Thanks to you all for sharing the wisdom of parenthood your GT children. We are still new to this and this is our first child, so we have a lot to learn..
One of the asynchrony that doesn't show in our score is where he hit the ceiling by a good margin.. He is really advanced in building.. He just asked to go to a lego bootcamp, and I shopped around. All the bootcamps I found in our area are organized by age ranges, and his skills are beyond the age ranges where he will be slotted
How do you all manage with after school extra curriculars?
My son is 11, and was a lego guy, too. He could do any set by age 5. Since he's my oldest, I thought every kid could, too.
My advice to you, is to just find a school you like for him, with parents you like, with a flexible administration. And then just sit tight and let them do their jobs. If it doesn't work in a year or two, and after you've worked with the school, you can make a change. He's only 4!
In the meantime, I would keep buying him sets until he's old enough for a Mind Storm. (My son got one at 7.) Look around for a Jr. Lego League. It shows them how to build things from scratch-- plus how to add movement. They start in K. First Lego League (starts in 4th grade, I think) was started by Dean Kamen, a great american inventor who created the Segue, among other inventions. There's something called i-camp your son will be able to do in a couple of years (it's combined ages 2nd- 7th, I think). When my son was going into 3rd grade, he was asked to come to icamp as a "Lego Master" and teach the other kids how to build the cool things he was building. He got to go every day for free-- if he'd teach kids whatever they wanted to build. He loved it that summer. (But he was over it all by the next summer.) Also, look at other building and creative sets. My son liked those complicated Knex marble runs, electric Knex, and many Maker projects. We did lots of building with real tools, too.
As for learning to read in a different way-- mmmm. I'm not so sure about that. I think that unless you think he has a learning issue, he'll learn to read and just take off without any special methods in the next year. Get him some lego building books and help him figure out how to read those. Personally, I wouldn't worry about it at all.
At his age, I don't see why you'd need to do additional testing. If I were you, I'd wait a few years and see how's he's doing. If there are strange quirks in his learning, additional testing will help figure it out. The most important thing I've found is a flexible school administration and teachers who don't feel like they have all the answers, but are willing to learn.
Have fun!
