Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy question on application

Someone, who went through the process last year, mentioned a question on the Hunter application and would love to get feedback from you, as I am trying to jog the memory.

Does your child use household objects in unusal ways or applications?

Right now, I can only think of DD in the shower using the back scrubber as a guitar and singing Beach Boys, or using this little gift bags as either casts for her animals or sleeping bags for her animals. (stuffed and plastic animals)

I am thinking there were moments of using an extra long stirring spoon for a sword or something but did not make a file. I wish I was better at recording these things. Because there were things she did but I just thought of it as regular play. She is always using something and doing some pretend play.

Anything that might give me an 'oh yeah' moment would be appreciated.

Ren

My ds8 has always built things out of tape and whatever is lying around, he made a big figure once with chopsticks for legs, sculpey for joints and feet... he made a car out of a shoebox, jar lids, etc <-- probably some of this is not that unusual, but might jog your brain...
Last week he built an airplane with broken down cardboard boxes..this thing is 6 feet long and fits two kids. he and the neighbor girl were running around in it in the yard.

Hmmm. Let me see.

A garlic press to push patterns in paper, a pizza cutter to cut circles, a potato peeler for curling paper.

String and sellotape for everything. We dont have any craft materials so ds just makes do with everyday stuff. Builds the imagination.

He once wanted a guitar like a friend of mine so took his play guitar and spent days cutting bits of elastic and fixing them to the toy one by one until he had a "proper one" It took a long time. Once finished though he lost interest. He often adds stuff to his toys to make them more realistic and spends hours adding details. One stage involved taping microphones to everything and another the bits on train wheels to make them more realistic.

He loves anything in the stationary department and we buy a ball of string and a roll of sellotape at least once a week

For a while when he was 2, whenever the rubber dishwashing gloves were within reach, my second son would grab one (and only one), put it on, and run around saying "I am Batman."

Anything arched or squared has time portal potential.

Sticks are fossils (okay, they aren't "household objects" except in our house where they are), and can be used to create entire skeletons.

One evening when he was 5, Batman bit a piece of salami into a particular shape, held it up proudly, and said "Look Mom! Dinosaur hips!" I'll give him credit --- he had formed it pretty accurately.

Val