers are self-reliant at young ages, and their dual preference for solitude and society makes them seem inconsistent to the children and adults around them. These children may have difficulty focusing in a classroom setting and much prefer to have their socialization time separate from intense learning experiences. Because our son’s classmates, also highly gifted, were equally intense, he was exhausted by the daily interactions and became easily frustrated. He had difficulty concentrating on learning in such a high-stimulus environment. Every day he would say he’d had a bad day at school, but would offer no further details. By the time he came home, he was emotionally and physically drained. By the end of second grade, he seemed at an impasse, neither thriving nor happy most of the time, getting through each day but without a sense of wholeness or purpose.

The option to homeschool grew in our minds slowly. Both my husband and I had been involved extensively in formal education as students and later as teachers; so, at least academically, the traditional education system had worked for us. I was a technical writing instructor at an engineering college and had just begun to work with gifted elementary school students in the classroom. My husband is a professor of Eighteenth Century British Literature and director of a university honors program; he had been a summa cum laude graduate of an Ivy League school and a Fulbright scholar.

By the time we are adults, we often forget the excruciating boredom we once experienced in the classroom, the nagging feeling of being different but not knowing why, the fear of making a mistake or of not living up to one’s potential, and most of all, the long days spent waiting for the last bell to ring so we could run home to our favorite books, hobbies, and projects. In my case, I remember spending hours pretending to be characters from books, being enchanted by the world of Star Trek in my middle school years but knowing no other child who liked science fiction, keeping an extensive scrapbook of newspaper clippings from my favorite professional football team, and writing stories in bed, using a flashlight, in the glorious privacy of late night hours. I attended a small, rural elementary school on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South Dakota with only two other children in my grade, and I felt inexplicably different from the other dozen or so children in the school. No one else seemed to think or feel as I did, nor did I have strong social and emotional skills to navigate what often seemed an alien social world. By the time I was ready to move on to the county-wide public high school, I was spending most of my time learning how to conform so I could fit in better. I remember almost nothing of what I learned in school during that time, even though my grades were good and I was valedictorian of my high school class. I entered college on a scholarship with almost no study skills, ashamed to admit that I hadn’t a clue how to study for a test or take lecture notes. Not until graduate school did I begin to feel comfortable with myself as an independent, self-directed learner. Looking back, I felt as though most of my prime years of formal schooling had been wasted.

But isn’t that the real world? Aren’t such difficulties not only necessary but somehow good for us—even character building? If my husband and I had each managed to live through it, couldn’t our son, too?

We decided we wanted something better for him.

Coming Home

During the spring months of our son’s second grade year, we stepped out of our comfort zones and opened our minds to alternatives to traditional education. Although we still hadn’t decided definitely to homeschool, we started by taking the advice of David Guterson¹—award-winning novelist, homeschool parent, and author of Family Matters: Why Homeschooling Makes Sense—to examine our own expectations and goals. We agreed that we were not interested in achievement for achievement’s sake. We agreed that the true end of education is neither the best school nor the highest honors—though some students measure success by those milestones—but that excellent education exhibits a meaningful integration of life and work and learning. An ideal education would allow children to find work they love, which might or might not be in the area of their highest potential. Such an education would also help children to know and to be themselves just as they are, with all of their magnificent quirks and passions and insights and ideas, and to find their own place in the world.

We began to realize from our reading and our own experience that children with traits of giftedness think and experience life differently from many other children and therefore need an education carefully tailored to their unique learning styles and interests. Such an education must take into account their abilities to question and think in abstract patterns as well as their complex personalities, fears, joys, and true love of learning. We began to spend a good deal of time simply getting to know our son better, paying attention to how he learns best, and noting when his threshold for stimulation was optimal. We saw that he preferred not to separate learning into times and subjects, and that, perhaps due to his perfectionistic tendencies, formal evaluation seemed to interfere with his learning process. We were also aware of his extreme sensitivity and empathy. We had watched him react with strong emotions to events and crises in the books he reads or hears. At age three, when he first heard the story of Peter Rabbit’s father being eaten in a pie, he burst into tears of sadness. When he saw his preschool teacher act out a scene from the children’s book Caps for Sale, where a peddler yells at some mischievous chimps, he became inexplicably fearful and upset. We also noticed how he naturally sought patterns and order and relationships in nearly everything he experienced, keeping his own lists of his passions du jour from an early age, and how he found busy work meaningless. We wanted to provide him with an education that could help him realize his sensitivity, idealism, work ethic, and perfectionism as strengths rather than as handicaps or burdens.

