Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school Puzzles and a PreK Question

I received an incredible amount of wonderful advice on my first post. One thing I did after that was toss age limits for toys out the window. I pulled down all the puzzles last week that said 2+. I verbally explained to my son (now 17 months old) how they worked and that was that. He was able to do them all with no problem. He really enjoys the puzzles and will spend a lot of time intensely taking the pieces out and putting the pieces back in. What is a good next step puzzle and where can I find it? A four-piece interlocking puzzle perhaps?

He does still struggle sometimes with the physical coordination of getting the puzzle pieces exactly where it goes but he knows the head has to go one way and the tail another (or whatever object it is) the same as the puzzle hole or the piece will not go it. (I hope this makes sense.)

My other question is about when to start PreK. In our state the cut off for preschool is August 1. My son has a mid September birthday so he will be almost 4 before he can start PreK and almost 6 before he can start K. My general belief is to not start formal education too soon but rather let the child play in a literacy rich environment. That said, DS seems to be learning things at a rapid pace. Ex: He brought me a shape book at 16.5 months. It was his first interest in and exposure to shapes. I read the book maybe 3 or 4 times and then he moved on. Two days later he lugs over his shape sorter and starts holding up the pieces and naming the shapes and pointing at the holes and naming the shapes with no additional reinforcement of shapes since I read the book. I gave him the book and he was able to "read" it to himself by flipping the pages and pointing out all the shapes. He mastered circle, square, rectangle, triangle, heart, and star from that one exposure. I'm fairly certain that isn't normal at 16.5 months.

About the same time he started saying his ABC's to me. He can't get all the way through yet but I have no idea where he is picking this up. It's the same with language. His English verbal skills are on par with a 3 year old right now so by the time he is 3 or 4 I cannot imagine what they will be. (I did start French with him after my last thread and he now interchanges French and English words. He really loves language. When I start speaking to him in French he recognizes it's not English and asks to watch the French Little Pim. How does he know it's not all the same language!?! It boggles my mind.)

Logic tells me if this is what he is doing now that by the time he is 4 learning shapes and whatnot in PreK won't really hold his interest. Should I start to look for (and save for) private PreK to begin right before he turns 3 or is this a bad idea? Money will definitely be an issue so I have to get a head start on this if early enrollment in PreK is the way to go.

My son was similar at that age. He started at a part-time, private, play based preschool at age three. In our experience, preschool is tough for a really smart kid. My very verbal kid was fascinated with Rube Goldberg machines at the time and loved reading How Things Work. I remember his preschool teacher telling me that he had tried to explain how the internal combustion engine worked (in great detail) to his classmates. On another occasion he asked a class mate over for a play date and suggested they tune the radio between stations and listen to the radio waves created by the big bang together. These comments were amusing to the teachers but made it very difficult to make friends. When he was four my son's preschool teachers approached us and said he was experiencing difficulty focusing on games the other kids were playing, that he didn't know how play with groups of children and that he talked incessantly about chemistry. We had him assessed to see if he had ASD or something else and that's how we learned that he was gifted. The psychologist told us that his main problem was a lack of peers at school. My son started a social skills playgroup and has met several other gifted kids. With them he doesn't seem to have any social skill issues.

This is a very long winded way of saying that preschool may not be the answer. In fact, it may be a very difficult period for your son. If I were you, I'd look for a program that is a few hours a week so he gets time with other kids and can practice social skills. I'd make an effort to find other gifted kids and spend time with them and their families. You won't believe how your kid will connect with them.

I'd spend most of your time just following your son's interests. My son loves spending time in nature so we spend time outside almost every day. We also read stacks of books on whatever he is interested in at the time. I talk to him like an adult and read things that are probably way over his comprehension level but he never complains or loses interest and I often realize hours later when he makes a comment that he understood more than I would expect.

I should add that we never try to teach my son specific things- we just follow his interests. For example, my husband is a mathematician and people always ask if we teach my son math. We don't. But we talk about it a lot and answer questions he has. He has intuitively grasped/taught himself addition, subtraction and multiplication. He understood fractions after I spent five minutes explaining them during baking. He read something about exponents and just understood it. Your kid will probably just absorb things, too. He'll probably need help with other things like relating to his peers and dealing with his intensities. A good preschool program can help with this but it need not be full time.

I think my son enjoys preschool but he is really happy spending a lot of time at home, too. He just turned five and while his friends at school are into blocks and Star Wars, at home we do science experiments and he can tinker and read stuff that he's interested in and have space to be himself. My son is an introvert so this may be one reason he likes to spend lots of time at home, too.

I guess the big question is - do you really have to send him to pre-K? Also - would the gaps in motor skills be an issue if you try to start pre-k before or when he is 3?

If he is that ahead and if he continues on that path, you may really have to look at non-traditional paths to education.

DS, who has been in daycare since an infant, had slammed into the wall at 3.5 where he suddenly realized he really could not relate to his age peers, and was bored - and starting to act out at home, and he misses the cutoff too (Sept b-day too). We now have him in a private gifted school - this is his first year, at 4 years old and he is loving it - there was no way he could have endured the traditional school/daycare another year (pre-k/early k) for 2 years until he was eligible for public k, which would have bored him to death by then.

