We got our Abeka order, the K4 curriculum, for Vidura.

Well, he went through the "lessons" and little owl book, little books in less than a week, sigh :(

Now the motor skills, that's another story, but as far as reading/phonics, I guess he's on 1st grade level, rofl, and he'll be 3 at the end of the month.

How do you do it and keep it interesting for them when their reading level is high but the motor skills (writing, cutting, coloring) are very low? I mean all he can do is write a O and I and V, cut a straight line with scissors and scribble "in" the lines for coloring...
But he stared reading 4-5 letter words.

I guess I'll have to re-think my whole approach, I know there's writing in each lesson with the phonics, but he gets bored with the lessons cause he already knows it.

AAaaaahhhhhhhh!!! HELP!
Ys,
Radhanuga

My dd is not as advanced in reading, but we do come accross the writing problem. What I do is the phonics program seperately from handwriting. You could use a phonics program that does not require writing like phonics pathways, ordinary parents guide to reading or just skip the writing part of your current program and work on tracing letters with tracing paper or you could print-off the pre-writing worksheets from the donnayoung.org site.We also like the handwriting without tears preschool book.

I bet Handwriting Without Tears would be good for him. The preschool book uses a crayon and has them write only capital letters and a few numbers. It's a lot of fun. Or skip writing altogether until he's ready and just let him read! :)

Hi Radhanuga.

My daughter was an early reader too. She was reading simple books by age 4. But, I am learning that balance is very important. IMHO, I would not order any more curriculums for such a young child. Let him be a child. If he likes reading, let him read, encourage him, but I would not try to bring him "up to grade level" to where his best skill is. Stephania did not get to cutting well with scissors until 6 yo and, though she writes well and legibly, still uses a very awkward pencil grip.

HWTs -- which I recommended to you in another post -- does not even recommend starting their preschool program with under 4 year olds. It is about developmental readiness. Of course every child is different, but these people have a lot of experience with writing.

Stephania is my oldest, and when she was a baby and toddler I did all of the "make your child a genius" :joker: stuff with her. Then, last year for first grade, we decided to send her to a Waldorf school because she was doing great academically but was not able to do age-appropriate hand work, clapping games, and socialization.

Waldorf was not a good match for us BUT I did realize some important things. You may want to read some of the Waldorf info on-line just to get a different perspective on early academics. (I don't agree with them entirely, but it is interesting to consider and is very mind-expanding.)

Just another way to look at it.

Natalia

Thank you for the replies :)
Natalia you always have such good advice, thank you so much!

I have a tendency to forget he's only 3 years old (not even yet), he's so lonely that I try to work with him as much as possible so that he doesn't get bored :(
We go to the park because it's next door, but that's about it, cause I don't drive. He used to go to toddler basket ball, but we are in a very bad neighbourhood and all his peers have a terrible language, when he started comming home saying the F word we just had to stop b-ball :(

He's not social at all, gets overwhelmed very easily, gets angry easily, etc... He loves learning, he asks for it all the time. We do a lot of cooking and crafts, painting, coloring.

I made him last night a set of curves and "sticks" for HWT, I couldn't spend the $27 on the set so made it with strong cardboard. He hasn't seen it yet, I can't wait to show him :)

Which one of the HWT books shall I get for him?

The preschool one is called "Get Set for School."

Erik is an accelerated learner too. I found I really couldn't do any of that kind of packaged curriculum, because of the discrepancy in skill levels (Erik can't cut AT ALL, has NO desire to even hold a scissors! But he does know how to write ALL of his letters and numbers, upper and lower case, because he wanted to do that). And that kind of academic skills go so quickly, I knew if I got anything, he'd rush right through it. And I realized he was going to learn it even if I did nothing.

Anyway, that's why I love Sonlight. The PreK is NOT a typical PreK program. It is a lot of great reading. And we loved it. We went through it quickly, and now we're getting ready for K... again, a lot of great reading, and learning through reading. It's much easier for me not to push him, because if he wants to listen, he listens, if he's not in the mood, I can tell quickly and we stop.

