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dakotamidnight
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| Posted: Aug 20 2009 at 6:43am | IP Logged
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DD will be turning 3 in Mid-September. She is gifted and on a kindergarten level currently with verbal reaching into 1st grade, per the local public school district who evaluated her recently for another issue.
Any ideas for her? When she doesn't get mental stimulation she begins to act out from boredom, so I need something that will keep her interest and make her think. We're running out of places to go locally that intrigue her - we've covered the zoo, libraries, children's museums, etc everything we can find in our town {San Antonio}.
We have all the CHC kindergarten materials and I was thinking of just starting her in kindergarten but maybe stretching it over 2 years, but I'm not sure she's ready for the handwriting. She has always lagged a bit in dexterity, and is still at the scribble stage. She does already know her alphabet though & we're working on the letter sounds.
Any ideas? She's such a sweetheart when she's not bored but it takes a lot to not have her bored.
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amyable
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| Posted: Aug 20 2009 at 7:13am | IP Logged
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She sounds like the perfect candidate for Montessori-type manipulatives! I've had a few "advanced in academics, slow in dexterity" kids and having letter and number tiles, and math manipulatives really helped when they wanted to "do school". That being said, I am *not* the person to actually explain appropriate Montessori works or even link you anywhere regarding that, so hopefully someone else will step in! 
ETA: I agree that CHC might not be appropriate, my kids found it too much writing, even at the right age.
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mom of 5, ages 6-16, and happy wife of 
The Highly Sensitive Homeschooler
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Angel
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Ditto what Amy said about Montessori. There are lots of great threads here if you dig around in the archives a bit. Sandpaper letters and a movable alphabet of some sort (magnet tiles or a more traditional wooden one) would be excellent, as well as alphabet stamps, sound sorting activities... One of the things my kids like is to go on sound scavenger hunts. They take a wooden letter from the movable alphabet and go around the house looking for things that start with that letter. When they find one, they put the letter on the object. My kids have all been the kind who act out when they're bored, too, and they need a lot of mental stimulation to keep them from being bored. So activities where we can engage their mind *and* their muscles are excellent.
Also, I would recommend reading to her as much as is humanly possible, and doing a lot of art. If you can follow her interests with some project work, I find that helps my kids settle down and engage. Some of them have started demanding skill work early, but you can only do so much of that in a day. Projects and art give young children content material for their minds to work on, and a way to express themselves that doesn't involve writing. I'm not just talking about drawing or maybe a bit of watercolor painting, but clay and collage and glitter glue (oh, how my kids have loved glitter glue) and sculptures with recycled stuff and painting with lots of different kinds of paint... and every day. The bonus is that all that art not only gives kids a way of expressing what they're learning and thinking about, it also helps kids learn to concentrate and improves the fine motor skills they'll need for writing. And if your dd is really interested in letters, for instance, you can spend a really satisfying time making them out of clay and talking about their sounds. That gets around the problem of 3 yo hands and a brain in hyper drive  .
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Angela
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dakotamidnight
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| Posted: Aug 20 2009 at 11:46am | IP Logged
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Reading we're already doing - she reads to herself a good 2 hours a day. We read to her another 2 to 3 hours on top of that.
The letters - we have the fridge phonics wordwhammer from leapfrog {Very good IMO} and she uses that plus the letters to spell out words on the fridge. She hasn't made the connection to A starts apple yet or at least hasn't admitted it yet {she tends to hide what she can do until she has it perfect}. She reads letters from things constantly though.
As for art - any ideas in getting her interested in it? She really hasn't much cared for it the times we've presented it. We've tried paints, sidewalk chalk, and crayons. The only thing she finally kinda got into was crayons thanks to her cousin who is 5 visiting and watching her color. DD is a kid who learns by example a lot and from watching other kids.
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SuzanneG
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| Posted: Aug 20 2009 at 12:54pm | IP Logged
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dakotamidnight wrote:
| Reading we're already doing - she reads to herself a good 2 hours a day. We read to her another 2 to 3 hours on top of that. |
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4-5 hours a day of sitting and reading seems like A LOT of sitting and reading for a 3 yo. A LOT!
Does she get out and play a ton??...running around, exploring, chasing, digging in the dirt, etc? I would tend to want 4-5 hours a day of those activities rather than reading....not that being read to and looking at books isn't important, but it's only a small part of a 3 yo's life.
Even if she's "testing" at a K-1 grade level....that doesn't mean she should be "booking-it" all the time...even K and 1st graders are only doing an hour or so of "seat work" .... and she's only 3, so I'd hesitate to do anything formal unless she's begging for it.
**Increase physical activity and exploring
**Practical everyday things like the others suggested above
**Involve her in absolutely everything you do....talking to her as you do it. Laundry, cooking, errands, etc.....everything. This should be the bulk of her existence.
**Mary Ann Kohl's art books....lots of great ideas in those for active little ones.
Also, peruse the archived threads compiled here: EARLY CHILDHOOD RESOURCES. There are some great ideas and food for thought in those.
