Who is Teaching Whom? Gifted Teaching

Multiple Grade Level Learning

You would think that home education with only one child would get monotonous, same old stuff day in and day out. I will admit, that sometimes during the winter months it can feel like that. Most of the time, however, the excitement I see on my son’s face as he learns new concepts, is just about the most fascinating thing I’ve ever seen.

A little history here. We first noticed that our son was a bit unusual at around 20 months when he first learned to spell his name. Soon after that he learned to say the alphabet both forward and backward. By 2, he was counting to 200 by 3 he was reading, not just simple words like cat and dog, but headlines in newspapers, and counting into the 1000’s. By age four he was reading fluently, writing in cursive and multiplying up to 10 X 10, and understood the concept. I have pictures or samples of all of the above if you don’t believe me.

Now at age 8, we works at multiple grade levels, depending upon his skill level. That is a freedom that I have in home education that our local public school could not offer him. Last week he began working with mixed and equivalent fractions. 

Now, here comes the difficult part. Fractions are not my strong suit. I thought, how can I possibly explain this to him. Guess what? Yes, you figured it out. He got it right away, in fact when I was trying to explain it to him, at one point he stopped me and said, “That’s ok, mom, I got this.” Then he took the book and proceeded quite happily to finish the page of problems. 

I on the other hand, sat there in awe of him, thinking to myself as I watched him work, ‘I’m finally starting to understand how this works. At almost age 39. Isn’t it amazing when the student becomes the teacher. Although, I won’t be letting him know just yet that he’s really teaching me.