<p>I am a teacher at a top 50 high school (in our state) as well as a parent. Last year our seniors did not do as well as they thought they would on their SAT’s. They all told me that they wish they had started studying for the SAT sooner. My son is an advanced student. He is in 6th grade and finds the work too easy. He reads at about a 9th grade level. I have started him on Algebra (which is an 8th grade class) and I have him memorizing SAT words. He picks up the material easily. It ends up being about 45 minutes to an hour of studying a night. He only does this on nights that he does not have any homework from elementary school (which is pretty much every night). I also plan on having him take some classes for kids advanced in Language Arts which is offered at an SAT prep center. I want to keep my son ahead but not burn him out. I was wondering what the parents of Ivy Leaguers did to keep your kids going without buring them out. No insults please.</p>
<p>If kids are motivated as your son is, they don’t need to be pushed - they just need to have their interests and curiosity triggered. Go to the CollegeBoard website and sign up for the SAT Question of the Day to be e-mailed to you. You’ll get one question a day, which the two of you can do together in a minute. My kids and I have done this for years - not to prep for the SAT but because it’s fun and they especially enjoy getting one right that I missed.</p>
<p>Oh, please don’t do that to him in 6th grade. As the parent of a NMSF who did really well on her SATs, I can tell you that she never prepped for the SATs. Ever. Not one single prep class; she looked over the prep books a few times but that was it.</p>
<p>If he is that advanced, look into him participating in a Talent Search for your state (John Hopkins or Duke’s programs come to mind) so that he can take the tests (ACT & SAT) in middle school so the “unknown” factor is taken out of the way for him come high school. If he scores well enough, take the SAT prep money and send him to a summer program for Talented Youth where he can be with kids like him & learn about a topic that interests him.</p>
<p>Let him read everything he wants. Both my DD’s are voracious readers and I am sure that is why they both score high on the standardized testing. </p>
<p>So in answer to question of how much did I “push” my kids…I didn’t. What I did do was look around for opportunities that would be INTERESTING to my girls to help them find their own way down their path.
Good luck!</p>
<p>The best way to build vocabulary and comprehension is lots of reading of good books; I’d encourage your kid to read, in particular, 19th century novels that have challenging vocabulary and paragraph structure (and are simply great to read), including “young people’s” literature, like Kim (Kipling), Kidnapped (Robert Louis Stevenson), Little Women (Alcott), Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain), Call of the Wild (London), stories by E Nesbit (these are really great), and at a more challenging level, A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens), Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights (the Brontes). Memorizing list of words is not much fun. Harry Potter is not really enough of a challenge.
And at that age, you could still read to your kid - which can be a lot of fun. And you can explain words he doesn’t understand.</p>
<p>Encourage your son to read. And then read some more. Instead of having him memorize the words, just use them yourself in conversation and answer his questions when he asks what they mean.</p>
<p>Math, I can’t help you with, unfortunately. ;-)</p>
<p>I have 17 yo twins. A boy and a girl. My daughter has been self motivated for years. She has alwasy put her education first with no pushing from her parents. She has excelled academically and is thrilled about her recent acceptance at University of Richmond. </p>
<p>Our son is a different story. He is an above average student but it takes us getting a progress report with a D (or worse) before he kicks into gear and brings it up to an A or B by the end of the marking period. He does not do well on standardized tests. He decided months ago he would be attending a CC because he would not have to take the SAT. I did convince him to take the ACT which he did ok on (25). He understands the importance of a higher education but I think he feels like he should know what he wants to do with the rest of his life because his sister does. We have always had to push him. We have told him we don’t care if he goes to college or a trade school but he needs to have some post high school education. His current plan is to attend CC and explore Psych. He says he would like to then transfer to a 4 yr college for his Bachelors. He needs occasional nudges to keep going the right direction (reminds me of me at his age). We’re confident he will do well once he figures out where he wants to go in life.</p>
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<p>In fact, I’m quite sure that that’s the only way to score high on Critical Reading and Writing. You can do some intensive Math study and make up significant ground there, but for the rest of it, read. And don’t read for the sake of scoring well on testing - read whatever makes your life more full and enjoyable.</p>
<p>I can’t claim to be the parent of Ivy Leaguers, but I am the parent of very nice SAT scores, and I agree wholeheartedly with the previous advice: encourage reading, encourage reading adult books and other material. </p>
<p>My son would have thrown up if I had handed him Little Women or Jane Eyre. (Actually, he flat-out refused to read Jane Eyre when we suggested it.) He did love E. Nesbit, but that was when he was 6, and I was reading it to him. But he loved philosophical science fiction authors like Heinlein, Gaiman, Asimov, Card, funny stuff like Terry Pratchett, and of course Tolkein (as well as Harry Potter), and in high school he developed a taste for Salman Rushdie (YA book Haroun and the Sea of Stories was the gateway drug, but it led him to The Satanic Verses and then everything else) and Thomas Pynchon (Tom likes physics, and so did he). He also got into the habit of reading The Economist and The New York Times.</p>
<p>The other important thing to do, of course, is to TALK to him about these things. And use big words when you do. If a kid has developed a visceral understanding of the requirements of logical rigor, evidentiary support, and clear expression in adult argument, CR and W SATs are a piece of cake.</p>
<p>I agree on encouraging/supporting your child’s reading versus studying vocabulary words. I have always believed you cannot spoil a kid by getting him/her books – and I don’t stop at books. If my kids were interested in something, I never complained about buying a book or magazine subscription related to that interest, or making a trip to the library to pick up relevant books. (ESPN the magazine is still one of our Harvard son’s favorite periodicals.) Kids read if there are reading materials around that are interesting to them, and the more they read, the better readers they become – and the more interested they become in reading things outside their comfort zone.</p>
<p>The math stuff they just picked up from school classes – although they found it helped to “review” some of the earlier math stuff prior to taking an ACT or SAT test. Those tests cover math that advanced math students studied many years earlier, so a little review helps knock some of the cobwebs off the basic math skills.</p>
<p>Hi – Not an IVY parent here.
