Ask him if there’s a language he’d like to learn. If there is, provide him materials to learn the basics (grammar, alphabet, fundamentals) and promise to send him to a language school that immerses you for x months during a break.
Ask him if he’d like tutored instruction in a subject; if he would, then, as others suggest, enslave a grad student.
Gift him a “Learn X the Hard Way” book. Alternatives include Real Python; I don’t know what else they include.
Ask him if he has any life goals. If they are scientific in origin, take the goals seriously, lay out some milestones that might help in achieving them, and utilise Davidson’s resources for all they’re worth (including people).
Ask if he’d like to learn an instrument and/or how to sing, with instruction in music theory being another option. Accommodate.
Ask if he’d like to learn a martial art, and if he has any preferences. You could ask him this after taking him to a demonstration of the Shaolin Monks. If he has an interest in oriental languages, instruction in the language he’s learning offers a practical immersive environment.
Have family writing competitions—everyone writes a brief story together by candlelight for a set period of time. Comment on the stories afterwards, and everyone can vote on a favourite should they have one.
Offer instruction in Go.
See if you can work out a way to direct all his instruction in the classes that bore him towards producing something of value. In the humanities, this could amount to historical fiction set in the learnt time period, limericks about the mechanics of Linguistics, or analytical essays (should he like that sort of thing). In maths, challenge him to derive established proofs himself without telling him the proof beforehand, or teach with the frame of covering the knowledge necessary for solving a current problem in mathematics. In science, tell a story of the scientist who ran a particularly important experiment, or set of experiments; inform him what the scientist observed, and ask him to design an experiment testing that observation with varying aims. You could also just tell the story, if the one teaching is a good enough storyteller (exempli gratia Seven Ideas that Shook the Universe, by Spielberg and Anderson—although it doesn’t actually teach the subjects).
Give him a yet-to-be assembled computer with a completely empty drive, books on how computers work, books on how software communicates with computers, and let him play.
Teach him skills known by the people he’s studying, but not us, concurrent with his studies of those people: calligraphy, perspective art, court decorum, honorifics, hunting for sustenance, foraging, needlework, thread and wool weaving, soap creation, candle creation, paper manufacture, eyeglass manufacture, architecture, sailing, letter-writing, mercury ingestion, plague avoidance, honour, swordsmanship, fear of the inquisition, etc.
I’m curious—Davidson markets itself as solving boring instruction; what about it does he find uninteresting?
Of course, at age 8, he is unlikely to have very realistic life goals (if any) - and settling too strongly on any goal you have at that age may even be harmful, since it will be based on rather limited information. That said, it would be useful to have some driving goal in one’s life. Meta-goals such as “I should learn things as broadly as possible, so that I will be in a position to do whatever I want when I do figure out my real life goals” are probably the most useful at this point, if he can be made excited about them. Having him read What You’ll Wish You’d Have Known may help with that.
There’s the Davidson Academy.
If he hasn’t learned algebra yet, get him DragonBox; I’d be curious to learn whether he prefers explicit instruction.
He is in Davidson Academy and finished DragonBox. He is fine with either type of instruction.
I’ll brainstorm suggestions, then.
Ask him if there’s a language he’d like to learn. If there is, provide him materials to learn the basics (grammar, alphabet, fundamentals) and promise to send him to a language school that immerses you for x months during a break.
Ask him if he’d like tutored instruction in a subject; if he would, then, as others suggest, enslave a grad student.
Gift him a “Learn X the Hard Way” book. Alternatives include Real Python; I don’t know what else they include.
Ask him if he has any life goals. If they are scientific in origin, take the goals seriously, lay out some milestones that might help in achieving them, and utilise Davidson’s resources for all they’re worth (including people).
Ask if he’d like to learn an instrument and/or how to sing, with instruction in music theory being another option. Accommodate.
Ask if he’d like to learn a martial art, and if he has any preferences. You could ask him this after taking him to a demonstration of the Shaolin Monks. If he has an interest in oriental languages, instruction in the language he’s learning offers a practical immersive environment.
Have family writing competitions—everyone writes a brief story together by candlelight for a set period of time. Comment on the stories afterwards, and everyone can vote on a favourite should they have one.
Offer instruction in Go.
See if you can work out a way to direct all his instruction in the classes that bore him towards producing something of value. In the humanities, this could amount to historical fiction set in the learnt time period, limericks about the mechanics of Linguistics, or analytical essays (should he like that sort of thing). In maths, challenge him to derive established proofs himself without telling him the proof beforehand, or teach with the frame of covering the knowledge necessary for solving a current problem in mathematics. In science, tell a story of the scientist who ran a particularly important experiment, or set of experiments; inform him what the scientist observed, and ask him to design an experiment testing that observation with varying aims. You could also just tell the story, if the one teaching is a good enough storyteller (exempli gratia Seven Ideas that Shook the Universe, by Spielberg and Anderson—although it doesn’t actually teach the subjects).
Give him a yet-to-be assembled computer with a completely empty drive, books on how computers work, books on how software communicates with computers, and let him play.
Teach him skills known by the people he’s studying, but not us, concurrent with his studies of those people: calligraphy, perspective art, court decorum, honorifics, hunting for sustenance, foraging, needlework, thread and wool weaving, soap creation, candle creation, paper manufacture, eyeglass manufacture, architecture, sailing, letter-writing, mercury ingestion, plague avoidance, honour, swordsmanship, fear of the inquisition, etc.
I’m curious—Davidson markets itself as solving boring instruction; what about it does he find uninteresting?
Of course, at age 8, he is unlikely to have very realistic life goals (if any) - and settling too strongly on any goal you have at that age may even be harmful, since it will be based on rather limited information. That said, it would be useful to have some driving goal in one’s life. Meta-goals such as “I should learn things as broadly as possible, so that I will be in a position to do whatever I want when I do figure out my real life goals” are probably the most useful at this point, if he can be made excited about them. Having him read What You’ll Wish You’d Have Known may help with that.
Thanks! He doesn’t attend the Davidson school, but is a member of the organization.
Hope it helps! Does that mean he has access to Academy resources, and could attend should he wish it?
Yes for the resources, but we live too far away for him to attend in person.