Finally, we had to face the toughest questions every parent considering homeschooling has to face: Are we capable of doing this? Can we teach our son what he needs to know to succeed? How will we meet his social and emotional needs? What are they exactly, anyway? We knew that before he went to school, he had learned freely and joyfully and according to his needs, so something must have been right back then.

So rather than focus on teaching, we began to focus on learning. Can we adequately help our son to learn? Can we help him rediscover how to learn and recover his joy of learning? What will his social and emotional needs be when a classroom of age peers is no longer a consideration?

Once we allowed ourselves to consider seriously the possibility of homeschooling, the decision was easy and relatively quick. The difficulty was only at the start, when we knew we would be diverging from the well-trodden path of public and private school education. As parents of a child who was gifted, we were already a minority in the broader community of parents. By homeschooling, would we be isolating ourselves even further? Would we find enough support and information? Like so many other parents who seek information on which to make schooling decisions, we studied books, magazines, and Internet resources, and we talked to other parents and teachers in an attempt to understand our son’s educational needs and options.

At the time, few written resources existed specifically for parents who were considering homeschooling their gifted children. So, as a writer by profession and an avid reader by compulsion, I began delving into issues of education, homeschooling, and giftedness beyond what is presented in the popular press. I became acquainted with several homeschooling families in our local area and through the Internet–families across the U.S. and Canada. The more I learned, the more I became convinced that for many families of precocious and intense learners, homeschooling is an educational path that can provide the intellectual, social, and emotional support necessary for a fulfilling life. I found that theoretical research about the needs of gifted children and the practical experiences of homeschooling families converge in many areas. For example:

Whereas gifted children are often uneven in their academic and emotional development, homeschooling offers an environment in which grade levels don’t matter and in which a child can learn at several different levels simultaneously.

Whereas gifted children’s high levels of sensitivity and perfectionism require understanding of caring adults for discussion, guidance, and support, homeschooling gives families the opportunity to address specific social and emotional needs in a loving and accepting atmosphere.

Whereas gifted children tend to think in new, divergent, and creative ways and often have a strong internal drive, homeschooling offers the chance to integrate meaningful self-direction into the child’s education. In addition, homeschooling can support rather than limit creative, divergent thinking.

Whereas gifted children have complex social needs and often need several different sets of peer groups in order to meet those needs, homeschooling allows and in fact encourages children to socialize with a variety of groups and ages.

Our deliberations and conclusions—which form the heart of this book—brought us to the inevitable conclusion that homeschooling was not only possible, but was the optimal educational option for our family. Once we came to that realization, we knew that we would be doing our son a disservice by providing him with anything less. When we mentioned the idea of homeschooling to him, he was more than willing to give it a try, especially after we assured him that we would do everything possible to ensure that he could still see his school friends regularly. A change in my writing schedule allowed me to do all of my work from home; we purchased a couple of extra bookcases for our son’s room and were on our way.

Over the next few years, we watched our son grow emotionally, socially, and intellectually. To say he was happier misses the point somewhat, though he was certainly happier. More important was that he was becoming better acquainted with and more sure of himself. Many of the inherent characteristics of giftedness such as perfectionism, intensity, and sensitivity were still there, but facing them and understanding them was certainly easier. And many of the struggles—such as being out of sync with traditional grade levels or not being able to capitalize on individual learning styles and preferences—simply dropped away.

