Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion The ultimate brag thread

There seems to be a lot of new posters on the board and many seem to have voiced the same comment - that they can't share their children's accomplishments with anyone. So I think it's time for a brag thread!

What wonderful amazing things has your child done lately that you can't tell anyone? Boast away in all your glory!

(and I expect much more boasting details from all those posters on the "isolation thread"! Here's your chance!)

Great idea, CFK! I dearly love to read the bragging about our kids!

And congrats to your DS on the A. Yay!

Mine is more of a funny than a brag...

We're homeschooling, and DS7 was working on adding and subtracting fractions with different denominators. We had worked on it a couple of weeks ago, but it hasn't yet "stuck" completely. (So he's being challenged and has to work on it--yay! And he asked to try it again, so he likes the challenge--double yay!)

He did one problem and multiplied the fractions together instead of finding the LCD and adding. I talked about why this didn't work in terms of fruit: "if you have 2 apples and 2 apples (ie if the denominators are the same), then you just add the apples together. But if you have one set of apples and one set oranges, then you have to change their appearance so that you're working with all apples, all oranges...or maybe something totally different, like all plums..."

DS7 grinned his "I'm about to be clever" grin and said, "...And then we're in a pickle!"

That boy cracks me up!

We got supplemental sheets for math. DS5.5 has been sick the last few days and I think he's under the impression that he has to do ALL 20 sheets while he's a home

At any rate, one sheet is open ended. You pick a number (we encouraged him to pick 36 as opposed to a prime number like he did last time!) and you're supposed to come up with all sorts of ways to get to that number. Like 30 + 6, 40 - 4, 6 x 6, etc. Since he figured out that 6 is a factor of 36, he was thinking through whether or not 3 could be a factor. Unsure of himself, Mom suggested, "well, just go through your 3 times table to see".

DS: "But mommy, I can't go up to 3 times 12!" (smurk)

JB

Good ones, all!

Pud (7) was doing long division the other day, 91/12. He couldn't figure out how many times 12 went into 91 so he starts subtracting 12 from 91 until he can't subtract 12 any more. Then, he counted up how many times he subtracted and said "there, there's my quotient and the remainder is ...". He'll get there one way or another.

Hope you don't mind me joining this thread.

DS7 loves to invent things. This is why I buy tape by the case. Last Saturday he was do his inventing thing and came up with item that is really, really good. My DH and I just looked at one another without saying a word. After the kids went to bed we discussed the item in detail and decided to look for a patent attorney. Maybe it will help pay for college. When I told DS7 that we were going to take his idea to a new level and keep it in his name, he completely freaked, his was soooo excited.

All these stories are fantastic.

Yes, these stories are awesome. This is just a great place for people to be able to talk about their kids openly. Thank you for sharing!

Great idea, CFK.

My DD8 recently realized that her best friend is *bullying* her in that she threatens to end the frienship if DD plays with anyone else.
She has begun attempting to resist her friend's attempt to manipulate her.

I'm very proud that she had the wisdom to realize this. The maturity to start standing up for herself. The finesse to figure out a way to do it without ending the friendship or hurting the friend.

May not sound like much of a brag, but she is so naturally passive and non-confrontational I am thrilled she is handling her problem this way.

My 10 year old is finding ways to work around the dyspraxia/hypotonia that causes difficulty with writing.

He took a long break from math (Aleks) because we had trouble with our internet service for several months and it is his least favorite subject. When he started back to work on middle school math course that he was about half-way through before he quit, he found that he could get answers to some math questions much faster by not writing anything down. For example: 3/10 divided by 4/15 he clicked on the fraction box thing that I thought could only be used once for the final answer and typed in 3/10, 15/4 and 45/40 so that all were on the screen at the same time, then 1 5/40, then 1 1/8 for his final answer after backspacing over the ones he didn't need. We had talked a few days ago about the need for showing his work so he could check it because he would sometimes get distracted when doing mental math and have to start over. He told me he was "digitally writing it down." I knew typing helped with getting his thoughts on paper but I never knew you could type math. He knows that he can't use this for everything and he will write out problems when he absolutely has to. He says I can't expect him to not use these tools if they are available.

He actually enjoyed his last Cub Scouts meeting because they worked on the Citizen badge and he got to talk about what he knew about government, the election process and the electoral college and the scout leader let them discuss politics, but he and the scout leader did most of the talking. He said the leader asked him how old he was and what grade he was in. He gets asked this question a lot. He had to fill out a worksheet and he said he apologised to the cub scout leader for his bad handwriting. At least he is able to explain to other people that he has a disability now, instead of trying to hide it. I think finding out that the actor who played Harry Potter also has this mild disability helped him. I think it also helped to find out that one of our neighbors has an older daughter that might be 2E. She only had one teacher in all of her years in school who really got that she needed to learn differently. One teacher had her put in special ed, but she told them she wasn't learning anything so they put her back in regular classes where she somehow overcame her difficulties and in high school she ended up making the highest scores on math tests in a school for gifted kids that she tested to get into. My neighbor said the one teacher who encouraged her daughter made a huge difference in her life.

Hi everyone-

This is my first post, but I have been lurking for awhile. I am so glad you started this thread because I have been dying to tell someone this and can't IRL. My daughter A (6.5 yrs) is double grade skipped and is now in third grade. Last week we received her first progress report and she received all O's (outstanding progress) and one S in writing. I even went and talked to her teacher because I was so surprised that she got almost all O's. He said that he is a hard grader and that only a few kids received all O's!! I was sooo proud of A and all of her hard work. Another thing she did last week was to move to her 4's in multiplication. O.k., no big deal. But she did 56 problems in 4 minutes the first day and the very next day she went to 94!!! WOW! I was shocked! Again, I'm so proud of her and she is LOVING school!

Thanks for letting me brag!!

Ooh! Ooh! I've got two!!