My oldest son is in 9th grade. He always required something – not necessarily a “push” but some way to keep him actively engaged. We’ve done lots of summer programs, on-line free things, science experiments just for fun (without lab reports or science fair boards), etc. The web has some great resources. Check out HoagiesGifted</p>
<p>I 2nd the suggestion to get him into the CTY-JHU Talent Search or some other talent search program. Taking the SAT in 7th grade really provides a leg up IMO. It allows you to see if child is natural good at taking the long standardized tests; there is no pressure to achieve a set score; and the student may qualify for on-line & summer programs.</p>
<p>Getting the student with other students who are as advanced is key for us. My son is not lazy per se, just very laid back. He is not the kid who will take on an assignment for extra-credit, but put him with peers who have varied interests and he just absorbs it all.</p>
<p>I agree with the people here to just ensure that your son reads and not worry about memorizing words. The SAT test is not the same as when we took it in the old days. There is not the huge emphasis on vocabulary for the sake of vocabulary - on the latest one I looked at (on the CB website) there are no analogies or antonyms - only fill in the blank sentences with words that a well read kid will probably know. Plus, even if a kid doesn’t know a word or two, you can sometimes figure it out, and if not, you don’t generally need 100% on the CR section to get 800. </p>
<p>Most of the test is reading selections and answering fairly basic questions on it. I think that’s why they changed the name from “Verbal” to “Critical Reading”.</p>
<p>read, read, and then read some more + encourage his natural intellectual interests.</p>
<p>I am a parent of one Ivy leaguer and one about to be MITer and I highly recommend JHU’s CTY or your regional equivalent. Those three week programs after 7th grade did more to focus my kids than anything else. They no longer felt different wanting to learn stuff, found a great group of peers, but also got the opportunity to fail, to find out that there were people even brighter than they were. And they learned to deal with it at 13, not just when they were freshman in college. Basically they learned what college might be like. And after the initial shock of the first week’s failures, they thrived, both did 4 years until they aged out. When they returned to regular school, they knew there was something better just over the horizon.</p>
<p>RodD brings up something that doesn’t often come up. The Talent Search program and it goes by different names I think in different parts of the country is a great way to keep those achieving middle schoolers academically involved. My oldest participated. And as mentioned they take the standardized tests each year which is great test prep for later years.</p>
<p>In addition to encouraging reading, we used to play a thesaurus game after dinner – randomly pick a word and see how many synonyms and antonyms everyone could think of. My children often outscored us parents. There were various other word games too. Say a word, the next person would have to think of word that started with the last letter of that word, and other variations of word games we basically made up. And they thought it was fun. We didn’t do this with SATs in mind just as a way to challenge their vocabularies. </p>
<p>Neither of my children did SAT prep and both scored extremely well on the SAT.</p>
<p>Not an Ivy League parent but will you accept summa cum laude from Smith?</p>
<p>Our D when very young regarded us a reading machines. It was frustrating to her that when she learned to read it took a while before she got to the level where she could read books of interest to her. She was reading at a 12th grade level by not later than 6th grade.</p>
<p>Disagree about test prep. Our district encourages 9th- and 10th-graders to take the PSAT just to familiarize themselves with it. D hates standardized tests and hates test prep but did the latter via a tutor and as a result got a 1580, which wound up being worth some substantial merit money. (Had gotten a 1400 on the first try as a junior without it. Which I thought was fine until I updated myself on CC…)</p>
<p>Because her extracurricular schedule was heavy, there was an almost daily catechism about homework and the amount of time it would take. Her schedule was cleared of chores on one hand, TV on the other, and early bed times on a third (much to TheMom’s distress) so that she could do what needed to be done.</p>
<p>Most telling comment about expectations: in about 11th grade, she told me that I was “pretty [academically] demanding as a parent but that if we were Jewish I’d be normal and if were Asian I’d be easy.”</p>
<p>I cannot push my children. 
They are stubborn and will do the exact opposite. I have to pretend I don’t care at all a about a thing. Even if they slightly suspect I am looking over thier shoulder. I get a suspicious “WHAT?” “I’m fine!”</p>
<p>Parenting is a lot like pretending not to pay attention in our house. Peripheral vision is everything. ;)</p>
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<p>As someone who taught test prep for a while I also agree there is value in it for some kids. I know from statistics our prep company collected it helped a lot of students. I just don’t think it needs to start in the 6th grade.</p>
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Besides being a voracious reader (nonfiction), my high-scoring S participated (and excelled in) debate during his high school years. Debate is a fabulous activity.</p>
<p>Both my kids love to read and both got fantastic scores on the CR portion of the SAT - even the math guy got a better CR score than math score. I encourage finding books your kids like. Both mine read mostly sci fi and fantasy. My older son loved CTY he learned things there he didn’t see again till college, but it was still taught in a very age appropriate way. My kids never studied much of the SAT - for a while we had a box of vocabulary words on the dining room table, but they knew nearly all of them. They’ve never been much for memorizing vocabulary. The younger one did question of the day - I don’t think it had any effect on his score though.</p>