Homeschooling Your Gifted Child - Links for my talk at the 2013 VA Homeschoolers' Conference

In an attempt to save trees and to make it easier to use links, I am posting my speaker's notes here on my blog.  If you have questions, please contact me through the email link on this page

Testing
I highly recommend Dr. J.D. Ball from EVMS for neuropsychological testing.  He understands the challenges of testing gifted children and is very accepting of homeschooling.  He may be able to recommend neuropsychologists in other areas of Virginia.  This testing is expensive and most insurances don't pay for it, however, if you suspect learning disabilities, this is the type of testing you need to do.

To have relatively inexpensive testing done that just tells you if your child is gifted or not, I recommend you do the testing through the Johns Hopkins CTY program.  Here is an overview of the tests they offer.

Talented and Gifted Course and Curriculum offerings
Email me if you have any programs you like that aren't on this list, and I'll add them.

1. Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth - online programs and summer schools
2. William & Mary: Center for Gifted Education - Saturday and summer school
3. Center for Talent Development - NorthWestern University
4. Duke TIP
5. Stanford's EPGY 
6. SIG at Princeton
7. The Davidson Institute - programs and support for children and families with profoundly gifted children
8. Splash and Spark at MIT 
9. Splash programs around the country
10. The Lukeion Project - academically rigorous programs in Latin, Greek and the Classics for children working at high school level
11. Online G3 - accelerated and engaging online humanities humanities courses for gifted children
12. Athena's Advanced Academy - age appropriate activities with high level content for gifted children
13. Royal Fireworks Press - the world's largest publisher of books for gifted children
14. Michael Clay Thompson - a language arts program specifically designed for the gifted child
15. Shelagh Gallagher - problem-based, learning units
16. Dr. Dave Purvis  - science teaching manuals
17. Problemoids Math Challenge
18. The Art of Problem Solving - math textbooks and online classes
19. List of online math classes for gifted children
20. Coursera - free online college level classes
21. Udacity - free online college level classes
22. eIMACS  - online, interactive math and science classes
23. ChemWOOT - Chemistry worldwide online olympiad training
24. Galileo Education
25. Moving Beyond the Page - Literature-based curriculum for gifted children (however, look at this program before you buy because I've heard of more than one instance where the grade level is too low for GT children)
26. eGifted - online classes for gifted children
27. The VHS Collaborative - online classes for gifted middle schoolers
28. Stanford's Online High School

Finding Support 

1. Hoagies' Gifted Education Page
2. The TAG Project - home of TAGMAX, an e-list for parents of gifted homeschoolers
3. Yahoo Groups for gifted homeschoolers

Storytellers to whom we loved to listen

1. Jim Weiss - storyteller for the thinking family and favorite of homeschoolers everywhere
2. Bobby Norfolk - Emmy award winner teller of folktales
3. Diane Ferlatte - her retelling of Aesop's fables is simply marvelous
4. Jay O'Callahan - he provides educator notes and ideas to go along with his stories
5. Odds Bodkin - he has some great stories for your dinosaur lover (and plenty more besides)
6. Willy Claflin - his crazy Maynard Moose had my kids rolling on the floor
7. Morris Gleitzman - very funny Australian who reads his own books. We purchased his books from Audible.com
8. Geoffrey T. Williams - my son adored his stories about jet planes, the solar system, the barrier reef and more
9. Robert Munsch - he offers free downloads of him telling all his stories.  Have your beginning reader read along as Mr Munsch tells his stories.  They are a scream, young and old will enjoy them.

Sources for Audiobooks

1. Full Cast Audio - everything by this recording studio is absolutely delightful.  Their recordings of Bruce Coville's books are a knee-slapping, belly-laughing pleasure to listen to
2. Audible.com - this is now my primary source for audiobooks.  I particularly like that if you don't like a book you've purchased from them, you can return it for a full refund, up to a year after you purchased it.
3. Most local libraries offer CDs or MP3's you can borrow.
4. Naxos Audiobooks - great renditions of junior classics, mythology and Shakespeare

Streaming video

1. Netflix
2. Hulu
3. Top Documentary Films
4. YouTube
5. Discovery Education Streaming - look at The Homeschool Buyers Co-op for a deal on this.

Language Arts programs we've used

1. Our experience with Shurley English.  My updated comment is that I believe this is a spectacular program, but only for one year. It is too repetitive for a GT child to remain interested in it for more than one year.  
2. Some thoughts on Michael Clay Thompson's LA program - I love his vocabulary and writing program, hate his grammar program (that's primarily because I do not have a good enough grounding in grammar and find he expects the teacher to have a strong grammar background)
3. My children are currently studying grammar and diagramming with Regan Barr at The Lukeion Project.   I highly recommend their very rigorous Barbarian Diagrammarian course
4. My kids are doing The Witty Wordsmith with Lukeion this fall. I expect great things from the course (based on our previous experience with Luekeion)
5. I highly recommend  Membean for vocabulary development for GT children 6th grade and up.  You can read my review over at the VA Homeschoolers' website.

History

I only have experience with two history programs. My kids started off with The Story of the World in first grade and I hated it, not because the information was bad, but because I hated having to prep for all the activities. We switched to  History at Our House  in 2nd grade and haven't looked back.  Scott Powell is the perfect teacher for gifted children as he helps train them to make connections and has high expectations of them.  You can find a review I wrote a few years ago here (my review is on the last page and I used the name, "Shez")