As far as HIS reading--with Erik, I haven't yet done ANY formal program with him. He plays starfall (http://www.starfall.com ) on the computer, and he loves that. But mostly he taught himself. He reads at a 2nd grade level right now (reading books like Little Bear), and for his reading, I just check out copious amounts of readers from the library.

Jacob was also like this. We ended up skipping a lot until I found our (his) groove. He just learns very quickly and not much stumps him. We also use Sonlight, and for the reasons Heather mentioned. We're doing Core 1 now - Ancient History, which is so much fun. We are doing Advanced Readers with it. The readers themselves are very easy for him, but the skills that go along with the LA program are good. Math is his thing - he's in Singapore 3B right now, cruising along.

My problem is that I've found that most people don't want to hear about how advanced he is. It must be a competition kind of thing. I can't help that he's the way he is and I need someone to talk to about it who will understand that I'm not bragging, and that this is a challenge, too! I found the accelerated learners forum at Sonlight and that was a relief.

Good luck to you! You're in for a great ride with your little guy! Learning with Jacob is quite an adventure.

My problem is that I've found that most people don't want to hear about how advanced he is. It must be a competition kind of thing. I can't help that he's the way he is and I need someone to talk to about it who will understand that I'm not bragging, and that this is a challenge, too! I found the accelerated learners forum at Sonlight and that was a relief.
.

That is so true (and I like the AL forum at SL too!). And I know people mean well, but I just stop talking about it a lot, because I don't want to hear "just let him be a kid". I AM just letting him be a kid, it's just that he's a different kind of kid ;) It is challenging too!

That is so true (and I like the AL forum at SL too!). And I know people mean well, but I just stop talking about it a lot, because I don't want to hear "just let him be a kid". I AM just letting him be a kid, it's just that he's a different kind of kid ;) It is challenging too!

Oh my goodness, I hear that all the time, from family, doctor and other "well wishers" :rolleyes:

"Can't you just let him be a kid?" "Why are you pushing him like that?" and all. Well, he sure IS a kid and I am not pushing him at all, he just likes it, asks for it, does it.
Since I hate bragging I just don't say anything, when asked,I just tell the facts, hehe.

It sure is a trip and is more challenging for me than for him. I wanted to start off formal "homeschooling" with a full curriculum so I'd get into a routine (I am totally not organized otherwise, especially when something is new to me) but I guess I'll have to re-plan my technics, lol.

I just got Abeka 1st Reading and phonics used with all the readers, I'm going to use that and use the math/numbers from K4-5. We are starting the Community helpers and Health Safety and Manners for 1st also.
Science K.

And I made a point of taking him to the library once a week no matter what (it's an hour and half walk from here, I don't drive, so 3 hours walk total)
We have a lot of books here in French and English, I'm starting to teach him French phonics.

Thank you for the nice posts/advice, I really appreciate, it's nice to know I'm not alone on this :)

Erik's learning a bit of french from DH and grandma (who is a French teacher) but we havne't done much. We think we're going to start with Greek. My plan is to get the materials... then have them laying around, or show them to him some. When he's ready, I know he'll tell us. I think he'll just LOVE the Greek alphabet. He recently started learning Roman numerals by flipping through one of my fiction books with roman numerals for chapter headings... and he thought it was so cool how it meant the same as our numbers, but was written in a different way.

And if I let him just do his own thing all day... we would ALL be miserable. Oh, I'm pretty amazed that you WALK that far to the library. You rock! :monkeydan

Heather --
Do you speak/write Greek? If not, how are you planning to teach him?

Just curious as I've always thought the Greek alphabet is beautiful to look at but don't know anything about it.

Natalia

We are looking at: Hey, Andrew, Teach me Some Greek! (http://www.greeknstuff.com/andrew.html) It uses Biblical Greek. My DH is a pastor, and he learned to read/write Greek (Biblical, not modern) while in Seminary, so he'd primarily work with Erik.