We had assumed that he would stop homeschooling when he was ready for high school, but after visiting our local public high school and considering the experiences of his friends—some in homeschool and some in traditional school—he decided to homeschool for high school as well. All told, he homeschooled from third grade through twelfth grade, and then entered university full-time, where he graduated summa cum laude. He is now finishing his first year of Harvard Law School.

Looking back, he does not regret his decision, and neither do I. Deciding to homeschool has been the most important, the most natural, and the most rewarding educational decision our family ever made. Homeschooling made us better parents, made him a better student, and made all of us a happier family.

One of the publicly voiced concerns about homeschooling is that it isolates children from society. We experienced the opposite. Homeschooling broadened, rather than limited, our child’s social opportunities and participation in the world in which he lives. A typical week for us during his elementary years included a homeschool gym day or group meeting with children of all ages, an afternoon playing and socializing with a core group of friends ages five to 13, bowling after school with former school friends, participating in a book discussion group with other homeschooled children ages nine to 12, learning with age peers in a Saturday College for Kids program, and playing chess at a bookstore with other children on Sunday afternoons. During his high school years, he began to take part-time courses at a local university, became involved year-round in a children’s theater academy, and continued to meet regularly with his homeschooled friends. He knew the people who worked at the post office, bank, library, grocery store, and other local places of business. A natural introvert, he nonetheless became comfortable being around people of all ages, from preschoolers to older adults, and he had a healthy mix of close friends and acquaintances,

I must stress that this book is just the story of our particular homeschooling experience. As I did my research in those early years, I gradually began to put together the kinds of information that I wish I’d had when we started. I decided to write the kind of homeschooling book I wish I’d had—one that is informed by the research and scholarship of gifted education and homeschooling advocates as well as by the wisdom of other families of homeschooled gifted learners who agreed to share their thoughts and experiences. You’ll meet these families throughout the book. Some are families I interviewed for the first edition, and others are new to this second edition. These families’ experiences and examples offer refreshing alternatives to the stereotype of homeschool parents who pull their children from school only to push them to go higher and faster or to hide them from the rest of the world. You’ll meet parents who seek to discover what learning is all about. Sometimes this means scrambling to keep up with their children’s young, quick, creative minds!

The Summer of Asimov

I will forever think of the summer when I finished the first edition of this book as the summer of Asimov. As I worked at my writing, our then nine-year-old son was often sorting through his collection of Isaac Asimov novels, essays, and short story collections. With my library books and notes scattered in front of me, I sat doing my work at the dining room table while he knelt comfortably on the living room floor just a few feet away, surrounded by his own library books, science fiction magazines, and notes. I remember specifically his putting together a chronological list or timeline of Asimov’s short stories, and he had begun to compile a comprehensive guide to the stories contained in specific anthologies. He hummed while he worked, and every so often, he talked about what he was doing or asked a question. He was content; he was incredibly focused, happily engaged in self-directed learning. This was not work I had assigned. It was considered part of his free time.

Some of his days involved a wider range of subjects, such as watching history documentaries or doing science experiments or studying math. While I would often work for only an hour or two a day, he busily stayed with his projects and interests from about mid-morning until suppertime. He stopped his activities for lunch, to make the salads for supper, and to fold and put away his freshly laundered clothes. After supper, we usually spent time together as a family, reading or talking or watching a movie. Some days involved more social interaction or group activities, such as weekly get-togethers with a small group of homeschooled children.

Our homeschooling life felt completely normal.

Homeschooling allowed our son to become comfortable with himself as a learner and a person. I have nothing against public or private schools; I have the highest respect for professional teachers, but the school system was simply not a good fit for our child and the way he preferred to learn. We knew homeschooling was working, not because of test scores, although our son tested well, but because he was coming back to himself, fitting the description below of the appropriately challenged and well-nurtured gifted boy.²

He was learning that there are ideas worth falling in love with.

He was alive to this world and full of the kind of self-esteem that results from real work done well.

He achieved for the pleasure of achieving, rather than for the fulfillment of external standards, and he was becoming more inner-directed.

His family supported and understood his intensity.

He had friendships with both boys and girls.

He was not shamed for the expression of emotion and was encouraged in his kindness.

