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Notes -
Do people have advice for enriching online curriculum for a gifted autistic 8-year-old?
My son was kicked out of our local private school after less than a term for being too autistic for them to handle, and we have finally had to pull him from the local state school because the SEN support he had in place wasn't working this year. So we (mostly my wife - I work a City professional job) are now homeschooling an autistic 8-year-old mini-STEMlord. We started using Doodle Learning which is based on the English National Curriculum - after entry assessments he is within months of being ready for secondary maths (i.e. roughly 3 years ahead) and 1.5-2.5 years ahead in English. When he started school, his non-verbal IQ was assessed at 99.9th percentile.
He enjoys the Doodle Maths online exercises, but refuses to do the English ones unless paid. My memory, and as far as I can determine online, is that if you are more than 1-2 years ahead in maths you need enrichment (more conceptually difficult work and problems that require deeper thinking) rather than acceleration (going through the standard curriculum faster). The UK has a good system of maths enrichment for secondary schools organised around a tiered set of competitions leading up to the IMO, but I am not aware of anything for primary.
More broadly, my son has engineer-brain, which is close to my scientist-brain, but different enough that I don't know how to motivate him or get him to build things more complex than Lego. Do people here have advice? He loved forest nursery when he was little, and built things that a 4-year-old shouldn't be able to build. He has stopped since then.
What's your goal for him wrt this? Does he share it?
But just taking this at face value. Have you tried an erector set? A 3d printer? Electronics? Model kits (cars, planes, boats, Gundam)? Combining all of the above...
I'm the mini-STEMlord's (love that, @MadMonzer) mum.
His nanna has treated us to a Bambu Lab 3D printer. He says he's always wanted a 3D printer since he knew what one was, and enjoys sitting in front of it, watching it print. He likes Snap Circuits, but he can do all the projects instantly (and free-build), so I'm going to learn Arduino with him - I'd previously bought an Arduino kit to use myself.
He's bought glueable model kits while on trips, but they've never really taken off with him.
Yeah I would guess snap circuits are too basic for him. My daughter enjoyed them when she was little but she was soldering and building things out on bread boards by the time she was 7-8. (My husband really wanted her to love electronics, but they are a means to an end for her. Give her el wire and suggest blinging out her ukulele? Absolutely! Make a doorbell for her room? Nahhh.) Arduino (and more modern incarnations) can be great. And let him do both electronics and programming.
If you think he might like tabletop gaming 3d printers can be a nice way to get a custom set of miniatures. The son of a friend uses his 3d printer to make bits and pieces for his rc car.
And depending on what's available and whether he wants to deal with people, FIRST Lego league can be fun. My daughter did it with the girl scouts.
There are so many cool things accessible to kids these days, especially if their folks have some extra money (so blowing out some LEDs with poorly designed circuits isn't a big deal).
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