First, DS(9) was accepted into a wind ensemble... he plays flute, and while generally the group is teenaged, he's keeping up pretty darn well! But the braggy part is that since he was basically thrown in the proverbial deep end in joining this group, he has drastically improved his playing in general. It's only been two weeks, but he's suddenly remarkably good at sight reading, and the music he's playing for his regular lessons is suddenly easy. Now on the other hand, there are a few pieces in the wind ensemble repertoire that are giving him grief, but they're SO much harder than what he's been playing (I mean, like Flight of the Bumblebee for Pete's sake!), it's like his whole range just shot up. He's also gotten much more diligent about practicing. Either the peer pressure or the jump in difficulty.. but whatever it is, he's rising to the challenge! Yay!

And my second brag... He just wrote his first completely independent program! I game him the assignment of writing a program on the TI-84 to simulate random dice-rolling. He had to ask what number of rolls you want, hold the answer in a variable and then use that variable in two functions that output that many random numbers between 1 and 6 into two lists (like two dice rolled over and over, together), and then use a third list to hold their sum. And he did it! Woohoo!! Tomorrow we're going to see if there's any way to get it to report the number of sevens in the whole set of sums... but I need to figure out how to do that myself first...

I have a quick brag from last weekend. DS5 wrote 3 short Halloween stories over the weekend because he was bored. The stories were cute and the writing was very good. I helped him mount them on construction paper and he illustrated each one. We put on a cover page and then bound the pages together. On the back covers DS5 had me write: "Other Books By DS5" and then list each title. He plan to make a whole series for each season. I love his motivation.

My ds5 seems to be working out square roots for himself.

Yesterday morning he woke me up by telling me two not friends(uneven numbers) can become friends (even numbers) if you add them together. Then he went from that to working out multiplying two same numbers together(eg) two by two is four. Then straight away he wondered aloud what would happen if you did it "upside down" and worked out square roots. All in the sspace of about five or ten minutes.

This seems to me to be a bit further on from counting reliably to ten? I plan to approach the teacher with this, but ds is not co operative in testing situations. All this is coming from him independently on his terms. Any ideas what age he might be operating at?

Dunno, but let us know if you find out, because this is all awfully familiar. DS4 (will be 5 very soon) was playing with his calculator on a 40 minute bus journey the other day. On that one journey he seemed to be having insights into place value (arbitarily far: he had understood tens and units before, but he suddenly got the general case), multiplication (again, beyond the very small numbers), division, fractions, and decimals including recurring decimals, all for positive and negative numbers. It's scary, isn't it? One expects one insight to be enough to last them at least half an hour, but it isn't... And at school they seem to be on the level of recognising digits and putting them in order on a number line...

I know.

ds wants a new calculator for christmas and a telescope! I think that this was brought on by the fact that his teacher sent a number chart home and he cried. He said he felt insulted because she obviously thought he was stupid.

He just loves numbers and maths and the ideas just pop in his head as he is building lego. We did place values a few months ago. The problem is I am not really maths minded.

anyway at least a calculator is a cheap gift!

What a great thread! I love reading these stories. Amazing kiddos!

I can't think of any "big" brags lately, except yesterday DS4 surprised me by using the word "affect" in the correct way, as in "oh, i see, so this isn't affected by that." And lately he's been telling us many new stories about the adventures on his made up planets, Guffland, Witchland, Everythingland, Towerland, Lavaland, and Creepland. (All carefully pronounced "lind" instead of "land" for some reason!) (The adventures usually involve sending the evil witches back to their own world.) Did you know each world has its own color of butterflies, including red butterflies on lavaland "red like magma and lava"? Oh, except Everythingland, which has every color...

And hours (well...) of endless fun (What happens if I do THIS to the number 100?" Error?? What??)!

Can I indulge in a brag that happened almost 3 years ago? It's a story I'd love to tell more often but usually don't.

Once upon a time when DD was 18 months old, she woke up in the middle of the night in a very good mood. It was around 4 or 5 am. I lifted her out of her crib sat her in the middle of the bed, and she started singing. She had a small repetoire of songs by then, and she could hit the notes.

She has this "second voice" that she uses when she sings or talks to her stuffed animals. The pitch is higher than her normal deep voice. It can be very endearing.

Anyway, there she was, singing "Twinka, twinka, litta STAH..." to no one in particular and showing no signs of going back to sleep anytime soon.

DH and I formed a circle around her so she couldn't tumble off the bed, and we just lay there listening to her as she went through her songs. When she finished, she smiled and said "Nigh nigh, Mommy" or something like that and I put her back to bed and everyone went back to sleep.

It was the middle of the night. It was so wonderful. She was just so darling.

Val

That is a really wonderful story, Val! And I say that with all sincerity. My DS did not sleep through the night until he was 4 years old, and I don't think he ever did anything that endearing in the middle of the night!!

Thank you. I always smile when I think about it.

Val

oh gosh... I think I *just* realized that maybe not all parents carry two solar powered calculators in their purse at all times for car rides and restaurants and other lengthy waits ....

and there's the "mom, it only has an 8 digit screen!"

time for an upgrade

Oh Barbara your post made me laugh...we have multiple calculators everywhere because DS5 loves them and has for several years...when he was 3, he would sit at restaurants/in the car/waiting for things and play with the calculator....we have one in his playroom, one in the car, one in my purse, one in his backpack....and then he saw a scientific calculator a few months ago and asked to put it on his santa list because he got all excited when daddy began to explain to him about the other number systems out there :-)

That's great!

Our 9m1w son sings to himself right before he goes to sleep. He's been doing this since 3 months.

We were at a high end audio shop when he was 6m old and we were listening to the speakers using Peter Cincotti's "Philadelphia" and when we turned on the good speakers, Mr W broke into a huge grin and starting humming the melody.

When he was 3m old, he smiled continously when he first heard a live piano. When the pianist started "Cast your fates to the wind," he let out a cry of joy and hummed the melody for days. Even today, when I start humming it, he will look up at me and stare at my face, smiling.

