A Newbie...hoping for more advice for a possible gifted child entering kindergarten

Evemomma - posted on 04/27/2012 ( 2 moms have responded )

I'm so glad I've found an active community here! I've spent my dd's nap time scouring the internet whilst my 5 year-old is wasting in front of the tv (oh yeah) looking for advice about entering kindergarten this fall. Part of this was prompted by my 5 year-old and my lunch conversation about why we recently switched to skim milk from 2% (because dd just turned 2)...I explained that babies need extra fat for their bodies and also for their brains...which led to a very long and invovled discussion about neural pathways, synapses and electric wires and power lines (the only thing I could compare it to in 5 year old language)...by the way....this was due to my son's constant asking 'why'? and wanting more information about each answer I gave him. Anyway. At the end of the conversation he said, "You know...I love thinking about that stuff...how we have tiny little electric wires running in our brains connecting what we know and telling our bodies what to do." It reminds me that my son is not the 5 year old son I expected.



Sam started learning his letters at 2 (again, because he asked not because we sat and forced him) and was reading before 3. He now reads Level 2 readers, some Level 3 pretty effortlessly and completely reads by sight (I figure we're going to have to go backwards on the phonics thing). And he was always interested in discussing opposites and synonyms and all kinds of words games...even when he was really little. I remember when he was just 3 he was excited because he thought of a homonym (of course that's also what he called it) a 'burger that you eat and burger that you pick from your nose!', lol. We bought Sam superhero costumes and action figures...and he had no interest...none. He was competely interested in logic/math/science toys all the time.



He has always has loved math and really just taught himself to add...I guess that's how I'd explain it. When he just turned 4 he told me, "There's so many ways to get to 4...there's 2+2, 4+0, 3+1, 10-6" one day when I was taking him to preschool - I guess he'd been looking at his fingers because we never talked about adding. He just seemed to get it. He seems to do math problems really easily in his head and once he gets a concept (like odds/evens, infinity, tens), he's got it - though we may have to talk about it A LOT.



I got him a globe last year at a garage sale, which he adores...and he loves to talk about the different countries and (which I usually have to Google, haha). He's also obsessed with recycling and we often discuss our families 'carbon footprint' (good grief) on the environment. Honestly if it's science or math related, he loves it.



He's a pretty active and impulsive kid but does well at school and has good friends. He definitely seems to be a bit more of a follower and tends to cling to one of his friends a lot - but seems pretty run of the mill in that respect. He's a pretty happy kid...just constantly curious.



OK, sorry. I hold it in, you know? I've never told most of my friends this stuff because I think they would think I was bragging or that I was lying or exaggerating. The advice I have been given is to lay low when we enter kindergarten and let his teacher 'discover' Sam's aptitude herself instead of marching in with 'guns blazing'. We live in a very wonderful school district, but there are no gifted resources until 4th grade.



Advice? Should we consider getting him tested? Would it matter? Thanks so much. Eve