I just came across this forum in my search of information on gifted children. My daughter will be three at the end of November. She has shown a great love of learning and a keen interest in everything academic. She learns quickly and retains well. At this point she can read books on a Kindergarten level, prints, sounds out words, and is starting to add with pictures. I used to teach Kindergarten and noticed that at age two she was doing academic things on the level of my Kindergartners who were going into first grade. She is in preschool right now and will be for two more years due to her late birthday. They have a specialist teacher pulling her out of class sometimes and working on words and reading. Just as background information: My husband has about a 160 IQ and I am working on finishing my doctorate in Higher Education and Adult Learning (I was never told my IQ but earned mostly A's in school). My concern is that she is not working to her academic potential or being challenged in preschool. For example: In school they are tracing one huge letter per page and she can write smaller letters without tracing, including her name and other words. We do a lot of supplemental work at home, not pushing her but making it fun for her. Thoughts/suggestions?

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Many families enjoy the book "A Parent's Guide to Gifted Children", accompanying them on their gifted journey.

Regarding your specific question as to whether a 3-year-old may not be challenged to potential in preschool, you may find a recent thread interesting which discussed different perspectives on when to let a child lead and set the pace (link- http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/173443/1.html)

I am biased by the country I live but I would run from any preschool teaching anything academic to 2/3 year olds.

You know, we're so frustrated by lack of play-based preschools here that moving to NZ for the next couple of years is starting to sound more and more appealing.

Perhaps a little extreme. I don't envy the preschools but there does seem to be more choice after preschool. I have seem a couple of ads for getting ready for school preschools but they are definately a very small minority. It is not helpful when your 3 year old has pretty much all the readiness skills the schools ask for - just adds a couple more years of boredom.

welcome to the forum

OP, if you contact the site admin, he can change your screen name.

I've been trying to respond without making it all about our frustration with preschool. To make a long story short, for our DD who is 4 months older than your DD, we are looking for a 100% play-based preschool.

We don't discourage academics at home but we prefer that at least at preschool, she is running around with other children, doing crafts with glitter and paint, and digging in the sandbox.

What we are focusing on teaching to DD is perseverance and I find that extra curricular activities that DD can't learn naturally through osmosis provide best learning opportunities for that. She has to pay attention to her teacher's instruction doing ballet and try her best to keep up with her class since she is grouped with precocious four to five year olds.

As far as academics go, I consider DD an unschooler and we plan on letting her be one until she is at least 5. Every time I get a bit involved and DD can sense that she is being pushed into one direction or another, she loses interest so I have learned to let her be but each child is so different on this regard.

We've also looked into Montessori schools and while I thought at least one of them would have been a good fit for DD, her father thought it played too much into her strength. For other families on this forum though, I think Montessori worked out well for their children during preschool years. I had a lot of prejudice against Montessori prior to becoming a mom but now that I have a child who is very much a Montessori child, I am glad that we have Montessori schools as an option.

Amen to that - our DS3.5, when interested in something, will zoom ahead and learning everything there is to know. If we try to push him, coerce him, or even merely ASK him something that he doesn't want to answer, we get nothing. So I feel like unschooling is what we do with him at home...let him lead, if he wants to do something, he will (and seems to eventually find his way to the things we might have wanted to introduce to him in the first place). Trying to fight with a stubborn, smart toddler is just...well, basically impossible. So we don't do it

Sometimes (I'm a little embarrassed to admit) I do find myself thinking..."this kid can read so well...if only he LIKED to do it right now, think of the books he could be reading..." or "if he had an interest in learning piano, I KNOW he would be playing simple songs on it....he's so musical." but then I just bite my tongue. Eventually he will get there. Or not. He's an awesome, unique kid, and I'm not about to screw that up by pushing my own agenda him.