He knows and responds to requests in English and Spanish such as "Go get your book" or "go into the kitchen." Since 4m he has shaken his head no when he did not want something. A few weeks ago, my wife was at a neighbor's, and said "Its time to go." and he said, "bye bye!" and waved his arm.

He will go find his book or toy, and then throw it in front of him, crawl or cruise, pick it up, throw it a few feet, then repeat, until he gets where he wants to be with it.

We go to the book store every weekend. Our usual practice is that I will walk around with him in a chest harness looking at books until he gets excited about one. We will then sit down and I will read to him and then he will turn the page when I tell him. He usually gets a huge grin and will look at my lips and then back at the book while I read. Or he gets impatient and will want to flip to the next page!

He is easy to like as well - he smiles all the time at everyone he meets.

Mr W's fav toy is a box filled with goodies like rubber parts, cut-outs from different food packages, balls, etc. He turns the box on its side and rummages through it, pulling out stuff, looking it over, throwing discards over his shoulder, then going for the next object. I add new stuff just about every day. It occupies him for hours.

Most pawn shops near a University will have lots of cheap electronic junk. We have an old atari set that he will get to play with soon. His first computer will be a POJ (piece of junk), too.

When he starts to read heavily, we will be at half-price books and yard sales.

I might even take him to a junk yard. LOL.

DD2's speech has really become amazing recently, she sounds just like her 4 & 6yo brothers! A conversation I had yesterday that was just so cute and I haven't really shared anywhere because I know it sounds crazy.

DD2: Mommy, help me with my pants. The problem is- the zipper won't go up.
Me: OK, please stop taking your clothes off.

Repeat 5 times over the next 2 minutes.

Then-
DD2 comes in after fighting a losing battle with her shirt, one arm is stuck up in the air in the sleeve and the rest of the shirt is sort of shoved over her head in what appears to be a very uncomfortable position.

DD2: Mommy, help me! I don't know *what* the problem is!

And I was trying desperately not to laugh because I didn't want to hurt her feelings.

oh, that is so adorable! No, you don't want to laugh at situations like that - but you sure do want to remember them.

Scientific calculators have made their appearance in our house- and when we visited my sister ... and SHE HAD ONE, TOO! oh my goodness what a find.

This is a fun thread, great stories!

The things I can remember right now seem weird and offbeat; but here are a couple stories-
We were at a pool and a man came over and asked ds8 about a toy he was playing with, a pretty cool rubber 'toypedo'. I could see this from across the pool. I asked what happened and ds said, "Oh, he asked about my toy, he asked where I got it, I think he thought it was his. But I explained I'd had it for several years and I think he saw it was older than his. He said he is looking for one like it, if I see it." I didn't think much more about it, but later saw my son speaking with the man again.
Turns out ds found another boy playing with the man's toy and explained to the boy that the man was looking for it. He got the toy back and delivered it to the man who was pretty surprised; he asked ds a bit about it, and the look on the man's face was just priceless. Anyway, I was proud he was able to assert himself and feel comfortable speaking with this guy and the other boy.
DD2.5 used to insist on my reading the R. Scary books over and over, and of course still really likes them. She has one huge one where around 1 year old she LOOOOOOVED flipping through the pages and finding the little bug that the author had hidden on every page (goldbug). By about 13 mos. or so she had the book basically memorized, she could find this bug anywhere, on every page without fail, faster than I could. She wanted to find that bug and she meant business!

Thanks for the thread. I have a couple of stories from today. First, since I am new to this idea of my DD(26 months) being termed as HG+ and the characteristics that come with the term, I figured I would buy her some board games. Nothing fancy and as I began looking at the pre-school ones I realized that DD already does the stuff that the games are suppose to teach her, so I bought a memory game and laid it out on the floor for her, explaining how the game works since she has never done a memory game before. It did not take her anytime to A. understand it and B. win the game. We always knew she had a memory but I was a little shocked at how quickly she remembered where all the pieces were after flipping them over once.

The other story is one that just made me laugh today. I am a graduate of U Texas so we watch our longhorns and over the last week she asked to watch the longhorns. I explained that she had to wait until Saturday, so last night I asked her if she knew what tomorrow was .. she thought about it and said Wednesday with a smile. (Wishful thinking since she dances on Wed.) I said no it is Saturday, longhorn game. So this morning we went to breakfast and she was sitting in a highchair with her hands hidden she asked her Grandmother and me what today was and when we ask what? she showed her hands, both with hookem signs and said "longhorns, hookem! It is football time!" It was so cute.

OK, here is my little brag:

DD5 was convinced that counting more than 20 was too difficult for her and almost got a panic attack every time I tried to make her count more than 20.
Until a few days ago, when she suddenly started counting up to 65 and she just stopped because she was tired of counting but she has obviously lost the fear that this is difficult. OUF!

Next one i hope is the puzzles: she is really afraid of them. I hope she overcomes this fear as well...

I cannot think of anything right now - It is time for bed now.

Thanks for this thread...it's fun to read about your kids...and always fun to brag!

In this past week or so our daughter (almost 2!) has almost mastered personal pronouns. She has had a hard time with using "I" instead of her name and I think she has it now!

DD started to show us that she understands simple addition...she was adding rocks as the playground the other day! She is very proud of this!

My biggest brag of all...she is finally sleeping through the night! I probably just jinxed it completed now! She has been sleeping so well in the last couple of weeks. She sleeps through the night, or wakes up just once! This is HUGE for us. We went almost 2 years with her waking up anywhere from 4 to 12 times a night.

YAY!!!

