Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums GT Research infatuated with any and all charts

just was curious if anyone else has a child who is in love with all things charts/graphs/diagrams/maps? my 5 year old seems totally infatuated with them and I was just wondering if this is unusual?! He has a huge collection on his playroom wall - just to name a few: the fujita scale for tornados, the richter scale for earthquakes, every map under the sun including a railroad map that shows all the railway systems in the US and their paths (his one bedroom wall is covered in an entire floor to ceiling wall map mural that he fell in love with online) , NOAA posters showing cloud diagrams, a weather graph in which he writes the daily weather info....He gets completely excited when we find a new one about something he is interested in...his newest thing is his interest in the Titanic history...he had to find the exact coodinates on a map of where it hit the iceburg and then in a Titanic book he learned about the SOS message being sent out by Morse code so this past week he had me help him go online and find a chart of Morse code which we had to print out and then he spent the afternoon with me "writing" (dots/dashes) messages in Morse code while he deciphered them. Everyone thinks I am nuts allowing him to put all of these advanced items up in his room but he finds them and begs to put them up. Anyone else out there with a child in love with these items and if so, any ideas on other cool sites/spots with fun charts/diagrams??

My DS5 likes to write messages in heiroglyphics and has a periodic table and a chart of the solar system in his room. He often asks to look at the globe. His interest doesn't seem to be as strong as your son's, though!

ETA, when I read the topic of this post I thought, "Ooooo! Test data charts!" I think I'm the one infatuated with charts...

I thought the same thing Cathy!

I say let him pursue his interests. My son was into advanced things at that age, and i wondered about getting him into more typical 5yr old interests so he'd fit in at school. Be careful what you wish for. I see that inquisitiveness slowly being extinguished the longer he is in school.

Yes Belle,
My son loves that sort of thing, especially flags and symbols. Google "Information Visualization"

Smiles,
grinity

DD3 loves her maps. I got the Children's map of the US and the World. But mostly she likes to know where Virginia is (where Pocohantas is from) Florida for Disney, etc. Just joking but she has headed for the globe in the library since she was very young, where is Italy: that is where Camelia was born, where is Japan: that is where Chisato and Fumiko were born. Canada where mommy was born. And now it gets more trying to figure how it all fits together and how places are separate.

We did the Land/Sea Disney thing last week and talked about Bahamas was a another country, Fl was part of the USA. For DD is understanding components of the map. But every night, she stands and looks at it before bedtime asking about a region.

Ren

All kids are different. Mine didn't have this particular obsession, but he had plenty of others that were equally...unique. LOL! His punctuation phase when he was not-quite 2 (I think?) was especially amusing. He even knew things like semicolons and ampersands by name. I know adults who don't know what an ampersand is called, but he'd proudly announce whenever he spotted one!

<shrug> They're all their own little people!

Going with it the way you are is definitely the thing to do. You're not nuts! I love that you have all those things up in his room and that you follow his lead.

I don't have any specific sources for you for more charts--maybe check a school supply store?--but I think keeping your eyes peeled and following your child's lead is the right thing to do.

Keep up the good mom-ing!

What a great passion, Belle. It crosses so many genres that it would be fun to nurture that one. I have trouble with my DS11's obsession with armaments/weapons or the long-ago one with fighter jets. Even my oldest DS's interest in economics is not up my alley (lots of charts and tables though!). You're lucky.

Big infatuation with anything that has to do with planes here. Tons of aerial maps, but thankfully not on the walls(tragically, they are everywhere else though). Walls are covered with pictures of planes and self made maps - but I have given up on his room a long time ago. In the summer I do let him use the hallway wall outside his room, but only for the summer!!!

Thanks so much for the comments, sometimes I feel a bit alone because we don't know anyone else that has a child anything like our DS so I am always wondering am I doing the right thing??? - love the punctuation story!! His newest giggles - he has figured out that there are words that sound the same but are spelled differently (homophones)and he giggles everytime he figures out a new one and he's fascinated with palindromes for some reason...we were driving through the neighborhood the other day and he yelled out, "Mommy look, a palindrome - and he pointed to the house number 4114.
New friends that don't know us or my son very well just kind of look at us like we are really strange when they come to visit and see his room/play room/hallway between the 2...and I was worried that maybe I shouldn't be letting him have free reign with his "obsession". He is very visual and has a severe comfort level with chart systems (really helps his sensory disorder as well) - at one point, at his request, we had chart/graphs everywhere... for how many chores he has done in the week (his newest chart), how many books he read on his own, how many times he went potty by himself with no help (when he was 3-4), the levels of rain in his rain gauge...and he loves seeing the patterns on the charts as they change - which has more, less... I introduced him to the local teacher's store a few weeks ago and you would have thought he was in a toy shop - he had to have every thing he saw...I allowed him to get a multiplication chart and yet another solar system chart (he was excited to find one that had Ceres and Eris on it)...the two weird ones that he wanted to make in the last few weeks just baffled me but I just went along with it..one of his chores he can do is help me load the washing machine and start it...he has been fascinated with learning about the cycles on the machine and how to work the controls to choose the cycles...so he had me help him make a duplicate drawing of the knob controls on the machine and attach an arrow with a metal brad so he could turn the arrow to the right setting he wanted, he then taped this up near his play kitchen area and proceded to play his own devised game using the control panel he made....he did the same thing when we went to the local car wash and he helped with the dial pad system on the wall that allows you to change between washing cycles as you're cleaning the car...he made a duplicate and taped it up in the garage and proceeded to set up his own car wash scenario.
His collections are also starting to take over (glad that he has his own room and he has a play room)...he fell in love with coin collecting when he found out that there were quarters out from each state and we found a huge chidren's coin collecting book at the store so for over a year now it has been a love of his and we have now moved onto coin books for all the coins and he looks forward to going to the monthly coin show we have in town to add to his collection (again, the looks of bewilderment from people as this little 5 year old walks in with his lists of specific years he is looking for)...and now we are onto collections of maps, rocks, and for some strange reason...buttons???!!! I guess I just along for the ride and need to get over my worries about what others will think!!!

OMG! We should get our boys together! The palindromes, the visuals, the collections (we currently have a rock collection, bottlecaps, beads, plastic pellets from pellet rifles...)...

You may not have friends with kids like your IRL, but I swear, our kids would get along fantastically. Your son sounds pretty normal for the kids around here!