Here is the question (in part):
For my son, …I am at a loss. He’s smart, like out there. He’s ten and just finished up a research project … that it is not completely scientifically accurate. But, it is amazing. He researched why the body’s immune system can’t win the war with HIV (not for school, just cause he wanted to know about it) and he mapped and planned a way to overcome the hurdle of beating HIV from the outside of the cell and instead figured out how to inject the virus with a disabling anti-body. Any suggestions for me? I figure I will do unit studies with him and plug in the three R’s every chance I get.
Sad thing is that he needs help with math. I can’t stand to see him have such ability to grasp and use scientific info but not be strong in math, which is what he would need to get to actually look at this level of learning in college.
This sounds very much like my son. He is advanced in computer sciences and has been told by many IT professionals that he is more advanced than their own employees are. Still, he is also slower at math. For that reason, I have been a bit looser and less disciplined with him than my daughter in his general studies, but more rigid in math. On thing I did for a couple of years was hire a gifted math tutor to work with him. I could do the math, but could not explain it in a way that he understood. I realized that for him, math needs to be constant. This means that we do math almost every day for about an hour, this includes summer and holiday breaks. This year he is taking an Algebra (8th grade) in a self-paced class, and will likely finish the curriculum half way through next year even after doing it all the way through the summer. The idea behind this is to slow down the pace of the math lessons to a pace where he can be successful. While my son is moving slowly, he is still at a pace that will allow him to finish four math credits by the time he is ready for college. Still I expect that his pace will be much faster for geometry than it is for Algebra.
As for the rest of his classes, your son appears to be a good self-learner, i.e. he is unschooling himself. There is not danger is stepping back and allowing him to do this. You are right to do unit studies with him. I would do these unit studies from his own writings and experiments.
Here is what I have done with my son. For grammar, I looked at all the work her had done on his own such as journals, book reports, and papers he had written. I picked out any misspelled words and put them on his spelling list. I found any grammar mistakes he had made and made his grammar lessons around that. For science and history, I found biographical novels, and historical books and movies for him to read each day. I followed the outline in What Your … Grader Needs to Know.
Since your son is already doing science on his own, I would work his units around his own work adding historical references. I would also take his work on immunity and cells and do basic lessons around that to make sure his groundwork is well laid. Personally, I would call the local college and see if I could find a tutor/ student with the same interests to work with him. (I sent my son to work with a computer scientist one summer and this helped my son tremendously.)
Read more about Unit Studies
*Have a question about homeschooling? Just ask.
* Have you seen the homeschooling curriculum glossary?