One of the things I have learned is never underestimate the sibblings, I have DD5 and DD4 (19 months apart) the 5 year old has what I beleive to be a photographic memory and has always wanted more and more info to learn, my 4 year old is a throw back from the 60's and is a free sprit loves to learn but does not have the same type of drive the older one has (a perfect balance for my 5 year olds perfection personallity) about 2 1/2 years ago when DD5 then almost 3 desided it was time to learn the months of the year, she was going through the calendar reading the months over and over (she learn to read before 2yrs), I told her to put it down and try it without looking. She said " January, February, March" and then she paused for a moment and little sis pipes in "April, May, June, July,August, ect....

Sleeping through the night? Woo hoo! Break out the champagne! (That's what we'll do, I bet.)

I love reading about everyone's kids!

My small brag from this weekend is our 22 m.o. DD has a cold and she played Doctor /Nurse /Parent to her stuffed kitty. She looked intently into its eyes and said, "Do you need some medicine, Kitty?" in the most tender and endearing voice, then waited earnestly for a reply. She went on to go through my Pediatric Medicine box and use all its contents on the Kitty - ear thermometer, motrin, gas medicine, Vics Vapo Rub (she can say that), nasal aspirator, nail clippers, an eye dropper and hair brush. I'm not sure if that's gifted, but it sure was cute and I didn't realize she knew what all those things did.

She also used a mini screwdriver to take the plate off the back of a toy. She is constantly saying "It's broken," "It's not working," or "It needs batteries," so it was funny she could finally change batteries herself.

most of my stories of DS4 are just cute and funny stories...or at least that come to mind...but he is pretty funny.

He likes to play a game called "scrambled up word" which he made up himself. He writes out on his board "rsreae dabro" Which was eraser board. He is pretty good. The "board" part was the funniest because after writing the first word out all mixed up (he scrambles them in his head and writes them out pretty quick) he turned to me and was about to whisper and ask me "how do you spell board?" but I stopped him before he said the word and told him to ask his dad. So I hear him upstairs say "no not that kind of board with an e...the board with an a" and then I hear him coming down the stairs whispering to himself "b-o-a-r-d" over and over. How funny. So smart but still just a little 4 yo.

And my DD(16mo) is starting to talk more. It is really neat to see. My DS said a couple hundred words at her age....so to see her start to communicate more with us is great. She is developing her own personality and is just so awesome. And I LOVE watching them both together. They can play forever chasing eachother around.

This is my favorite story. When DD5 was at a well baby checkup at 15months the doctor asked her is she could say something simple like "ball" or "cat" and she responded, "I can't talk I'm just a baby" LOL!!! Talking and humor :-)

Wow Shelly. Your little DS4 is amazing! My dd7 loves stuff like that but to have that ability to manipulate language at 4 is truly exceptional. Good for him!

Actually I have another brag:

when DD was two and two months she made the remark that real cats do not wear clothes and talk and started to asked questions about real cows or horses, etc.

Two months later she made the remark that 'Sinterklaas' (the Dutch version of Santa) is when papa and mama have hidden presents in the cabinet under the stairs...

This is just a small brag, but it was one of those "oh, yes, he's a bit different" moments. I'm pointing out the shadow play of a lit pumpkin in the dark. Me: "hey - look at the wall." DS4: "The pumpkin is projecting images on the wall."

Wow! Astonishing and apropos! Does she still have the same sense of humor? Dry, wry, or otherwise sarcastic? Amazing for a 15 m.o. baby!

Yes she does. She's a riot!

What a great thread! I wish I could meet all of your kids--they sound wonderful!

Some of my favourite Harpo (now 7) moments:

When he was 2 and just starting to read aloud to us, he'd also spend a long time quietly staring at print of any sort (cereal boxes, whatever). One day, he asked me to type him two pages on the computer, one with lower-case "a" in every font, and one with lower-case "g" in every font. I thought this was a little odd, but I did it, and he carried it around like a talisman for weeks at a time. I finally figured out (I am slow) that those are the only two letters that exist in two different forms, according to font. So then I went up to the university library and got a bunch of books about type design, and he was in hog heaven for months.

When he was three, he'd lie on his bed for more than an hour at a go for about a week, chanting the alphabet slowly to himself. At the end of the week, he came down and said, "there are only five letters where I don't have to do anything with my lips or my teeth, and they are a, e, i, o, and u." Then he went happily out to play.

When he was four, we were waiting in a long line at the bank one day, and to keep him happy, I handed him a bunch of the bank's pamphlets about their services. One of them had to do with the bank's commitment to keeping its customers' personal information confidential, and had a photo on the front of a woman locking up a huge safe. He looked at it for a while and said he'd like to see this safe, where was it? I explained that there wasn't really a safe exactly like that particular one, but that they were trying to get across to people how seriously they took their privacy concerns. He said, "Oh, you mean it's a metaphor?" Every adult head in line snapped back in our direction.

Sorry, too many stories--I have pent-up bragging needs, since I only have one person I can tell this kind of stuff!

peace,
minnie

Wow! Many adults do not know what a metaphor is. Amazing kiddo!


Um. Just had to go find the above quote in another thread...tee hee

Wow is right! I want to hear more stories about Harpo don't leave them pent up anymore.

Agreed! I think those are pretty unusual stories, even among HG+ kids. He sounds like a deep thinker and a pattern-y guy. I have one of those, too, so I adore those kinds of stories even more than most!

Please, share often!

I think they were all looking at the Meta-Four!

Love it!! When DS was about that age -- 3 or maybe 4 -- I babysat a friend of his two afternoons a week, and we would always bring a big bag of stuff to keep ourselves entertained while she took a nap. Generally we made a mess of their living room in various ways, and we always cleaned it up before the mom came home....

