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DS5y8m just finished ALEKS Level 4.

Shouldn't this thread be called the Ultimate Ulp! Thread?!

I was asking DD6 if she wanted e-g-g-s for breakfast yesterday spelling out the word so that DD18months wouldn't understand and want one too instead of the food she was already eating, and when DD6 said yes, DD18mnths chimed in with "Mommy - e-g-g-s " and shook her head yes with a big grin, telling me she wanted some too! She was so pleased with herself it was funny.

Food is such a funny thing!!

I promised Mr W (18mo) chicken and ice cream yesterday on a road trip. He had two thighs and fell asleep. I forgot about the ice cream.

When we arrived at home, he grabbed my hand, took me into the kitchen, asked to be picked up, pointed at the freezer, which I took him to. He opened the freezer door and reached in for the ice cream package.

The ice cream in this case are the vanilla ice cream cone "drumsticks" but this one has the mini-ones in it it which he had not had.

I picked the peanuts off over the sink and then handed it to him.

He took one look at the mini-cone and his face just looked puzzled then he burst into tears and ran off. I then had to explain to him these are the minis and showed him the package. He gave me a smile and took his cone.

This kid is no one's fool.

How neat to have a "safe place" to be able to celebrate our kid's accomplishments!

My little guy, Nick, is 23 mos and is beginning to sight read several words. We were driving by some shops and he started saying, "EAT" over and over. I asked him if he was hungry, he said "no". Then I realized that he was reading the sign on a billboard that said, "eat" on it...he also was reading 'stop', 'go', 'play' and some other small words...it 's really cool to be able to express this here without anyone IRL thinking I'm nuts, or pushing my kid to read. Amazing how their minds just unfurl puzzles...

Not sure if this is a brag or a lament (which is pretty typical for parents of gifted kids) . . . This was my morning:

My morning began an hour before we normally get up with my DS18mo screaming in his crib. I ran in (assuming something was very wrong). When he saw me, he smiled and said, "Want breakfast please." Still groggy, I stood there for a minute and he looked at me (like I was stupid) and said nicely, "Now, mommy!" Uh, ok.

While still in the chaos of the am getting ready for school time, my DS4 actually finished earlier than the rest of us so he sat on the couch and began looking at some materials that I have purchased to use in his homeschooling this fall. When the rest of us were finally ready to leave (approx. 30 minutes later), I asked him to put down the book on stories with critical thinking activities (1st-3rd grade). I casually asked, "Did you read one of the stories in that book?" "Was it good?" He told me that he "finished the whole book and the authors thought they were being clever but, actually, they weren't."

I think I'll need to start the caffeine much earlier in the morning to keep up.

My twice exceptional 11 year old son with motor dyspraxia, who has a high verbal IQ but lower performance IQ, was able to learn and play a two page piano song written at what his piano teacher estimated to be a late intermediate level. The piano teacher said this song would even be challenging for her high school age student. I think my son's performance IQ would suggest that he might not be capable of this, yet he did it. He did it because he wanted to do it badly enough and was willing to practice as much as it took to do it.

I reminded my son that he somehow learned to read without being taught at 2 1/2 even though he had undiagnosed vision issues that made it difficult for him to read for very long, and he managed to read at a 5th grade level at age five even though he could only read a paragraph before his eyes got tired and he had to rest his eyes. I think he was able to do this because he didn't like books written at the lower levels and he really wanted to read the books he liked.

I think this success gave him the confidence to try other things that were difficult for him in the past. Because he had such difficulty when he was younger in manipulating small puzzle pieces he never wanted to do jigsaw puzzles and I didn't force him to do them. He had Legos when he was younger but he wouldn't work with those either. For the first time he put together a Lego car with small pieces by himself. He had a little trouble with dropping some of the smaller pieces but he didn't give up and now he wants more building sets.

A few weeks ago, I was a little worried when we talked to the neuropsychologist about college plans and she said something like "He has a high verbal IQ, but which IQ score do you use to predict how he will do in school?" I think we found our answer. He is capable of higher performance even with his motor learning disability. He just has to want to do it badly enough and he needs the freedom to learn in the way he learns best.

Kudos to DS Lori, tell him from me that's terrific!! I've listened to many painful renditions on violin and I understand how hard mastery is! Great Job!!

Love this thread! I finally finished reading all the posts and can't believe how amazing these kids are. Here's my little brag:

My DS3.5 is currently obsessed with the solar system and outer space. He knows all the planets by name and order, plus a lot of facts about each one, and about other things as well, such as comets and asteroids. Most of the books out there still list Pluto as a planet, so we've had quite a few discussions about how it's not an official planet any more (he's very sad about this). A couple of weeks ago, he came up to me and said, "Pluto isn't a planet, it's a comet. It's made of ice and rock and it's not a planet so it's a comet."

Just thought it was neat how he took what he knew about Pluto and comets and came to his own conclusion.

(Trillium, great story.

I was kind of sad when they reclassified Pluto too, until I realized that what we call it doesn't actually change anything. Pluto is still Pluto, regardless of what some committee decided. Now I feel better about it. )

-----------> And now for tonight's story...

DD4 just lost a tooth. It had been loose for a while, and her elder brothers have been coaching her on what to expect from a tiny person called the tooth fairy ($2).

We put the tooth into a plastic sandwich bag and told her to put it under her pillow. Her brothers told her that the TF would take the tooth during the night and would leave her some money!

But DD thought about it and she was dubious about this plan. In particular, she couldn't work out how the tooth fairy would know to visit us ("How will she know to come here if the tooth is hiding under my pillow?"). So she thought about it some more and decided to make everything more transparent by taping the plastic sandwich bag to the sliding door that leads to the balcony outside her room. As an extra precaution, she also taped a note to the door (Daddy helped with spelling):

"TOOTH FAIRY

Please come and see my tooth.

Don't forget the 2 dollars.

"

We'll definitely be saving this note for, like, ever.

Val

Ha! Great story, Val!

The last tooth DS lost was quite a bit larger than the others he had lost, so he wrote a note to the TF pointing out its size and saying he thought it was worth $5 instead of the usual $1.



For the record, he got $2 for it. And yes, we'll be saving that note forever too!