Also the way she thinks and can logic....she saw a truck parked not in a parking place but in front of the curb at wal-mart. She asked me why it was parked there and not in a parking spot. I asked her why did she think and she responded "All the parking spots are small, they would fit a car, but not a mac truck, so he had to park there." She uses deductive reasoning on a daily baises, something that develops typically later in development and not something that can really be hothoused.....so I guess I would look at not just knowledge but lots of other indicators in a child that is young. I believe this is where a lot of difference can be seen between gifted children and ND children who have been hothoused.
This is the kind of thinking my kids did on a daily basis that I never thought anything about. At the time, I thought, of course toddlers intuitively know this kind of thing and use logic. They had intensity on certain things and persistence on other things. Lot's of questions and bigger kid anxieties and angst. Neither were particularly interested in words, letters, writing. They had their alphabet sounds somehow. My daughter could write before 3. But really because her brother was in kindergarten and she'd see his homework every night. My daughter was interested in reading briefly at 4 and stopped. They had non-academic preschools experience. And here we are anyway.
This is a really interesting topic. We have SO many early readers in our area that I have to wonder what is going on. Truly, at the beginning of K, I thought my kid would be a remedial student. Sure, he can describe heating duct and plumbing systems in great detail, do lego sets marked for 12+, multiply and divide, but he can't read "Go Dog Go". Turns out he learned to read at that level in a few weeks time after we thought to bring home a few early readers. I think it's great to encourage learning, play games, bring out the early readers, etc. But our kids seemed not to have suffered at all by not having an academic pre-K experience. I kind of wonder if they would have been early readers if I would have let them watch Sesame street, play starfall, introduce phonics, read early readers while they followed along? Who knows. I guess my point is, I don't think it really mattered for my kids. They are who they are.