Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school 3 year old

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Welcome punkiedog Your DS sounds so amazing, reminds me a lot of my little ones at that age. I think your doing what you should be doing by following his lead on what he wants to learn. I was very worried about the same things with mine, just keep in mind when he gets to school age it's one year at a time. My older one was 5 1/2 when she entered K and it was very ovious that it was not a good fit for her. I was hopeful because we had put her into a private school that was advanced. The teacher had come to me and suggested she be tested and look into a grade skip (which we did) this year she's in a combo class and the teacher teaches to the higher grade (3rd) so it sort of working this year, I'm pretty sure we will need to do another grade skip or homeschool, but like I said it's one year at a time. Happy wishes, and have fun

Welcome....goodness he sounds very similar to my dd 2.9. She is doing 48 piece puzzles, sight word readers, and is soundig out words and very into spelling. Doing simple addition and subtraction, etc. She also gets very frusterated with same age peers as they do not talk wel enough or understand her complex and adult like speech and vocabulary. She loves loves to learn and is highly fasinated by space.
DD would be 5 and 1/2 before she could enter K, but has already mastered all K skills, infact I got a 1st grade readiness test my mom school uses on end of K year and she aced it. So as of now she is academically ready for 1st grade! I have no clue what we will do. I think most likely we will have to homeschool. I do no really teach dd, but she does ask and ask and ask questions so even though I don't plan it I guess I do by answering her...she is very pushy when she wants to learn or understand things LOL.
DD LOVES workbooks, I mean will beg and cry for them and choose them over lots of other play so we have ton of those and she loves to do them. Also she is very into mazes, my tip if your child is is to laminate them, you can use a dry erase marker on them and whipe them off....has saved me a ton of money as she can blow through them LOL. Anyway, again welcome!

He sounds like a very awesome little boy! I think that if he's interested in something and wants to go all out with it then by all means do it! Even if you don't do it and he wants to learn it he'll find a way on his own. The bad news is that no matter what you do he sounds like he'll be bored in school.

My DS is 5 and so far is in a normal kindergarten classroom. His reading level is years ahead as is his math. The problem is that if they move him up to 1st grade he'll learn the material the first time that they explain it to him and then he'll be bored. Doesn't matter what I teach or don't teach him at home. He learns extremely quickly and becomes bored with it at the same rate

Keep doing what you're doing!

What a blessing to have a curious eager child. I try to follow my kids leads yet look a keeping a balance. We try to do lots of different activies - learning, social, educational, physical, helping around the house, some silly time, And lots of hugs and kisses for a well balance child.

You may want to start investigating school ahead of time. Talk to other Mom and get opions. It may beneficial to look into gifted services in schools, alternative schools - charter, gifted, Montessori or homeschool. It's great to be familiar with options. There is so much to read on the Davidson Database that can be helpful.

Welcome.

From what I read public schools historically aimed teaching at a little below average so as to give useful education to the maximum number of students. While that's still the case, seems like within the last 15-20 years there has at least in many states been a recognition that not only the bottom of the curve needs accomodation, and there have begun to be more standard sorts of options for kids at the upper end of the curve, still within the public system. It may still be quite difficult at the very high end of the curve, but perhaps less so than 20 years ago. So it's possible that our DSs experiences will be different from our own. I hope so.

My parents gave me no reading instruction, I could not read before school, but in no time at all I was bored by all the reading instruction. I don't think I was ever tested but recall my 6th grade teacher evaluating my reading on the first day of the year at a 12th grade level.

My point with my anecdote is that if your DS is an unusually quick or able learner (as it sounds like you probably were if you were bored) that researching what is taught in the early elementary years and specifically not teaching it to him early might prevent boredom only very temporarily.

Polly

Welcome punkiedog! Your DS sounds lovely and a lot like mine (and many here - I hope you'll feel at home here). I think you should let your DS be interested in whatever he is interested in! It's already clear that he's going to be way ahead when he starts school, so you may want to be thinking about your options there, visiting possible schools etc. Our experience in case it helps: when DS started school at 4y10m he was clearly far ahead in reading (reading chapter books), and his teacher took that in her stride. Since there was absolutely no doubt he needed differentiation there, it was easy for him to get it. In maths he was less obviously ahead when he started, but had an enormous spurt a few months in. It took a bit more work on our part to get the school to differentiate there, I think because his abilities in that area hadn't hit them in the face on Day 1 (even though a year later it's obvious that this is where his strengths lie). So my slogan these days would be: if a child is going to need differentiation, it's easier if they *obviously* need differentiation. Of course that doesn't mean that you sit them down and teach them, but I think doing something to depress their level at academic skills artificially might backfire, and I'd just go with the flow.

Sounds a lot like Mr W.

A couple of relatives have said that he should not be reading at 23 mos, but they have come around. He can certainly shock strangers.

We are taking things one day at a time with him and letting him tell us if he is happy or not. We recently moved him from an in-home daycare to a Montessori program and he is enjoying it. I imagine that by this summer he may get bored. We'll cross that river when we get to it.

I would suggest you look up Dr Ruf's book and read through it. She classifies the children into groups and then offers solutions for them that she has seen.

As far as options go, we have more options than a lot of people do - here in Texas. There is an outstanding gifted program for younger kids in the local schools where they group kids together and move them through the curriculum at an appropriate pace. We also have two excellent private schools that have mostly GT kids in them.

Another option is a tutor and HS, although Mr W is very outgoing and enjoys interacting with all kinds of people.

Welcome! Your boy sounds a lot like mine. My son also had an incredibly long attention span from a very young age, soaked in everything we read to him, and started reading spontaneously at 2 1/2. He discovered Magic School Bus at a science museum when he was 2 1/2 and was immediately obsessed. I felt weird reading the books to him at the time because he seemed way too young, but he LOVED LOVED LOVED them, comprehended them, and constantly applied what he learned from them. For example, when he was 3, while I was planting a tree in our yard, he asked me if I was going to dig down to the mantel!

Since then, thanks in large part to this forum, I have learned to embrace his giftedness and just run with it. I registered him for kindergarten when he was 3 1/2, and he entered kindy this past fall at age 4 1/2. He's at a very small private school where each child receives an individualized curriculum and is doing great. The first week of class, he was reading at somewhere around the 5th grade level, so the teacher just worked from there.

If your son was reading at 2, I don't think 3 is too early to start visiting schools. Just try to imagine him "learning" the letter sounds at age 5 1/2!

Most doctors will never see a toddler that advanced. Its one thing to see a bright kid, its another to be confronted with it.

Our Pediatrician recognized that Mr W was unusual from the very beginning and has been sympathetic to his situation. She spent some extra time with us at his 1 year to talk about how unusual he was.