Thank you so much for all of these responses. I'm sorry it's taken me so long - I expected notifications to responses & never got them -- so I forgot! As it is, I do pretty much all of these things with her - she plays pretty open ended at school (they have "centers" where they rotate through different play areas that they can do whatever they want in, but allows for everyone to have their chance at something).
She LOVES rainbow ordering, it's become an obsession since she learned the colors, we have to paint her nails rainbow in order
We spell together, we even do basic addition and subtraction together (up to 10) and all sorts of fun things. I'm a big fan of taking learning opportunities.
Lately, though, I'm getting worried about her holding back - she's been perfectly writing her name since April and then started to refuse to do it completely. Deliberately writing it out of order and saying she doesn't know how to make the letters. At home, I can encourage her into it, but at school she won't do it. When I asked her why, she finally told me (after a month or so), that she didn't want to leave her friends and go to the next classroom.
Luckily, she's very social and incredibly friendly so we've lucked out there, at least in the pre-school realm!
She has also started to get REALLY hard on herself, if she has an accident she gets upset because she didn't do good enough. Yesterday, we went to a faire and shot bows, she hit the target (meant for kids over 7) 4 times, by herself, and she said she didn't do good enough no matter how many times we told her it was great.
I started reading "The Everything Parent's Guide to Raising a Gifted Child" and noticed a lot of parallels to her behavior and I'm worried that her pre-school may not be challenging her or giving her enough focus. There is one other girl in the school who is older and far ahead of her peers, as well, and when they play my daughter's papers and drawings are more than scribbles and zig zags! But, she doesn't like to go to that classroom because she says that the kids there don't like her.
I'm just starting to feel lost on what my options are. I feel like "that mom" always advocating for a kid that I don't know FOR SURE is in need of special help, but I know what I see. She does 1st grade math workbooks, she sight reads words (then pretends she doesn't know what she just said) and we think that she is actually reading more than she lets on, but we can't tell her school that because she isn't acting like that advanced kid there anymore!
Wow, this has become a ramble! Sorry about that! It's just been that kind of week!
