Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion The ultimate brag thread

Ooh! Ooh! I've got two!!

First, DS(9) was accepted into a wind ensemble... he plays flute, and while generally the group is teenaged, he's keeping up pretty darn well! But the braggy part is that since he was basically thrown in the proverbial deep end in joining this group, he has drastically improved his playing in general. It's only been two weeks, but he's suddenly remarkably good at sight reading, and the music he's playing for his regular lessons is suddenly easy. Now on the other hand, there are a few pieces in the wind ensemble repertoire that are giving him grief, but they're SO much harder than what he's been playing (I mean, like Flight of the Bumblebee for Pete's sake!), it's like his whole range just shot up. He's also gotten much more diligent about practicing. Either the peer pressure or the jump in difficulty.. but whatever it is, he's rising to the challenge! Yay!

And my second brag... He just wrote his first completely independent program! I game him the assignment of writing a program on the TI-84 to simulate random dice-rolling. He had to ask what number of rolls you want, hold the answer in a variable and then use that variable in two functions that output that many random numbers between 1 and 6 into two lists (like two dice rolled over and over, together), and then use a third list to hold their sum. And he did it! Woohoo!! Tomorrow we're going to see if there's any way to get it to report the number of sevens in the whole set of sums... but I need to figure out how to do that myself first...

I have a quick brag from last weekend. DS5 wrote 3 short Halloween stories over the weekend because he was bored. The stories were cute and the writing was very good. I helped him mount them on construction paper and he illustrated each one. We put on a cover page and then bound the pages together. On the back covers DS5 had me write: "Other Books By DS5" and then list each title. He plan to make a whole series for each season. I love his motivation.

My ds5 seems to be working out square roots for himself.

Yesterday morning he woke me up by telling me two not friends(uneven numbers) can become friends (even numbers) if you add them together. Then he went from that to working out multiplying two same numbers together(eg) two by two is four. Then straight away he wondered aloud what would happen if you did it "upside down" and worked out square roots. All in the sspace of about five or ten minutes.

This seems to me to be a bit further on from counting reliably to ten? I plan to approach the teacher with this, but ds is not co operative in testing situations. All this is coming from him independently on his terms. Any ideas what age he might be operating at?

Dunno, but let us know if you find out, because this is all awfully familiar. DS4 (will be 5 very soon) was playing with his calculator on a 40 minute bus journey the other day. On that one journey he seemed to be having insights into place value (arbitarily far: he had understood tens and units before, but he suddenly got the general case), multiplication (again, beyond the very small numbers), division, fractions, and decimals including recurring decimals, all for positive and negative numbers. It's scary, isn't it? One expects one insight to be enough to last them at least half an hour, but it isn't... And at school they seem to be on the level of recognising digits and putting them in order on a number line...

I know.

ds wants a new calculator for christmas and a telescope! I think that this was brought on by the fact that his teacher sent a number chart home and he cried. He said he felt insulted because she obviously thought he was stupid.

He just loves numbers and maths and the ideas just pop in his head as he is building lego. We did place values a few months ago. The problem is I am not really maths minded.

anyway at least a calculator is a cheap gift!

What a great thread! I love reading these stories. Amazing kiddos!

I can't think of any "big" brags lately, except yesterday DS4 surprised me by using the word "affect" in the correct way, as in "oh, i see, so this isn't affected by that." And lately he's been telling us many new stories about the adventures on his made up planets, Guffland, Witchland, Everythingland, Towerland, Lavaland, and Creepland. (All carefully pronounced "lind" instead of "land" for some reason!) (The adventures usually involve sending the evil witches back to their own world.) Did you know each world has its own color of butterflies, including red butterflies on lavaland "red like magma and lava"? Oh, except Everythingland, which has every color...

And hours (well...) of endless fun (What happens if I do THIS to the number 100?" Error?? What??)!

Can I indulge in a brag that happened almost 3 years ago? It's a story I'd love to tell more often but usually don't.

Once upon a time when DD was 18 months old, she woke up in the middle of the night in a very good mood. It was around 4 or 5 am. I lifted her out of her crib sat her in the middle of the bed, and she started singing. She had a small repetoire of songs by then, and she could hit the notes.

She has this "second voice" that she uses when she sings or talks to her stuffed animals. The pitch is higher than her normal deep voice. It can be very endearing.

Anyway, there she was, singing "Twinka, twinka, litta STAH..." to no one in particular and showing no signs of going back to sleep anytime soon.

DH and I formed a circle around her so she couldn't tumble off the bed, and we just lay there listening to her as she went through her songs. When she finished, she smiled and said "Nigh nigh, Mommy" or something like that and I put her back to bed and everyone went back to sleep.

It was the middle of the night. It was so wonderful. She was just so darling.

Val

That is a really wonderful story, Val! And I say that with all sincerity. My DS did not sleep through the night until he was 4 years old, and I don't think he ever did anything that endearing in the middle of the night!!

Thank you. I always smile when I think about it.

Val

oh gosh... I think I *just* realized that maybe not all parents carry two solar powered calculators in their purse at all times for car rides and restaurants and other lengthy waits ....

and there's the "mom, it only has an 8 digit screen!"

time for an upgrade