One note - what we seen with our son, and your case may be totally different - but his emotional and motor skills are very age-typical while mentally, he is ahead by at least a few years... the good thing is that his school does NOT hold him back from learning due to his motor skills matching his physical age not his mental age. So they have been able to balance the development of motor skills that are age appropriate while covering subject material at a much more rapid pace. The reason I emphasize this is that the way you describe his puzzles sounds like he may have that similar asynchronous development of physical skills being more age typical and yet mentally being way ahead.

Since we have no direct exposure to public school, you may need to look into that too. Our exposure is via the "traditional" pre-k room that DS was in for a little bit before we moved him to private gifted school and what I saw was a heavy, heavy emphasis on writing and repetition of materials (covering a letter for a whole week kinda of deal) and their criteria to move up to their K room had a large emphasis on writing competency.

Whether or not preK turns out to be at all workable (and I'm skeptical, unless you have some option specifically for gifted kids), I'd recommend saving for future school costs... because there will be something (whether it's private school, commute costs to a better public, loss of income for homeschooling, or multiple extra classes and activities).

My DS, at 1 yr., had a 4 & 6 piece cube puzzle and the design was somewhat disjointed, so he seemed mildly frustrated at times. To my surprise, my DH brought home a 48-piece puzzle on DS's 2nd b-day, and DS became obsessed. I laugh now thinking how I seriously underestimated DS's readiness for more. Melissa & Doug have some very large floor puzzle pieces that are easier for small hands to manipulate.

http://www.amazon.com/Melissa-Doug-...1&keywords=melissa+and+doug+space+puzzle

Although not the puzzle you requested, Wedgits seem to hold the interest of children over a wide age range.
http://www.amazon.com/WEDGiTS-Delux...8&qid=1424388005&sr=8-1&keywords=wedgits

At your sons age we had these (from 2-4 interlocking pieces) and my son loved them:

http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B000BTNIC2/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s02?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Around 1.5 we gave him a regular 12 piece puzzle and he loved it. By 2 he was proficient in 24 piece and working on his 48 piece puzzles. We like the wooden ones. Here are some we used:

http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B000REP3E2/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0028K2AX0/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s03?ie=UTF8&psc=1

http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B000E99Y6S/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s04?ie=UTF8&psc=1

http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0018MQGFC/ref=od_aui_detailpages01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B004JIJNFW/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00584SLMC/ref=od_aui_detailpages02?ie=UTF8&psc=1

If you refer to the favourite toddler media thread I linked in your first post, I included some wood puzzles from Beleduc (one a world map, the other a multi-layer anatomy puzzle) in the linked thread with 15-20 pieces that my son loved around your LO's age. They were more manually workable than interlocking puzzles, while being more mentally challenging.

A word to the wise: puzzles have, by and large, been a waste of money in our house. One use and they're done forever. I buy all puzzles used. Generic puzzle games like Katamino and Blokus have had much more mileage, as has a Quadrilla wooden marble run. Wooden train sets, such as Brio, also create a puzzle-like opportunity to reason spatially while arranging track layouts, and I've found they have been longer lived.

One thing I did was to make our own inexpensive puzzles using eye-catching magazine images or pictures I drew pasted onto cardboard. I'd then just cut the pieces in a way that they fit together without interlocking. This way, you can fully customize the image, number of pieces, and degree of difficulty in dexterity at little effort or financial cost.

I am headed to see the in-laws this weekend. They have already dumped off a massive wooden train set and train table. I totally forgot it's in our basement. I know they have a marble run too. I'm a little worried about DS eating a marble but if I'm with him it will be ok. I'll bring it home. I bet he would love that.

Have you tried Legos yet? My younger son started putting together Lego Technics when he was 15 months old. I wouldn't have dreamed of introducing them to my older son at that age but when my younger son saw his big brother playing with them he wouldn't stay away. He developed amazing fine motor skills and spends hours playing with them. He likes the Duplos, too, but both of my kids prefer the Technics because they like all the moving parts.

Like the poster above, I have found that puzzles have not been a good purchase for us. The kids put it together once and then move on. I'd recommend more open ended building toys. Some that got a lot of play at our house at that stage include blocks, magnatiles and, closer to two, marble runs, Quercetti tubation sets(simple pipes that you can build with, one of our best purchases ever), and Jawbones. These building toys have all lasted years and through many stages. When your kid gets sick of a set, put it away and take it out a month later and he will be captivated for several days again. If you have a kid who tends to put things in their mouths, marbles aren't ideal but my kids never did that and after watching them closely for several months I was satisfied that they could play with them safely.

My son loved huge floor puzzles at that age. They ranged from 24-60 pieces and were at least 2' by 3' in size and often in the shape of an item like my example below. We had many I bought many at thrift stores and yard sales. The advantage of these is the large size of their pieces making them easier for a young kid to handle, and much easier not to loose all the pieces.

I have a favorite memory of this puzzle and my son ~2 years old. The day this arrived in the mail, I'd just unwrapped it when the phone rang. By the time I'd finished the the call my son had the entire thing put together.

http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Friend...494&sr=1-1&keywords=floor+puzzles+thomas