Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion The ultimate brag thread

Oh I just had to read this out to DH and we giggled like crazy, it's so the sort of thing my DS would write too! And then I giggled at the thought of how many of my friends would just stare blank-faced and confused ...

My brag is just a cute story about DD6. She was on school holiday recently and we were hanging around the house one day while she was on a bit of a space kick. We watched a Nat Geo documentary about collisions and impacts in space, wrapped one of her old teddies in tinfoil and stuck a jar on his head to make him into an astronaut, played with her rocket set and toy astronauts, using the pages of a solar system book we'd got from the library as planets for them to land on and collect samples ...
Then we did some tinfoil modeling, and although I was exhaustedly trying to get her to make something easy like bracelets, she made a comprehensive model of the solar system, including all major moons (there are a LOT!), Uranus's sideways rings, the asteroid belt, even a comet to demonstrate the way the solar wind affects the comet's tail. She turned my lame tinfoil bracelets into distant spiral galaxies!
Anyway, I was worn out and went to hide/take a bathroom break, when after 30 seconds a little note was slipped under the door: "There are no toilets in space"
It totally made me laugh I've stuck the note up on the back of the bathroom door to always make us smile. I'm sure any guests must think it's weird but never mind!

(In comparison, btw, this week for Poetry class at school she had to colour in a cartoon picture of a banana. Sigh)

sweet mother of cheese, that is awesome.

funny brags
I painted a funky lighthouse watercolor print, two different people thought my five year old painted it. I guess that's a compliment that they think a decent adult level painting is reasonably within his grasp. But, no, I did it.

I think my 2.5 yr. wrote the first letter of her name on her bedroom wall, but she says he did it and her brother says she did it. She does trace letters, so it's very possible.

Another "little big" milestone for DS3.2 today! I've mentioned before he has a big speech delay and aside from when he's reading he doesn't speak much. We know he can, he has the words and even sentences in him, just chooses not to use them very often. And to top it off, we speak two languages in our house though we have defaulted to English being the boys' primary language since they are growing up in the States. We are raising them to at least fully understand the second language and they'll get plenty of opportunity to speak it when we go overseas once they get older. DS4.9 flat out refuses to speak the second language (other than a few words he likes). With DS3.2 I use English probably 90% of the time because I want to keep things SIMPLE for him to motivate him to finally start speaking more. And today, he came to me and in a whiny voice said in very nice clean Czech what in English would be something along the lines of "Get it out! Get it out!" ... pointing to his diaper! lol He had the PERFECT grammar and pronunciation (and trust me, it's a very hard language!). I have absolutely no idea where it came from but it just shows how much he's really absorbing. I've heard him repeat about 3 words in Czech over the last couple of weeks but never any attempts to speak the language until today! Maybe if I teach the younger one speak the language, the older one will stop refusing it? Either way, this was HUGE coming from our non-talker!

DD9 has been doing area in school, but just asked me..."Wait, but how would you find the area of a CIRCLE?" I told her and now she's going around the house finding circles and calculating their area.

My son has been getting into pi and measuring the area of circles, too. But he's still using a calculator to help him. At least he's getting into it, though!

On a non-academic note, DS6 has been learning to playing basketball for over year, but hasn't felt ready to play on a team. I have to admit, he wasn't exactly great when he started. I was worried about how his playing would agect his self esteem, and I tried to steer him towards a sport that he played well. But, no. He wanted to stick it out, and he has been practising for sooooo long- now he's ready to join a team! I am so proud of him; he never has to practise anything, and I worried that he would take that for granted. He has proven me wrong!

Frustrated by our DD-then7's school's failure to take our request to skip her a grade seriously, we yanked her out this year (again) and homeschooled her, where we found that not only was she not working a year ahead in the GT pull-out in LA and math like we were told, but she'd even missed a few things in 1st because of this haphazard GT/grade-level arrangement. DW immediately set about patching the holes, then taught her a full third grade curriculum.

We had DD-now8 take the state assessment test given to all 3rd graders. This would give us incontrovertible evidence for putting her back in school at 4th grade next year. DD is an extrovert who strongly desires to be in school to make lots of friends.

We got the test scores back today... "Mastery" in all subject areas.

That's awesome! Congrats!

I SO WISH DS4.9 would just want to stay home. It would make schooling and managing his allergies so much easier (just added allergy and exercise induced asthma yesterday to the pile of issues he already had!) But he really REALLY wants to go to school and have friends there as he says so we are trying to make it happen. All he's talking about these days is how he's going to go to Kindergarten

Fabulous, Dude! A big kudos to your DW and DD for their successful homeschooling partnership!

Dad: What is 16x4?
DS6: Um....(smile)
Mom: What is 15x4?
DS: Wait! Wait! (covers ears)

....10 seconds go by....

DS: 64!

Mom: Yes! How did you get that?
Dad: I know how he got it.
DS: (smiles)
Dad: He multiplied 6x4 and added the 24 to his 4x10.
DS: (grinning)

Mom: On the floor. (never would have thought of that).