Hi there. My oldest son just turned 6. I know that he is pretty smart, but not sure if he would fit under the classification of being naturally gifted. I saw a few threads here where posters described their not yet 2 year old being able to do incredible manipulation of numbers and letters well before they're supposed to. My son is nothing like this. I never thought him to be anything more than relatively bright up until he was 3.5 years old, certainly not "gifted".
When he was introduced to addition before he was 4 years old, I found that he mastered the basics very quickly. The single digit plus single digit problems that he brought home from pre-school were too simple. So we used a children's whiteboard that someone bought him for his 4th birthday to do more difficult addition problems for fun. After a few months of playing with the whiteboard every night after dinner, he was adding and subtracting three and four digit numbers with ease. He learned his times tables while he was still four. By his fifth birthday, he was multiplying three digit by 3 digit numbers and dividing four digit by two digit numbers. Around this time, he also learned how to manipulate fractions and operate on them in both mixed and improper form.
In addition to what I have taught him at home, he has been enrolled in an abacus course for most of the last year. One of the perks of learning the abacus is the ability to allow students to mentally manipulate products of large numbers. He is now able to multiply two by three digit numbers and divide five by two and five by three digit numbers mentally as a result of the abacus practice.
Reading-wise, most of the books he currently reads is at an accelerated reader book level of 3 to 4. Like with math, his reading did not develop at an incredibly young age. He was barely reading Green Eggs and Ham when he turned 5, but has made huge leaps in the past year.
DS will begin first grade in August. Because of how accelerated he is in math and reading, I am anxious about whether his elementary school will be able to meet his needs. On the other hand I feel that he should be in class with students that are of similar age because I don't want to stunt his social development.
I have considered looking into some gifted and talented programs, but all of these require IQ testing by a registered clinical psychologist. I wanted to get a feeler on this forum about whether this is something I should even consider for my child given his background (no gifted traits before three, takes in new information like a sponge after four).
