Hi!
I'm just getting going on this place. I have a 2 1/2 year old and 9 month old.

Any suggestions on books about identifying giftedness and facilitating a very active young mind? My kids are still small so some books or articles on stimulating without overwhelming in these young years would be great!

Welcome Brittany:
I would suggest just searching this board for topics of interest.
There is many parents of young and gifted here.
My kids always enjoyed play along with mom.
TV was off for most of the day.
Two languages from day one.
Reading aloud at night, followed by a movie of a book we just finished. The movie was alway watched as a family (I still read aloud to my kids and they are 13 and 11).
My kids LOVED B&N story times and literacy days at the local library.
Introduce them to variety of subjects and play with them a lot.
One of the unusual things we did with our kids when they were young was to build houses/palaces out of cardboard, big in size so our kids could really live in them. To this day Ghost remembers painting a roof on a farmhouse that he later moved in with his guinea pig.
But most of all enjoy this time and do not worry about the numbers...

For us, one of the best thing about having really young gifted kids was being able to start all the *fun* stuff, early! We do lots of museums and the zoo, we spend insane amounts of time at the library. We go on day trips to state historic sites and take the tours. I can read the kids all the good books that I loved as a kid, I remember when DS6 was 2.5 I read the whole Chronicles of Narnia series to him (the big hardback books with color illustrations). It's funny, at the time I didn't see a thing in the world different about him understanding what we were reading, lol. We take the kids hiking and to the beach. All the things we loved to do, we just brought the kids along (until there were 3 of them, then being outnumbered put a stop to a few things for now). We give the kids a good variety of well-made basic toys (wooden trains, building blocks, lincoln logs, legos, little people, and most recently k'nex) and let them go to town. In my book that is some of the best learning and exploring they can do!

As far as books, I really like the "Preschoolers Busy Book" type books, they have a lot of really fun activities, we just always used the books for a couple of years ahead.

Hi Brittany - As for a book about identifying giftedness, I liked Ruf's Losing Our Minds: gifted children left behind. Losing Our Minds

For those kids who exhibit their GT very early, this is an interesting read. I liked the stories from parents of GT kids - it made me say "that's our son!" and helped us feel like we weren't imagining things.

And I concur with the others about just giving your kids the tools to play - blocks and setting up train tracks and legos (now we're on the "all legos/all the time" station) have always been hits with our DS, now 4. I would get him things I would think he would like, even though they were for older kids. We did the zoo a lot when he was young, too. We also found good friends in Early Childhood Family Education classes. They had loads of ideas for activities too.

I'm a Ruf fan, too, but some here are not. Just be aware that her lists of characteristics should be used as a tool to help you rule IN kids as GT, but should NOT be used to rule OUT kids as GT. What I mean is that just because your child doesn't do all the stuff that the kids on her lists do doesn't mean your child is not GT. One tool among many...

For me, though, "Losing Our Minds" was the most useful book I read. It got me past my GT denial, which I really needed.

A close second for most useful book was "Creative Home Schooling: A Resource Guide for Smart Families" by Lisa Rivero. Even for non-HSing families, it contains a lot of useful info about how to approach living and working with a GT child. It even helped me understand myself a little better.