He had a strong sense of self and an emotional resilience.

As a family, we are grateful. Homeschooling is certainly not for everyone, but for us and for thousands of other families, homeschooling offers a reprieve from sometimes inappropriate and punishing education, or in some cases, a long-term alternative to formal education. It is my hope that other families can realize the sense of joy and wholeness homeschooling can bring, including reduced stress and the freedom to learn according to the child’s abilities, interests and need to progress. I hope that this book will serve as a source of information, support, and inspiration for other parents who are considering homeschooling a child who is intense, creative, complex, and wonderfully out of sync.

Pros and Cons of the Word Gifted

A lot of homeschoolers react very negatively to the G-word. Parents should be prepared not to use the word in public unless with a gifted-friendly group. It may be hard to find peers if you’re not in an urban area with a high concentration of gifted homeschoolers. If your child has accompanying overexcitabilities, it can be hard to explain this to other parents and homeschool teachers you work with.

- Suki Wessling, homeschool parent and author of From School to Homeschool

Parents of gifted children face unique challenges that are seldom discussed or taken seriously by other parents or school personnel. While parents should not become overly focused on a child’s potential nor should they organize the entire family around a gifted child, parents will be served well by understanding why their children seem different, and that the difference necessitates unique parenting and educational approaches.

I cannot adequately describe the relief I felt when I finally met other parents who, like me, were accused of being pushy when their young children taught themselves to read before kindergarten, or who felt helpless as they watched their child’s extreme and painful sensitivity, or who struggled to keep up with the reasoning powers of a six-year-old asking a question a minute.

The temptation for parents of bright children who are in regular school is to take advantage of every service for gifted students that is offered to them, even though it may not serve their gifted student positively. On the other hand, parents whose children learn at home may feel pressure never to let the word gifted enter their thoughts, or if it does, to encase it in quotation marks and declare that in the homeschool setting, every child’s gifts flourish, which of course, on one level, is true.

While it may be in vogue (or politically correct) to scoff at any distinction between gifted and more average learners, any parent who has lived with a gifted child knows that these children do experience life differently and that efforts to make them fit in with age mates only serve to reinforce the child’s suspicion that something is wrong with me. When gifted children experience emotional difficulties, the cause is usually not their inherent giftedness alone, but the interplay between their gifted traits and the environment, so the more that parents understand the unique needs and challenges of gifted children, the better equipped they are to offer an environment that promotes healthy social and emotional development.³

Part of the problem is one of nomenclature. The word gifted is ambiguous at best and understandably elicits envy and even hostility, especially if people equate gifted with special or better. All children are special. All children have unique traits and abilities. Certainly gifted children are not better or more valuable than any other children. They are as valuable as other children, however, and thus deserve an education that meets their needs.

I debated with myself whether to use a different word for this book so as not to confuse or offend some readers, but the terms that make the most sense to me—intense learners and overexcitable learners—do not have similar connotations for other readers. Bright and talented are preferred words among many educational professionals, but they do not adequately describe the gifted child’s inner world and makes me think of talent shows with big blue ribbons—a not entirely benign misrepresentation. Perhaps the word gifted does not adequately describe these enigmatic children either, but other phrases such as more able learners, advanced learners, high ability children, intellectually talented children, and highly intelligent children serve us no better and are certainly less graceful from a writer’s standpoint. So until a better word is found, I will use the term gifted to describe learners who bring high levels of intensity, sensitivity, and complexity to their learning.

It’s interesting to note that the phrase homeschooling is similarly problematic, with unschooling, home learning, world learning, and, my personal favorites, home-based education or home education as some of the alternatives.⁴ Different homeschoolers have different preferences for how they want to think of themselves and what they wish to be called.

