Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school leaps and bounds

Isn't it crazy how little ones seem to learn piles of new things overnight? They can go weeks, just coasting along, not showing that they have picked up new info and skills.... and then BAM! It's like they had an IV infusion of brain cells while they slept.

My little guy just turned three last week and he had really slowed down on his aquisition of new info/skills. It's like he took a summer vacation along with his sister and focused on playing hard. In just this past week he now counts everything (there are 18 chairs in our ophthalmalogist's waiting room, in case you are interested :-), he read numerous words in his books (same words in a few different books), completely potty trained himself and gave his preschool teacher a long and drawn out lecture about the differences between steam trains and diesel trains (he could barely talk 4 months ago).

I think this is why I so often question whether my children are really GT. They seem so 'normal' and fit in so well with their age-mates 90% of the time. It is these spurts of growth in their knowledge that bowl me over every now and then. After speaking with some of the other moms at his school, I realize I need to spend more time with other kids his age because my sense of a normal three year old must be warped, LOL!

So very very normal. I see 3 year olds hanging out on steampunk festivals lecturing about the trains all the time. ((wink))

In my dreams...
To moms with warped yardsticks everywhere!
Grinity

Well, I do go through my own periods of denial/wondering, and then my child does something so different/advanced and I go, oh, yeah,...I guess maybe he does have some odd skills...hmmm...

you are not alone on that one, and yep- Nick's got these cognitive growth spurts, things will be kind of quiet and BOOM, all of the sudden he's got mad skills and is up till 10PM practicing whatever they happen to be... fun.

I was schooled the other day on the life cycle of butterflies AND how long each cycle takes. Sometimes ds makes me feel stupid lol. oh and did you know that aardvarks eat termites? Yes I learned all about that too from him.

When I read this, I had to laugh. Hubby and I have often commented to each other that it seems as if our son had a pod stashed under his bed and woke as a new boy!
It's a bit unsettling to look into your child's eyes and see new knowledge there that wasn't evident the day before.

It does seem so "normal" when you are living with it

HA! I was just going to log on to post something pretty much exactly like this. After a month in preschool, it's crazy how he blends in so well so often, but then his teachers will comment on little things. They were supposed to bring in something "circle-shaped" last week for show-and-tell, so he brought in his younger brother's grippy ball that is made up of a whole bunch of circles. He was intrigued by the fact that a ball is a circle "in all the directions," so we taught him the word sphere... and assumed he'd forget.

Turns out, the next day, he was going on and on to his classmates (all but one of whom are older than him) about how his ball was "REALLY REALLY A CIRCLE SHOW-AND-TELL" because not only did it contain a whole bunch of circles, it was a "SPFE--SFFP--SPHERE!"

Last Monday, The Husband taught him adding on his fingers on their extra day off (I had to work, they got to stay home, the turds) last Tuesday. He's been able to count objects with one-to-one correspondence for over a year now, and has been able to do the whole "if you had one more grape, how many would you have," but the language of mathematics has eluded him. Suddenly, he's an adding wiz, and is working on subtraction. This is after a year of not really even caring about it... suddenly it interests him and he knows it. He's blowing through a kindergarten math program on my work iPad like it's nothing... a few weeks ago he just liked pressing the numbers to count things and had absolutely no interest whatsoever in the actual adding/subtracting game.

It's nice, IMO, that his preschool is fairly play-based. They do some "readiness" stuff, which he kind of blows through, but most of the day is listening to stories, playing on the large-motor equipment (or outdoors, weather permitting), playing with legos/blocks, doing art projects, etc. While his teachers comment at how smart he is, he's still able to participate fully and happily because it's 95% fun. Climbing on a preschooler-sized climbing wall is fun for all.

I can totally relate to this thread.

Something happened a couple of weeks ago with my just turned three-year-old. All of the sudden she is such the critical thinker. I have no idea if it is typical for this age or not. It is hard to tell because she is so advanced verbally, has an incredible memory, and unusual interests.

I can appreciate it, but it is making my life so much harder.

Me: You need to listen to adults.
DD: Well, you need to listen to your child!

or

DD: I am not back-talking. You are just saying what I was going to say!

or

Me: If you keep back-talking me I am going to turn this car around.
DD: If you say one more word I am going to take my shoe off. (She knows this bothers me. then she did the other shoe, then the socks...)

She sounds delightful, doesn't she...

After giving her a brief and a bit biased explanation of political parties, she came immediately to the conclusion that "Richard Nixon must have been a Republican because he was stupid enough to get impeached and resign."

She also came to the realization all on her own that "if you keep going somewhere special a lot, it won't be special anymore." My jaw dropped with that one.

She also makes up these questions for me.

DD: Which sesame street character likes to take a bath?
Me: Umm, elmo?
DD: How 'bout count, Mom? (as in c'mon, think.)

or

DD: "Let's see who can name the most Star Wars characters."

Now this is DH's thing so she is definitely explaining things to me. Once, she said, "Mom. Darth Vader's boss is a human. He is the emperor. Umm, he has a random name. Do you know it?" No, I have no idea what you are talking about.

I somewhat think her increased critical thinking and reasoning skills are a direct result of starting preschool a few weeks ago. It is the first time she has been away from me and had to really think for herself.

We also love our play based preschool.

DS's preschool is also play based. We love it and I think it works/worked so well for our kids because that is all they want to do 95% of the time. The big emphasis is on school readiness... learning to follow routines and listening and being respectful and taking turns, etc. It doesn't matter how smart a child is, they all need to learn these things!

Yes when asked what the best thing about preschool DS always says the sandpit