But one time we got completely carried away with little scraps of paper... He would come up with a letter sound and I'd write down the letter and he'd put it in a pile with the other sounds that were "made the same" -- b/p/m and s/z/t/d/n and k/g/ng/Russian-x/cat-hacking-up-hairball... and we just went on and on about how it all went together and why there wasn't a complete set of sounds at each location (voiced, unvoiced, fricatives, stops, whatever all the technical terms are that I can't remember anymore)... and we'd try to make the missing sounds (what kind of fricative can you get in the b/p/m set? and what does it sound like when you try?? LOL)

And then the kid's mom came home early and there we were lounging around in her living room surrounded by dozens of bits of paper with letters on them... Knowing her, I expect it was one of those things where she had read about the importance of coming home unexpectedly sometimes so you can find out if your babysitter is always watching TV or lets the preschoolers walk the dog down the highway unsupervised... I don't think she expected to catch the babysitter making apparently nonsensical piles of letters all over the living room rug. I think she always thought I was a weirdo anyway.

I thought of another cute one. My friends and I got into a habit of spelling everything we don't want our little ones to know. I do this with my husband and my mom too. One time I was in the car with my mom, DD5 (4 at the time) ,and DD4 (3 at the time) And I started spelling to my mom the plans of the day. My mom asked me to repeat what I just spelled because she didn't catch it all and my DD5(who was 4) piped up and said Grandma, mom said " we are going to the mall first, having lunch and if the kids are real good after shopping we will get some ice cream"

When my son was 2 1/2, we found that the secret messages my husband and I were spelling out to each other were no longer secret. When my son had just turned four we could pick up a book he hadn't read before and spell out all the words and he could quickly and easily identify them. His cousin, seven years older than my son and also very bright, watched him do this and was surprised that my son was getting the harder words faster than he could. At age 5, older kids in his acting class would try to find words that he couldn't get, usually science related words, but he always got those because his favorite book to read at that time was a science encyclopedia.

Last night, one of my son's cub scout leaders told me that he thought my son must read a lot. No matter what they discuss it seems like my son has read something about it and likes to share this knowledge.

So my son is a well-read gamer (isn't this an oxymoron?) who spends way too much time on video games but somehow reads enough on Wikipedia finding answers to his many questions.

We had a pretty big OMG moment a couple of days ago. During this weekend I was showing DS about numbers in different bases (base 2, base 16) because he's a patterns guy and similar to Kriston's DS. So I thought he'd like talking about why we have "digits" why we count in base 10, and how you could count with other symbols.

A couple of days later he went to his white board isle and titled it "1st grade binary" and started to write out 1 + 0 = 1, 1 + 1 = 10, 10 + 1 = 11, etc. I thought "oh he just memorized it" until he moved on to "2nd grade binary" and "3rd grade binary" with addition with carry over and subtraction with borrowing.

I am still shocked at that one.

JB

"There are 10 kinds of people in this world. Those that understand binary and those that don't."

Wow! That's amazing! very cool.

(I'm one of the people in your quote... so i guess i'll have to see if DH can later teach this stuff to DS4, who is also patterny.)

My DS fell asleep on my lap last night at 7:30 while enthusiastically watching election returns. He woke me up this morning at 4:30 because he needed to know right now, how many electoral votes Obama had received. I said 338 to McCain's 155 (late night numbers) to which he promptly replied WOW- that's 68 more than he needed!

A funny one of logic a few nights ago, while going to sleep. We have annual passes to Disneyland this year and DS was very disappointed that Small World was closed in October when we were there. We told him they were fixing it because the boats keep sinking and we haven't talked about it since.

Just before bed a few nights ago he sits straight up and exclaims "I'VE GOT IT! The boats keep sinking because people are too fat!" It took me a few minutes to figure out what the heck he was even talking about!

And yes... they are sinking because people are too fat, so they had to make the canals deeper.

JBDad--I love it! What a great little guy!

Do you know the books "How to Count like a Martian" by Glory St. John and "A History of Counting" by Denise Schmandt-Besserat? They're both kids' books about number systems, and have been much enjoyed here--maybe your son would like them, too.

Have a happy day!
minnie

Thanks for the suggestion! I'm not familiar with those books, although previously DS has loved "big number" books. He favorite "math problem" that he creates usually involves googol

I'll check them out and maybe DS will be able to get them for xmas."

JB

Great resources Minnie - fyi, while i was searching for the martian book, I also found this book, which has teaching activities related to the Martian book (among other books):
Math Through Children's Literature

Thanks for the link, pauli! I saw some other old friends there--especially the Anno books and the Thomas Crowell Young Math series--and also some ones that are new to us--we'll check them out!

minnie

Those do sounds like good books to look into.

We had a fun tubby moment with dd2.5 the other day: We have foam letters in the tub for her and she picked up the 'F' and said, "Look, P for foot!" and stuck it on her foot. I laughed and said "That's an F and foot does start with F! And it looks a lot like a P", and we talked about how they look alike and different. I figured it was a coincidence that she grabbed the right letter...then later she had the 'Z' turned sideways in her hand and said 'nnn' for Nemo!
Ok, maybe less coincidence than I thought.

It's report card time...DD11 came home with all A's.

Rumor is that she's the only student in SLT (2ndary learning team, i.e., middle school) to do this this term.

It is great to have a place to talk about our kids. DD4 has been really into spelling lately. We play this game at home and in the car. We will give her a word and she will sound it out and tell us how it is spelled. She is getting really good at it. She is so cute if the word has an E on the end alot of times she will say and silent E when she get to the end. She likes to get words with trick letters which is what she calls words that are not spelled like they sound.

People use to tell me not to make her grow up so fast when she would do something unusual or really early. Now her uncles are being really supportive of following her intrests which is great.
Our family is not bugging me as much now that she is getting older and they know she is doing what she does on her own.

She also has been really into math. Doing addition and subtraction and a little multiplication. She likes to find 100 of things like 100 m&ms or rocks etc. This week we showed her how to count by 10s. And I tried to tell her how to count by 2s. We were amazed to see her because she will say 2 and then count on her fingers and say 4 etc she got up to about 12 and it was the first time we had talked about that.

