Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Is this gifted, or just "bright?"

Seriously, just be honest here. This is a child I am homeschooling. I am trying to discern whether I should invest time, effort, and expense into getting testing and looking into resources like Davidson, or whether I should just let her slide along at her speed.

This is 6 yr old girl, who I say is in "1st grade", but she is not doing ANY first grade work. And let me be clear I am far from an overachieving homeschooling parent. We have an older one, too.

Reading: She exhibited no signs of super early reading in preschool beyond letters and basic sounds, but when I started teaching her in Kindergarten last year, she picked it up and was reading fluently within a few weeks, and with almost unlimited capacity within a few months. She is now reading books advertised for kids in the 8-12 range, though, there are limits as to what she will read based on content and interest. (Likes things like The Guardians of Ga'Hoole and Rick Riordan's books.)

Math: I have her on a 3rd grade curriculum right now, and she is just blazing through it pretty effortlessly, but then every so often she has a fit, says something is hard, so I hesitate to push her further - yet she usually overcomes the fit and can perform the math flawlessly with even a few seconds of explanation.

Here is an example of "challenge problems" I gave her that are beyond the scope of her curriculum, with only concepts explained very casually and verbally (in response to questions in the car, for example)



Writing example. Sometimes I think she is capable of more, but she gets grumpy if I try to push anything more, and I feel I shouldn't because she's only 6? (This example, she listened to me read something orally, and then answered all these questions with no input or spelling assistance.)



Benefit from some kind of eval, or is this just the work of a bright 6 yr old and I should let it go?