Barbara Kerr and Sanford Cohn write in their book, Smart Boys: Talent, Manhood, and the Search for Meaning,⁵ that they use the word gifted rather defiantly in their book, since the children themselves shouldn’t suffer as the result of adults’ discomfort and biases. Thus, for my purposes, gifted is as good a term as any other, perhaps precisely because of its ambiguity. Gifted children are, after all, by no means a homogeneous group. One gifted child may be obviously above grade level in most or all subjects while another, (like Thomas Edison), struggles to learn to read at age seven. One gifted child may be reflective in thought, giving the impression of being slow, while another may be impulsive, making her seem flighty. A gifted child may be physically strong or stereotypically bookish or nerdy. There are as many unique forms of a gifted child as there are children within any group.

Words like smart and bright are often used to describe gifted children (and, in fact, I sometimes use them myself in that context), but there is a difference between the book smart child and the gifted child. Children who are book smart are generally satisfied to learn the knowledge of others, to answer questions, and to have good ideas. Children who are gifted are seldom satisfied to know the right answer. They are driven to go farther and deeper, to develop and uncover new knowledge. They ask endless questions. They have unusual, even outrageous ideas. Book smart children are usually very easy to teach. Gifted children rarely are easy to teach. That is not to say that book smart children do not deserve an individualized education, but they have different academic, social, and emotional needs from the gifted child.

What sets the gifted child apart from her bright classmates are the following traits: intensity and insight; self-determination and an unrelenting drive to learn about the world; divergent or creative thinking; perfectionism; and sensitivity. Gifted children also often experience asynchronous development: they appear out of sync with age peers because they are operating at a higher age level in some areas and lower in others. Other lists suggest even more traits. Whatever list one prefers, usually a combination of some of these traits are intricately and magically woven into one complete and complex child who may or may not achieve—now or later—according to the world’s timetable or standards.

Parents who are unsure if their child is gifted can still benefit from this book, because all children have the potential to develop their creativity and to learn in more self-directed ways. Many creative, gifted adults describe themselves as late bloomers, so we should refrain from identifying any child as "not gifted." Many of the resources, principles, and strategies used in gifted education will benefit all students. Strategies such as individual pacing, open-ended questioning, and using different points of view—foundations of gifted education programming—can be used by any homeschool parents.

If the experiences, descriptions, and resources in the following pages are helpful to your child and family, even if your child is not formally identified as gifted, please don’t let the term gifted stand in the way. Because programming for gifted is often one of the few ways that children can receive an enriched, individualized education in schools, it should come as no surprise that many parents want their children to qualify for such programs. But a home-based education permits any child to receive an education tailored to the child’s unique needs without having to fit the child into a category.

How the Book Is Organized

The book is written in two sections, and each section explores a different part of the homeschooling path. Readers should feel free to turn to the section or chapter that pertains most to them. While some readers may benefit from reading the book sequentially from start to finish, others will use it more as a trusted reference to be consulted for specific concerns as they arise.

Part I: At Home with Gifted Children shows how giftedness affects the choice to homeschool and how being gifted shapes a child’s personality, behavior, and education. You will become acquainted with learning traits common to gifted children and ways parents can manage the dual roles of parent and teacher and still address social and emotional needs. You will discover family dynamics frequently associated with giftedness and learn how best to work and live with sensitive, creative, and sometimes overexcitable children.

Part II: Creative Homeschooling focuses more on homeschooling specifically, including the importance of self-directed learning and how to integrate self-directed learning with common home education approaches. We will explore gifted education and creativity research and the implications for homeschooling, look at curriculum options and costs, learn how to keep records, and discuss special issues such as gifted teens and highly or profoundly gifted children.

The book ends with a short list of parent-recommended resources.

Here’s where to look for answers to certain questions right away:

How will I know if my child is gifted? Chapter 2

How can I address my child’s perfectionism? Chapter 3

How do gifted children learn? Chapter 4

What are the ways that my children learns best? Chapter 5

Will I be a good parent/teacher? Chapter 6

How do I start homeschooling? Chapter 7

Is homeschooling expensive? Chapter 8

How can I encourage my child to be a self-directed learner? Chapter 9

Is unschooling right for me? Chapter 9

How do I approach each subject? Chapter 10

What is classical education? Will it work for my child? Chapter 10

What are unit studies? How do I use them? Chapter 10

How do I keep homeschool records? Chapter 11

How do I homeschool a profoundly gifted young child? Chapter 12

What are some tried-and-true learning resources for gifted learners? Chapter 13

Throughout the book, all of the examples and quotes from homeschool families are from individuals who agreed to participate in written or e-mail interviews or surveys. To protect privacy, names are largely fictitious.