She also is very interested in zero. She keeps saing to me things like, mom guess how many cookies I have for you, And then she will laugh and say zero. She does this about alot of things and thinks it is pretty funny. DS20m does not think it is as funny, he he.

Every day she amazes me. She always asks about different things. Like last week she wanted to know everything about eels. So we went on line and read about eels. As soon as I get info for her on one thing she says I already know about that I want to know about this other thing now. Its hard to keep up, but it is fun.

Well thanks for letting me go on and on a little. Usually only my husband hears this stuff. It is fun to read about other kid who are similar.

all this mathy talk reminded me of when DS9 was 4 he thoughtfully remarked (after incessently asking questions about numbers) "people change, but numbers never do!"

Not to go on and on about dd2.5 but she did this thing the other day that I was really amazed by - Nutcracker practice has started at my son's dance school and she was running down the hall and called out 'I hear the Nutcracker!' - I hadn't heard it yet, they had just turned on the music and only the first few notes had been played. I thought it was pretty cool, and I said something to a mother who had heard her also - just like 'Wow, that's cool'. She said 'Oh, that's normal if you grow up in a dance studio'.
Honestly dd is really enthralled by the Nutcracker and watched the dvd of last year's performance even in July - so I guess we have been hot-housing her with Tchaikovsky . I figured ok, I shouldn't have said anything (duh!).
Later that same day she was playing outside one of the studios (door closed so I am pretty sure she couldn't have seen what was going on) and said 'Oh, here comes the Rat!' - I looked into the practice studio window and they were playing the dvd to get the choreography down, and sure enough the Rat king had just come on the stage.
Anyway, I guess if the first thing wasn't that amazing at least the second thing was 'curious'. I am excited but I guess I mostly just need to share with you guys! Thanks for being here

our DD5 started gymnastics 3 weeks ago and was finding it a little easy, when she walked in they "noticed her" because of her body shape, the following week they said they had * her whatever that meant, I spoke with the coach last week about her complaining it was a little easy and I didnt want her to get bored and not want to attend anymore, he suggested we bring her to the class the following day and if the coach and her thought it was a better class for her then we could bring her on that day instead. We did as he suggested and she attended, had a great time and enjoyed it immensely. She was staying in that class! When we left I got talking to one of the mums, her daughter has been doing Gymnastics for 3 years and apparently unbeknown to us the class our DD is now attending is for children who have tried out and been selected out of hundreds of children for the program. She has no clue as to all this but we were a little proud of her, she is having fun and learning something new at the same time. It's always more accepted to brag about sporting achievements but to add that on top of already doing well academically well that just seems to be too much for some people, so glad we can share here.

Well, a few things interesting this week. DS4 the other day asked for 4/4 of a glass of milk. then he replied "that's a whole glass of milk" I agreed and was surprised he knew that as we had never done fractions. He then went on to say that 8/4 is 2 wholes, and 12/4 is 3 wholes and 16/4 is 4 wholes, then asked what is 16 + 4, because that will equal 5 wholes. Not sure where he gets this stuff.

Most of the amazing stuff he says and does is quite comical. that is always the stuff that stands out in my mind. Yesterday he wanted to play a syllable game and I wasn't sure if he really knew what syllables are. I asked him how many syllables were in a couple different words and he easily got them right. then he paused for a minute and said "mom, supercalafragelisticexpealadocious (sp?) has 13 syllables......no wait..it has 14"

He also loves word scrambles. He scrambled up the word alphabet the other day fairly easily for me to figure out. He is a great scrambler and sometimes has me stumped for a bit.

That's enough bragging for one day.

I love this thread!

I would also like to brag about our dog, who is getting old, and is quite the rabble rouser, having grown up on and lived on the farm and always gave more than she got - she just takes Mr W's abuse and loves every minute of it.

I love this thread, too!

Groucho (5) has a new favourite expression: id est. He was explaining "The Taming of the Shrew" to someone today, and happily told him that "two of the suitors dress up as schoolmasters (id est, teachers) when they go to court Bianca." Also, when he wants a drink at bedtime, he says to Frenchy, "Daddy, someone here is thirsty, id est, Groucho [insert real name here]."

Shellymos, I love both the fractions and the syllables stories--what fun! Sounds like a great kid, who keeps you busy, too, I'll bet!

minnie

id est, that is hilarious. That totally sounds like something I could hear my son saying in the next year or so. I swear we could write a book with the things they say.

Not sure if this is a brag, but I thought it was funny:

DS5 (almost 6) asked me how I type so fast--have I memorized all the keys? I told him I had. He said, "Well, my method is I've memorized the backspace key, so I just hit the keyboard randomly and if I get the wrong letter I backspace and try again."

Well, now that I think about it, I guess that algorithm would work just fine--but might be a little slow...

This evening dd(24 months) was looking out the window and said, "Look Dadda, I see silhouettes of trees!"

A BIG BRAG....dd chose her Dadda to read stories to her tonight instead of me!!! This was the first time in a year or more!!!!!!!! I had to go in to read her one story and then put her in her crib, but she did choose dh to start with so that was a HUGE step!!

Oh, Cathy, I so needed a big laugh today! And that one was a real thigh-slapper!

Thanks!

minnie

I remember when DS(now10) was 2 years old, he was explaining to someone about the difference between deciduous trees and evergreens.

This thread is so interesting to read! The "calculator" as a gift made me smile because that was exactly what DS8 has asked for since last year. For his birthday in June, my sis bought him a scientific calculator and he was proud and eager to use it!

I realised I couldn't recall many wonderful moments. There was one particular one which I did though. It was when DS was in KA (4+). His room teacher proudly shared with me what DS had drawn when he asked the class to draw something to show the word "enormous". DS drew himself as small as an ant. Beside him, he drew the Eiffel Tower.

