Her sister (barely eight, would now be a second grader) scored a 6.9 grade equivalent on a third grade test. I did do a practice test with her because it was her first such multiple choice exam with a scansheet. She multiplies polynomials in her head. Her term paper was on Verne. In our home school, we have spent the bulk of the time with her undoing the damage of two years of dialogue journals and fuzzy spelling, and that was a PRIVATE school (her sister didn't have that problem because her reading was stronger before she entered kindergarten). I have come to the conclusion that to preclude the damage in reading that a public school will do, one must have their child at a MINIMUM third grade reading level entering kindergarten.
These are bright, but otherwise NORMAL kids. I have seen no evidence of "genius." They work hard, they love to help, they are kind and generous, and they do fine with other kids. I have no desire to "toughen them up" with middle school viciousness. Leapfrog that garbage, meet the creeps in college holding the academic high ground, see them for what they are, and pity them.
Southpark had an episode on homeschoolers.
A boy and a girl were allowed to check out the Southpark Elementary school.
The girl became an instant whore, the boy a bully. The moral, though, was that homeschoolers have to learn to get tough to understand how to get along in the sick liberal world or they'll be too suseptable to influence when they do "get out of the hampster ball."
Southpark failed to realize that most homeschoolers will do their own K-12 and are adults when they have to stay in a box everyday with the liberal kids. They're old enough and experienced enough because the world has been their classroom.
If anyone is in a box, it's public school kids. They switch to the next box each year with the same kids who are the same age. The only thing that ever changes for them is the person who teaches feelings standing in the front of the box! How suffocating!