Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion The ultimate brag thread

We took our kids to an astronomy lecture with kids and adults present. When the professor asked questions during the program, ds9 answered all of them correctly. No one else even knew the answers. After the program, a random adult came up and asked if we were astronomers and ds' age. We told the man our ds is self taught. He said our son was just amazing! Definitely a moment where ds was proud of himself, esp. since he is 2e and gets a lot of negativity for his adhd behaviors.

My 11 year old 7th grader got her ACT scores back and qualifies for Duke's Grand recognition ceremony. Really proud of her but not sure how to communicate results to her school...

MorningStar, that's great news!

When DS took the ACT through NUMATS, his school knew he had taken the test but they did not indicate they had received his score. I know that they would not do anything with the score if they had it, so I didn't push it. He and a classmate did receive a certificate at the year-end school awards ceremony for having taken the test. And FWIW, he didn't qualify for the NUMATS ceremony that year, but he did qualify two years later when he took the SAT.

I took my DS12 and DD10 to a plant nursery to pick out something and my DS began talking to the nurseryman about various types of club mosses and plants that existed in the prehistoric era and the nurseryman shared some interesting information with him about lichen (it is actually a symbiotic organism, both a fungus and an algae). When he asked my kids what they wanted to be when they grew up my DS said biologist (a given) and my DD said an oncologist...

He looked at me and said you have your hands full don't you...

Our school district offers a single-subject acceleration option for 5th grade honors math students to skip 6th grade honors and go straight into Intro to Algebra. DD11 wasn't sure if she wanted skip a year in math but decided to take the placement test just to see. Just informed she qualified to be subject accelerated. So proud of her. Plus we think the math challenge will be good for her since she seemed a little bored even with the compacted curriculum of the 5th grade honors math program here.

Then, DD8 was selected by the school district to exhibit a special project she did. All 10,000 kids in the district were to complete a project of their choosing at home in an effort to promote project-based learning. A true animal-lover, DD8 invented an imaginary animal, drew a picture of it on a poster board and listed male versus female characteristics. Then went on to describe its habitat, diet, babies, fun facts, etc in great detail. She was one of only 50 kids selected to show her project so we were super stoked!

My daughter found out today she got a 5 on the AP Human Geography exam

My state isn't released yet

DS got 5s on Music Theory and AP Bio (the course he was failing, but pulled it up at the last minute). And in checking, I noticed that LAST year, after scores were released, he was named an AP Scholar with Distinction (got 3s or higher on all 4 tests he took. He got 3 5s, and a 4 on the Physics 2, a class that isn't offered)

So if your student took 3 or more tests, or you live in the Bahamas, or...there are a few other awards...check their record again in a few weeks. There might be a certificate suitable for framing!

DS6 had his first official foray into real multiplication and division yesterday. He’s played around with the concept on his own, and done some simple single digit by single digit multiplication with me, but nothing much outside his own thought experiments (e.g. mental math time conversions from hours to seconds in the car when he wants to figure out how much longer until X, baking unit conversions or recipe doubling, making loot bags for parties and dividing prizes, etc)

Yesterday, he tried his hand at what he felt was an appropriate novice problem and solved it correctly: 4,232,436 x 23. He also attempted some division: 7,063,248/ 2. It seems Beast Academy has fueled a love of what DS calls “challenges” (often said with a wry smile).

Hilariously, he thought these weren’t real solutions, because he’d used Montessori materials to help him reach his answer. Apparently, to him, he’ll have shown mastery only when he can do these calculations quickly in his head. I expressed that some of the most challenging math problems in existence require brilliant mathematicians to struggle for years—on paper and with algorithmic support on computers—to solve. He seemed to buy that conceptually, but insisted he will do the multiplication and division in his head.

Another little math brag: DS has been having fun issuing me verbal code-breaking equations to give me single-word answers to questions I ask. He’ll give me a little algebraic equation to solve, and the answer is a number-to-letter substitution cipher. But he does this all verbally, without pen or paper, which amazes me, and the spelling is mostly correct. I never thought this was how I’d take pizza orders from him!

Ds12, 6th grade, presented a project to Northwestern University's FUSE program. He designed, set the parameters and built a bridge made from spaghetti and marshmallows that had a span of 15 inches and can hold the weight of several large marshmallows. . It is a level 3 challenge. I'm not sure when a decision will be made whether his project will be added to their middle school curriculum.