Yesterday he wanted to play a syllable game and I wasn't sure if he really knew what syllables are. I asked him how many syllables were in a couple different words and he easily got them right. then he paused for a minute and said "mom, supercalafragelisticexpealadocious (sp?) has 13 syllables......no wait..it has 14"

[/quote]

Shelly,

Maybe we should try to arrange that playdate!! I told dh about the syllables and he remembered when my dd7 was in Kindy she did the same exact thing and just a week or so ago, showing her continued obsession with the word, said and spelled it backwards

Mr W ( DS10m0w) did a 6 piece shape sorter by himself today.

He watched the Wizard of Oz with us until he fell asleep when they got to the Emerald City. He loved the Lion and kept saying "Poppies"

Ok Ive got a recent brag. I took DS4 in oct, DD1.5, and baby to the library this week and DS4 picked out a magic tree house book. We got home and she said she wanted to read it, so I got comfy on the couch with her and opened the book to start reading and DS4 said I know that word and sounded out he first word. She ended up reading the whole page. She called her grandma to tell her the news and was very excited. She continued to read pages every several pages that I read. Three days later we are on our fourth magic tree house book.

Look at what my dd's teacher sent me!!! I will certainly have a good day! Yay....


"There are many writing competitions for children on line. You may want to take a look and encourage dd7 to submit something. She truly is a gifted writer. Have a great day."

What a cool thread!

My ds6 used to write a lot of lovely stories, which ended after he started school and got miserable. But two days ago, reading the book Dragonology, he noticed the key to dragon runes, taught himself them - all but Z, which is hard b/c you never use it, Mom - and suddenly began writing again, just in Dragon! He's got pages of story about a dragon who goes to a Red Sox game, which he then gleefully asks me to read, which I can't do, b/c *I* can't read dragon. And even better, his teacher let him do it yesterday after he finished his work, so he came home happy from school for the first time this year.

And the same day, ds3 did a 96 piece puzzle, and ds8weeks used a consonant for the first time and said "bleh!" it was a banner day.

How exciting, what a great compliment!

Well I wanted to share something from this morning, because it is way to wierd to share with coworkers. I will get the weird stare. Anyhow, this is typical DS4. He does lots of thinking while I drive and wants to engage in interesting conversations. So this morning he said to me "3x4+1 equals a bakers dozen, right?" and I agreed, then he quickly said "or you could also say 4x2+5 equals a bakers dozen" Then he proceeded to go through addition problems in Spanish for fun, and then moved onto roman numerals. And THEN decided to do "Spanish Roman Numerals" I had no idea what he was talking about until he started saying "ixx = 19" only he said all the letters and numbers in spanish. The stuff that comes out of his mouth floors me. I swear he learns things while he is sleeping.

I have less of a brag and more of a celebration of sorts, too. I had no idea DD 22 months knew that C comes after A and B. We have not tried to teach her the alphabet quite yet. Tonight DH comes home from a walk with DD and says, "Did you know DD can say the whole alphabet?" She proceeded to sing the whole song. I was speechless. That little rascal has known all along!

Shelly, do you keep up with all that? Do you already know Spanish? Wow!

oh it feels so nice to be able to share!! Today dd (2) counted from 10 down to 1. I had hearrd her do that before, but today dh heard her and he was so proud!

DS7 went for his belt test in tae kwon do and won a trophy for having the most"Awesome Attitude" strips, he gets these for good grades at school.

This morning it was chilly in the car and DS quipped:

Guess who's in the artic?

Coldilocks and the Three Polar Bears!



Oh, and the other day he drew four dots on a piece of paper and then connected them in all the possible ways (i.e. like a box with an X in it.) I asked him what he was drawing and he said, "This is how they all shake hands."

Awww! There's nothing I like more than a little punster. You made my morning, Cathy!

DS and I liked your DS's joke too! Cute.

As for our DS4, I think my warped sense of humor is rubbing off. We were at grammy's yesterday, and he wanted to use her egg slicer for some hard-boiled eggs. He picked up a peeled egg and said "hey egg, i've got a nice new office chair here for you. Want to try it out?" Then he put the egg in the slicer and pretended to be the egg, and said "wow, this is really nice. Wait a minute what are those sharp things, aaaaaah!"

I've just now been able to sit and read this thread! Great stories, thanks for sharing! They all made me smile!

I love the playing with words and puns, they are so cute when they put that stuff together.

Shelly, I have to say, your 4yo not only playing with multiplication, but putting into meaningful context, WOW!

Definately support that math talent!

I love reading this thread.

Here's my latest awe moment from DS5.
Last week out of the blue he discovered a "math rule". He told me that 2 times a number + 3 times a number is always 5 times the same number. He proceed to do this all the way up to around 10 to fully test his rule. I then took the opportunity to show him how to write 2x + 3x = 5x. He was in heaven. I was truly amazed that he was able to not only see a math pattern but also to define what he considered to be a math rule. No wonder 1st grade math is not cutting it.

As far as my DD4 this is just a quickie on her art talent. She has been amazing me with her art work lately. She has moved from flower and hearts galore to detailed buildings and abstract colorful patterns. My refrigerator is covered.

And just because I don't want to leave out DS2- I can do a brag on his ability to make his own track designs with the Geotracks. He is train obsessed and spends hours each day playing independently with these trains.

Thanks for letting me share.

Crisc, your son's amazing algebra example reminded me of something else:

DS6 just finished the second disk of Descartes' Cove with me. He told me he wanted to skip to the algebra disk after that. The first problem on the algebra disk was

Given that x+y=586, what is 2x+2y?

DS asked me what x and y were and I told him we don't know, but that they are two numbers that add up to 586. He thought for a minute and then said, so 2x+2y would be 2 times 586. Then he worked that out on paper by himself.

I was impressed!

Wow, Crisc and Cathy! Great stories! It would be so fun to get all these kids together for a great big playdate!!