PART I:

AT HOME WITH GIFTED CHILDREN

CHAPTER 1

THE DECISION

If you are going to keep your children out of schools, you had better decide what an education means because no one else is going to do it for you.

- David Guterson, Family Matters: Why Homeschooling Makes Sense

My son would survive at a public school, but he thrives as a homeschooler.

- Stella, homeschool parent

You want to learn about homeschooling. You probably have a lot of questions. Can children learn effectively at home? What are the benefits of homeschooling versus traditional school? How do homeschooled children find friends? How can parents best facilitate a child’s education at home? Is it possible to school more than one child at home?

If you are considering homeschooling a child who is especially talented and creative, you may have even more questions. What is giftedness? What is creativity? How can it be encouraged? In what ways do gifted students learn differently? How do they experience the world around them? How is homeschooling different for children who are gifted and creative, if at all? What exactly is involved in schooling a bright, intense, sensitive child at home? If you’ve ever asked these questions, this book is written for you. Whether or not you decide to homeschool, this book will help you understand the kind of learning environment bright, intense learners need, and it may even help you work with your child’s school or teacher to provide that learning environment.

Sometimes children are identified as gifted by a school system but do not experience joyful learning, the kind of learning you remember from their younger, pre-kindergarten days. Sometimes gifted and talented programs, enrichment opportunities, and grade acceleration, while beneficial for many students, are simply not the best choices for all gifted children.

Perhaps your child does not meet all the criteria for the school’s gifted program, but you know in your heart that she is a creative thinker who would benefit from more challenging activities. It may be that hours of rote learning leave her frustrated or withdrawn, and you see her gradually losing her love for learning.

It may be that your school does not even acknowledge giftedness. "We believe all children are gifted," school officials sometimes say. Unfortunately, this kind of statement usually means that the gifted child’s unique social and emotional needs—and even intellectual needs—will most likely be unrecognized, overlooked, and certainly misunderstood. If you are already homeschooling you may notice that your child is different from the other homeschooled children you know. He’s more intense; he resists standard curriculum packages; or he gets frustrated and anxious if his work isn’t perfect. His skills and achievement levels are uneven; he asks difficult questions about complex issues. Certified gifted or not, children who are sensitive, intense learners do require a modified curriculum and a specialized approach, whether they learn in school or at home.

Why Homeschool?

Families choose to homeschool for a variety of reasons. Some value the extra time available for family and community. Others appreciate how homeschooling can provide a truly individualized education. And some families with highly gifted children find that their children’s emotional and intellectual needs are so different from the norm that homeschooling is necessary for the child to thrive educationally. Reasons for homeschooling a gifted child usually fall within four broad categories: (1) Intellectual Needs, (2) Social and Emotional Needs, (3) Self-Actualization, and (4) Homeschool as the Last Resort.

A Tradition of Homeschooling

Learning outside of school is an educational tradition with a long and impressive history in the United States, whether the children were taught by one or both parents, tutored, or mostly self-taught. Benjamin Franklin’s formal education ended at age eight, but through self-directed studies, he mastered several languages and published his first essay at age 16. Abraham Lincoln’s formal education was very limited; he taught himself by voracious reading and by seeking the tutelage of mentors. Susan B. Anthony, who could read at age three, was educated mostly at home. Florence Nightingale was taught entirely at home, mostly by her father.⁶

Thomas Edison’s mother taught him at home after he had spent just a few months in school and where his teacher thought him addled. Michael Faraday never attended school and was mostly self-taught. Anthropologist Mary Leakey received most of her early education by traveling through Europe with her father. Her later experience with formal schooling was quite short-lived. Expelled from two schools, she continued her education at home with