Small is now 10 years old, and would be in year 6, the final year of primary school. However, his academic performance wouldn’t really suit him to primary school particularly well.
In maths, we build on a framework from Singapore maths, and started using Mathletics three or four years ago. He’s just started on year 8. What we do is look at the topics, I go through it with him, and then he works on it until he gets the area perfect. Some days that takes longer than others, but I’d guess he’s doing an average of 20 minutes a day. If I decide he’s covering the ground too quickly and I’d like to broaden it out, somewhere I’ve got Calculus by and for 7 year olds, so I’ll use that to take things a bit deeper.
For English, we’re working steadily through a KS2 text book. Most of his English is way above his age range, (check out his blog if you don’t believe me), but there are some very specific areas, non literal language and imaginative expression where we’re having to work a little harder. And he doesn’t like writing things down, so I do try to vary the demands there as well.
History, Geography and Science are covered partly from free web resources, partly from regular activity days with friends and partly using Galore Park. Their text books are thorough without being offputting, and I do feel that if we work through them steadily, we won’t miss much out. I do wish there was aWhat your child needs to know book for his age, but I don’t think Core Knowledge UK have reached Y6 yet sadly. (They do have a sequence table which is quite interesting though.)
IT though, is Small’s main passion. Mainly playing games. At the moment minecraft is the flavour of the month, although I thought he was going to go off it this morning when it crashed quite splendiforously on update. Turned out that not all of his mods were compatible with the updated core. I’m sure he learnt quite a bit about software from that experience 😉 He’s also very good on graphics, can do lots in photoshop, to the extent that Tim, who isn’t precisely a novice himself, sometimes consults with Small over the best way to do things. I don’t worry too much about Small really – I’m fairly sure that with the talents he has, he’ll find some way to support himself in the future, whatever that may be.
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