Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion 5 year old Math

Hi everyone,

I've never really written on this site before but I have been following the conversations for about 2 years now when I started to suspect my son may be gifted. He is about to turn 5 in August and I am worried about Kindergarten. He's been tested for therapy services (speech therapy for articulation and physical therapy) as well as for school. The tests were interesting but I don't really know what to make of them since he took them at a young age (4.4-4.6) and I'm not sure how reliable they were. He scored a 96 percentile on the SB5 a 98 percentile on the OLSAT and then on the WPPSI he scored 100 (50 percentile on verbal and 130 (98%?)on verbal (he was sick and had to stop and returned the next day to finish up so this test but was still feeling uncooperative) . Basically it seems like he is gifted but not too extremely gifted. He started to read words at around 2.5 years old and is now reading about early 2nd grade. It seemed like he was much more gifted when he was young and even though he is still ahead of kids his age he doesn't seem to have the same kind of focus as when he was a toddler.

Anyway, this is really a post about math but I though you guys might like some general information. I've always felt like my son was really great at math. For example, at 2.5 we were making squares with popsicle sticks to build a farm. He had 2 sticks and then he ran out so I asked him how many more he needed and he counted out loud and said, "3, 4 oh, I need 2 more." By 2.5-3 years he could divide items to be shared and do addition and subtraction when situations requiring math presented itself. He always seemed to have very good number sense. So this year, the summer before kindergarten, I thought it would be a good idea to introduce some standard math. So we started to play a game called Go Fish 10 where rather than making pairs for the same number the objective was to make pairs that added up to ten. The problem is that after playing the game many many times he still can't remember the combinations (e.g. 7 and 3). He always has to count. We've also started to do a 1st grade math book (at his request) and he can't remember simple rules like 3+1 is 4 because you go one up from three. However, if say the equation as a word problem, he can figure out the answer. I just don't get it. I'm starting to worry that there is something going on with his memory but then this is the same child that memorized the entire lower case alphabet in 2 days at the age of 2! For example, when he was a toddler he could not count up to 10 for a long time but he already recognized all his number to 20 and now he still has trouble counting to 100 but he has been able to recognize his numbers to 100 since he was less than 3! He also can't remember lyrics to songs unless it is for his school concert and he's practiced it with his class repeatedly for weeks but yet he has a very rich vocabulary and seems to remember all sorts of information that we share with him. I'm just not sure if maybe he is very weak in something and we are just not picking it up. I don't want him to go into school which I know can contain a lot of rote learning and he ends up doing poorly. I've heard of kids who are great in math but do very poorly in school math. Has anyone had this problem with their child? Are their ways to help them cope? Please share you experiences and your advice. Thank you.