Special Needs & Homeschooling - About Us

When my student was in the second grade at an expensive private school in the Midwest, they told us he couldn’t pay attention in class. My student was sometimes disruptive to the class because he blurted out answers or he skipped ahead. The teachers suggested that my student had an attention deficit disorder. Fortunately, I knew my student better than it seemed they did. Instead of rushing him to a psychologist for an ADHD diagnosis as they suggested, I explored other avenues.

I had read about “giftedness” in children, but I didn’t really understand what that meant. Don’t all children have gifts and talents? After further reading on the subject of giftedness, I had the Woodcock-Johnson Achievement test administered. It was an early indicator of just how gifted my student was. He showed that he had abilities far above “the norm” in several areas. The test administrator suggested that my student was “highly gifted” in some areas and “off the charts” in other areas. The Stanford-Binet test was recommended at the time, but I deferred that suggestion for another day as I wasn’t really sure what that would tell me. Naturally, at that point in my life, I shared the Woodcock-Johnson information with the school. Surely they would be able to educate a student that was “highly gifted” in some areas. They presented some ideas that didn’t feel right to me, but even more interesting was that the school claimed that they only “taught to” an IQ of 120. To this day I still don’t understand what that means.

The suggestions the school provided were that my student could stay with the current group of kids and do more advanced work in a special class once a week or he could skip a grade. They also wanted to focus on my student’s small motor issues in a special class. It seemed to me to be the perfect recipe for personal disaster for my student, a loss of self esteem.

The school assumed I was seriously considering their solutions. After all, they were the experts weren’t they? What they didn’t realize was that I had been exploring another option, homeschooling.

The Gifted & Talented Homeschooled Student

As of 2007, we have been homeschooling for almost a decade.

Our first year was our "chill-out" year where we "figured out how to do things" (as my student will tell you). The next four years we homeschooled in Utah. While we were there we started a non-denominational statewide website (www.utahhomeschool.net) which is where a lot of the information you'll find at this website came from. Where we have reused information from that website, or in places where our new friends have contributed, you'll see the symbol:

This symbol appears on some of our pages. It indicates contributions made to this site by friends and visitors to this site...

One important discovery we made in Utah was that we found that homeschoolers can easily add travel to school schedules. As my student matured and we found our way as homeschoolers in the very unique state of Utah, we began to add travel to our homeschool curriculum.

We have since moved away from Utah and back to our home state - Ohio. I have decided to narrow my focus with this website to how I am homeschooling a highly gifted student This theme, makes this website more valuable to others considering the same thing. As I am gaining more and more experience with homeschooling a highly gifted student, I share what I have learned along the way on these pages.

This website is unique because it reflects the eclectic approach we take with our homeschooling. You'll find things here that you may not find at other homeschooling websites, and certainly things you won't find in the established schools. We blend together humor, travel, photography, reading, writing, Math, Science and one rather large Guinea Pig in our homeschool. It works well for us.

more at "Our Journey"

Over the Years.....

weBLOG I see travel as an important part of education. I've had the travel bug all my life but when I left college, I actually started traveling. I sailed the East Coast, I traveled around in the US. Then I started working and I took a job that involved travel and I ended up adventuring to Europe, Northern Africa and the Pacific Rim. Although those tales are interesting, what you'll find at our BLOG are the tales of travels that are part of our homeschool. We've recorded our travels in a BLOG since 2005 and in fall of 2007 we updated and changed the forum and format of our BLOG: Travelin' With the Kid. . We hope you'll find our tales as enjoyable as ever!

Our collection of wickedly geekish stuff!

Mascot Merchandise Because of our unusual mascot, Daphne the Science Guinea Pig (who's Daphne?) we opened a cybershop in 2005 called: Daphne's Emporium. The items you'll find there are fun and geeky!

Travel Photography As travel is a big component of what we do in our homeschool, also in 2005, we began offering some of our travel photography for sale.

As of September 2006, I decided to add an electronic newsletter, The Eclectic Telegraph, to this website.

"Why This newsletter?"

As much fun as that newsletter was, and even though it was published "on or around the 15th" of each month, it eneded up being more demanding than I imagined. One of the things I quickly realized at the high school level, is that not only are you the mentor, the chauffeur and the parent, you also get to be a guidance counselor. At the year anniversary edition, in October 2007, I decided to scale back the format and use a forum that is easier from a maintenance standpoint.

As of fall 2007, I have revamped our entire homeschooling teens section. As we go through homeschooling at the high school level I am discovering more and more what it takes to mentor a gifted student from grade school to college. It's a daunting task, but as it turns out - worth the effort!

In Fall of 2010, my student went to the college of his choice and is studying in the field of his choice. We did it!

As always, if you have questions or comments, feel free to contact us. If you want to contribute information that may enhance what's here, please feel free to do that as well.