Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Puzzles and DYS portfolio?

I have been considering applying to DYS for DD6. She has qualifying WISC IV scores, but no achievement scores yet and I am really stumped as to what to include in the portfolio. Her most noticeable talent is with jigsaw puzzles. Since she was very young she has amazed us with her ability to do them. By the time she turned 3 she had started doing 200 piece puzzles and by the time she was 5 she had started doing 500 pieces. Now at 6.5 she does 1000 piece puzzles easily. In fact she recently requested her first 1500 piece puzzle. Are jigsaw puzzles worthy of the portfolio? If so, how would I document it? Has anyone else ever used them in their DC portfolio? Thank you for your help!

You could include that with a video or just a discription like above.

I think they are looking for more academic examples like Math doodles, above grade math worksheets, writing, ect. Chess is also something they are interested in.

Good Luck with the application.

Yes, I was thinking puzzles aren't very academic. I did try to video once and she stopped working. Puzzles are a huge part of her life, so I thought I'd ask. Thank you!

I am a puzzle person, and I think there is a strong case to be made for puzzles at a young age matching really good pattern-solving abilities. Those abilities have served me well my entire life, and if you can tie the puzzle-solving to other pattern-matching would make a good story. When I say pattern-matching, I don't mean visual puzzles necessarily. For instance, finding the pattern in the daily classroom work, to the point where you can predict what comes next with good accuracy. Finding the pattern in the way you solve math problems, or doing art.

Artana, I think what you said is very interesting. DD is constantly making connections and discovering patterns. Thankfully, her teacher this year realized this about DD and created a way for her to appropriately share her "connections". Hmm...maybe I should start writing them down.

limonata - Those connection sound worth including in your application.

The DYS application used to have a question about at what age the child mastered puzzles of a certain size. I think your child's accomplishments here are quite noteworthy, as few young children will have the ability to maintain interest long enough to complete the larger jigsaws that you mention. DYS is all about passion- show off whatever passion your child exhibits!

Is she also very good at Sudoku, MindBenders, etc, or Legos/other engineering applications? We turned in some Sudoku pages and a picture of a Lego project as part of my DYS5's application (along with video of his mental math and lots of creative writing projects.)

I am glad you posted this- I am trying to figure out what to put in a package for DS (different state) We just moved and I did not save any school work or such and never really thought about needing to put together a package :-/!!! Last place his scores were good enough and nothing else was needed.

He is great at sudoku, puzzles, mazes, legos and those kind of things. Desperately trying to figure out how to incorporate that kind of thing into his package since that is all we have to work with right now!

Thanks for the ideas! I don't think there is anything she commits too and excels at the way she does with puzzles but you have me thinking...she is pretty good at logic puzzles and such when she is confident. Sometimes she stops or gives up when she "thinks" it's hard, or she doesn't know it right away.