Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums new, with a three year old -- experience anyone?

I have a gifted 3.5 year old. I finally admitted to myself that he was most likely gifted when he started reading at the age of 2.

I joined the board because of my older one and I must admit that my younger one is on the back burner. Most of the worries, finding a good school placement, gifted classes and such are about my 5 year old. It's probably not fair but it's exactly what's happening here. On the other hand having older gifted brother sure helps as he gets exposed to much more than his brother at his age.

DS3 is in Montessori too as is my DS5, but it's quite likely that next year DS3 will attend the same play based pre-K my older one did. It just worked better and DS5 was very happy there and that's all that matters at this age. He can get all the academics he desires at home and go there and just have fun.


This is so true. We have been through this many times. The interest changes but if they get their mind set on something they usually become remarkable good at it.

Good luck. I am envious of the options NYC offers for gifted education.

The changes. Like tonight, she has watched the ballet of Peter and the Wolf 3 times. I got the DVD from the library since we are going to the concert in a couple of weeks. Then she played on her Cinderella computer doing all these spelling games, did them all quickly and correctly, except for teepot. But we had done this thing during dinner (magnetic letters on the fridge) about sea and see. She was just really into spelling tonight. She spelled a bunch of words on the fridge.

Then it was the dress up dolls. No more mind stuff. Just dress up and go to a party.

Thank you for all the feedback.

Ren

You Go Girl! ((wild applause!!!)) That takes so much patience on your part - so congratulations! It actually get a little easier with practice - but watching them struggle is so NOT fun!
Grinity

OK, I have to ask, how did she spell 'teapot'?
Just friendly teasing...

Yes, that is why I wrote teepot.

People write that their kids learned to read at 2 by themselves. The first time my daughter read a word, Dollar, at the rent a car, she was 2.5 but it was due to Between the Lions. She looked up, pointed her finger and sounded out Do then la, then rrr, then put it together. It didn't just pop out of her head like some math she did at the time.

Ren

My son liked to spell words at age three--on computer games and with magnetic letters on the fridge. But one of his favorite games was identifying words that people spelled out for him orally. He got a lot of attention at that age from other kids at church because he could do this. We first noticed that he had this ability at 2 1/2 when my husband spelled out the word that he didn't want our son to hear because he was telling me that he was hiding the J-E-E-P in the garage. My son asked "where is the jeep?" So I started spelling out words for him when he was in the tub and he thought this was a lot of fun. Much older kids would spell words for him that he had not been taught and he could identify most of them and he could do it faster than his cousin who was six years older at the time. He has always liked word games.

At nine he is finishing up learning thousands of words for a spelling bee and last night he enjoyed playing the vocabulary game on freerice.com before bed. He also likes to game shows "Chain Reaction."

When I give my son an oral pretest over new words in his spelling bee book, I notice that vowel combinations still give him some trouble, unless he has seen the word a few times. I always pretest him orally and mark off the words on his spelling bee list that he already knows and only work on the ones he missed so there are not so many to work on.

We have had a lot of fun with this.

My son could also do math in his head at preschool age and like your daughter, seemed to have a large capacity for information. He liked a book that I think was called "The Big Book of Tell Me Why" and it had so much interesting information that I didn't even know and it was around that time that I thought he sounded like a "little professor" because he used big words and loved to share his knowledge with other people.

I really enjoyed my son at that age. I wrote a lot of things down that he said at that age and I still like to look at those notes sometimes. It brings back pleasant memories.