We were at the playground this morning, and Chico (3) was swinging. He heard another child ask for an under-duck, so he decided he'd like a big push, too, but he thought "duck" was insufficiently specific (we spend a certain amount of time bird-watching)--so he asked for an under-hooded merganser, an under-surf scoter, an under-northern pintail, an under-greater scaup.........

I was supposed to make the appropriate bird call for all of these while I was pushing him, but I, um, faked it.

peace
minnie

Hee-hee! I wouldn't even know how to fake it

When I was a kid we used to call them "underdogs". I'd probably do better faking the barks of different dog breeds.

We had an exciting baby day today. Our littlest DD3m scooted across the floor and giggled. So cute.

DS6 discovered the Fantastic Contraption website. I stuck it in his bookmark folder a few months ago when it was posted here and just let it sit there for him to discover. I didn't even have to show him how it worked, he figured it out all on his own and is on the last level after just a few hours working on it.

I don't know if that's so unusual, but as a completely non-visual spatial person who gave up on the game after level 6 (the asymmetry of my contraptions was too much for me to handle, lol) I was really impressed! I definitely think we'll be investing in the paid version.

DS13 had a bad day yesterday. Someone canceled the bus that was supposed to bring him back from the high school to middle school after math class. He went to the HS office and called the middle school and got the bus ordered. But he was late for 2nd period in the middle school. Since they were doing state mandated testing he didn't want to be late he ran past the MS office right to the room where the testing was going on and just made it for the start of the test. After the test, he went to the office to get his paperwork for being tardy in order and was instead slapped with a detention for not stopping at the office on his way in to second period.

I was pretty mad that they just left my DS sitting at the HS and almost called the school. But instead I asked DS if he would like to try to take care of things today. We brainstormed some options and today he talked to the principal directly about what had happened. He got an apology for there being no bus and she had the detention taken off his record!

I am so proud that he can handle these complications with just a little coaching from me .

Wow! That's so great, acs!

Gosh, I'm proud for him and I've never met him!

In some subcultures this might be a brag. I don't think its a brag, but its funny.

Mr W ( 10m) and I went shopping this week at the grocery store. The cupboard and fridge were empty and even the mice were complaining of not having any crumbs.

So, at checkout the cart was FULL. $400 full.

While I was busy unloading the cart, Mr W was examining the offerings of candy and tabloids from his perch in the cart seat. He grabbed a few things to look over and when he seemed done, I would take them from him and put them back.

The Altoids boxes fascinated him the most and we repeatedly played take-remove-put back until he seemed satiated with the Altoids and just sat quietly in his seat until I was done.

We arrived home and I put him on the floor so I could go outside and get the groceries.

When I came back, he was swinging an Altoids box and giving his campaign speech (DAHADHA! DafCHUCKAWAYAYY! ) , smiling at me.

I was shocked. I took the box from him, "You little Hoodlum! You stole that!!"

He laughed right back at me.

I got more groceries and when I came back, he had ANOTHER BOX!!!

He had not moved from where I left him.

I unzipped his jacket - and there was one more box inside of it!!!

He stole THREE Altoids boxes!!

This morning I caught him taking my wife's stuff from her nightstand to put it in her laptop case - her lip gloss, keys, and phone.. LOL. Had I not seen it, we would have been looking hard for her keys.

ACS, that is a great!

Dottie and Austin, very fun stories!!

And acs, good for your son--that's terrific!

Chico (3) has been printing a lot lately, in fact, it has been his major preoccupation for a couple of weeks (he writes "theme" pages,with one word per line--there's the knight, sword, shield, joust, etc. page, the stethoscope, needle, tongue depressor, medicine, etc. page, and so on--he gets help with spelling from whomever happens to be around when it's a word he hasn't done before). He's been drawing his own horizontal lines on blank sheets to use as ruling, and it's been neat to see how evenly sized and spaced the letters are.

So I was a little taken aback to come across some of these sheets yesterday with most of the letters nice and big and even, with some teeny tiny little ones in several of the words--Frenchie and I had a closer look, and lo, the little monkey had made all the silent letters small!

Kids are so much fun!

minnie

Funny story...

I was talking to dd5 about global warming last night. The conversation started with the basics. The earth is getting warmer because of pollution etc. etc... Well dd kept asking more and more detailed questions and her voice sounded as if she were on the verge of tears. Finally I stopped answering because it she was so upset. I asked - Honey are you worried about all of this? She answered Yes! so I asked - What exactly are you worried about? Her response, "Well I really just don't like the heat" LOL!!!

Have to put in a brag....

Two days ago, DD9 was in her classroom where the Teacher was trying a new schedule. Well, unfortunately the schedule was wrong and had too many kids doing the same thing at the same time. DD said that the teacher tried several configurations to try to get every student to do every activity planned for the day and just couldn't get it arranged. DD took one look at the chart, reaaranged it and it worked the first time!

She loves puzzles, math and patterns!!! (I wish she could organize her room that easily! lol)

Aside: LOVE the Altoid story!!!

I don't know if this will help, but a smart HS kid turned me on to this site.

It looks like most of the "heating" is due to poor USHCN station siting. Most of the stations surveyed are non-compliant.

http://surfacestations.org/odd_sites.htm

You could look up the USHCN stations in your area and submit a report. Its very easy to do. And its real science and you are DOING something.

Okay I had a proud momma moment last night with my DD 27 mths. She had brought her doodlepad into a restaurant last night and happily went to drawing. For the most part she has been drawing volumuos creatures with some features up to this point. Of course, nothing recognizable, but last night I looked over and she had drawn a baby bird coming out of a nest. It had eyes and a mouth as well as little wings. There was shading in the nest and a sense of volume in the bird. She even told me it was a bird in a nest. As an artist I was thrilled and just had to take a picture before it got wiped clean.

I got the best brag. I bought my tree and put it up. Have all my presents done. Packages sent. I am so so cool.

Hope everyone is doing well in this holiday season. Tis not the happiest of times for the world.

Ren