Homeschooling gifted children

NDN, We've been homeschooling for 7 years, since our oldest was kindergarten age. Our kids are very bright and very different in where their strengths and weaknesses are. We almost always have been able to use the same curriculum and materials with all the kids, and just adjust how long they spend on things based on how well they pick it up. For example, I thought one daughter didn't really need the first 3 levels of spelling books, because she was a natural speller, so I gave her a test over all the words in the 2nd and 3rd books, and just had her practice the handful she missed, rather than have her spend time going through weekly spelling practice. Her older sister is not a natural speller, so there was no skipping for her. The girls have been taking piano lessons for the same amount of time, and the one who is the "best" musician is also the one who needs the most review of music theory and notation, so she is the only one who has to do that. They have the same teacher, and she started them out in different piano books from day one, so they wouldn't be assigned the same songs and always be comparing themselves to one another. This turned out to be a good plan since there is a big difference in musical ability between them. One of them is techinically perfect and the other one sounds good :) LOL All that being said, your kids are very young. We were careful not to start academic stuff too soon, so before 1st grade "school" was just being read to and lots of time for creative play, arts and crafts, etc. We didn't push reading and writing too much, and made sure they had lots of books and music and no tv or computer. Only one of the three was a natural reader, and two of them were only reading Level 1 books in the middle of 2nd grade, but our approach paid off as they are all huge readers and in the top percentile in reading ability and comprehension from grade 3 on. In other words, even with really advanced kids, slow and steady can win the race--they need lots of time for imaginative play. We've been part of a large group of homeschoolers for 6 years, and we have seen lots of people succeed and lots of them struggle, even with super-bright kids. My best advice is to turn off the tv and the computer (until the kids are in bed) and read, read, read to them, with them, and in front of them. We haven't seen that method fail yet.