Tonight at dinner, DS2 was playing tic-tac-toe with my mum. She drew out about eight frames for them to complete.

Turn 1: DS marks "x" in the center of a grid.

Turn 2: Grandma marks "o" in the top right former.

Turn 3: DS marks "x" in the center of all the remaining frames then smiles disarmingly at Grandma.

My game theory work is apparently heritable.

He also talks in riddles non-stop. It's fun to have insight into how his mind processes the information. Case in point: "what truck can move in more than one direction at the same time?" His answer: an articulated truck.

I'm also certain he can read more than we thought previously. Last night, he read to me most of a new book he'd never yet seen. He's my little enigma.

Went to the LEGO store yesterday with DS5 and DD22months. I pushed DD up to the play table in her stroller so that she could stand on it because they didn't have a stool. I just wanted to keep her occupied while I browsed. She demanded the LEGOs of girly colors and we started passing her some of the regular rectangular bricks with the 8 bumps on top.

Didn't she start building her own tower? She was putting them together by herself and all in all, the tower grew to be well over 50 pieces. The most impressive parts were that she did this for at least 15minutes of intense concentration; she would dig through the big bucket of random LEGO pieces and pull out the exact size she needed, and when she didn't have any more of the 8-bump pieces (there's probably a LEGO term for that), she put two 4-bump pieces together.

This month, my son moved up to #67 in UFCF's Top 100 (Ages 7 & Under) list for chess players in the USA. This also makes him #15 in the state of Texas for his age group! If you count only his age, six years old, he is #8 in the country and #3 in the state. Pretty excited for him!

Hi
This is my first post. My grandson 2yr 4 months never ceases to amaze me. He is totally engrossed with the alphabet and spends hours making words and writing sentences on his big magnetic board to his parents. Two months ago, he knew the whole chicka chicka boom boom book by heart and understood what was on each page as his eyes followed the sentences and he turned all the pages accordingly. He is now counting to 100. Is he gifted? I think so.
His father, my son, graduated high school with honours at age 12 with all his final high school exams in physics, chemistry, history, English etc, high SAT and also first year university calculus with an A. Entered university at 13 in math and computer science. Now is a technical director age 29 and a great people person. Radical acceleration worked wonders with him. I was a single parent throughout with a demanding job.
I really would like my grandson to have a "normal" experience in school for 12 years but can see the challenges ahead for his parents. I live in Canada.

Welcome, Shameine Ali! Your grandson sure sounds gifted, just like his father. What fun it must be to watch your grandson!
doubtfulguest, long division at age 5! Oh boy, I hope you are prepared to move at the pace your DD is setting for you.
Tor'sMama, CONGRATULATIONS! This is amazing!

Wanted to share a poem DD4 wrote recently.

Winter Tree Star

In December, one fine night
There was a tree jingling with light
In the dark of the night
There was a star twinkling on top

In golden color and
Jingling and jangling and glowing
In the night
In the height

There was a kid
who loved the tree.

Love the poem...are you sure she is only 4???

DD9 just got her results from the ACT Explore test, an 8th grade test that our local university's Talent Search program uses to differentiate 3rd-6th grade kids that get 98/99th percentile on the standard tests. She scored at the 82nd percentile of 8th graders who took the test, as a 4th grader - top 10% of the gifted kids who've taken the test. We'll be meeting with the school gifted coordinators soon to go through the Iowa Acceleration assessment - they've been reluctant to do anything without "meaningful data".

whoa, Lovemydd - you need to start The Ultimate Poem Thread right away! that is really, really marvellous.

and ha, yeah - i feel like i'm really just getting to know DD5 - i never, ever thought she would eat curriculum like this. i have no plan that makes any degree of sense, so i'm just going to follow her for a bit - it's lucky she's interested in EVERYTHING.

DD is starting to tell her own stories and they are actually quite good with many colorful descriptive words. One of them started with "In a dark dark forest, a little girl found herself lost in the shadow..." but I cut her off mid sentence to ask her if she was reciting a story she remembers or if it was her own story. She replied, "It's my own story and I'm working on creating a whimsical ambiance so don't interrupt me!"

I did reprimand her for being sassy.