HTH,
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Suzanne in ID
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Mom of 7 (Girls - 14, 12, 11, 9, 7 and Boys - 4, 1)
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violingirl
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I'd like to echo previous posts- Montessori activities, side-by-side work with you cooking cleaning and doing laundry, Mary Ann Kohl's art books, getting outside- I think they may all be good options for your daughter. I do think that the reading times you listed are a lot for a not-quite-3 year old- my son really loves to read, and we read several different times in our day, but I think if I put a timer to it we'd top out at an hour on the book-heavy days.
DS1 will be 4 in a few weeks and I've been hanging around these boards for about a year reading and soaking up the great advice. There is this feeling of pressure as a mother that if you don't get going with an early learner that they're somehow missing out and you're getting "behind". I've *finally* figured out (even though everyone here told me this,  ) that he's not behind if he does kindergarten work actually in Kindergarten, even though I know he's capable of the academic portion of the work (not the handwriting) right now.
For art stuff, DS1 has always been reluctant to try new things (he doesn't like messes- totally gets that from his dad. My 2 year old loves a good mess!) and it makes a big difference if I sit next to him and make my own creation with whatever medium we're working with. I don't help him make his own creation- if he's working with clay and asks me to make him an elephant I'll ask him about the parts on an elephant and encourage him to make the head and the trunk on his own. I might suggest some ways to make things (like rolling the clay to make a round trunk) but I don't do it for him.
Over the summer I've made a big deal with my boys about being outside as much as possible and learning to observe- how many petals does the flower have? Notice the color? etc. Along with this you can encourage more descriptive language- "that flower" can become "that small, beautiful pink and white flower" after you've put it into practice.
I think it's more important at this age to build a few skills that will serve them well in their future studies(like observance and practical life stuff like cleaning up spills and pouring their own drinks) than to focus so much on academic things.
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Erin
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ekbell
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| Posted: Aug 21 2009 at 12:51pm | IP Logged
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Your is almost three? Scribbling sounds about right for fine motor control.
Re:art
Something that I did with my oldest who was advanced in her reading but slightly fine motor delayed by kindergarten readines standards was use Ed Emerley's Picture Pie books.
They show how to make pictures out of shapes. I cut out the shapes and then my dd could make pictures that looked the way she thought they should instead of being frustrated because she couldn't draw a line the way she wanted. We did a lot of such collages for a year or two. She enjoyed drawing later when she had better fine motor control. Another source of easy to do arts and crafts is DLTK Crafts for Kids.
Another suggestion if you have the money would be an early music program. There is value in such a program even if she starts off just watching you singing, playing and moving to music.
I've invested in the homeschool edition of Making Music, Praying Twice as the cheapest and most flexible complete early music program (it's also Catholic). It gives me the option of having sessions every day. My children (ages 1-11) enjoy the music,plus playing around with the musical instruments and dancing scarves I bought to go along with the program. At the very least it's a good way to get the wiggles out in an acceptable fashion.
[my three year old loves the boomwhackers I bought as a bell substitute because he is allowed to 'sword-fight' with them and whack the floor and furniture- large durable plastic tuned tubes = fun]
Other things that my busy three year old loves
- lego (I invested in one of these sets
Shape and Space, Lego Explore set )
-sand and water play
-helping me and his dad cook (I normally start with stirring and pouring out pre-measured ingredients)
-bugs, catching them, looking at them, watching them fly off, books and dvd's about them (there is a marvelous dvd series called Insectia). One of the best investments I made for the summer was a bug net and various bug holders.
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ekbell
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I forgot to note various fun things to do with words. I'm sure that you already do much of this but here are things we do with words.
Making books out of cut-out pictures and dictation. Sometimes the story comes first, sometimes the pictures come first. I've occasionally printed out a number of free clip art pictures for this use.
Telling/dramatizing stories either heard or made-up with stuffed animals, finger puppets or masks as props.
A great encouragement towards discussion and story telling is to read a number of variations on the same story. Then you can talk about which ones you liked best and why and how you'd tell the story.
Music and art apprecation books for very young children also tend to be very good for discussion and story telling. I'm fond of Gladys Blizzard's art books and musical works such as Carnival of the Animals or Peter and the Wolf. A book which effectly combines art and music is Can You Hear It? from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Reciting poetry can be fun for a child who loves words, and how they can be put together.
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hylabrook1
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One thing that is really hard for anyone who knows or works with gifted young ones is to remember that their intellectual or academic age is advanced, but at the same time their emotional and motor/coordination is more in line with their chronological age. One of the reasons we started homeschooling was that the school/teachers couldn't keep this straight in their minds; they told me that anyone with my dd's insights, vocabulary, etc. was certainly able to sit still, be quiet, etc., even though she was the youngest child in her class. Maybe you're already onto that, but I know I had to keep reminding myself of the appropriate expectations. That said, as to motor skills, you can buy books where you trace lines and also ones where you cut along printed lines. Doing manipulative work where you are working from left to right is great for reading readiness. Even a child who reads at a very young age needs practice/training in the motor skill of tracking the words in the right direction. Okay, my final comment  -- a really bright/gifted child undoubtedly has a great imagination and would thoroughly enjoy and benefit from toys and materials that lend themselves to that kind of play (things like colored silks, playmobile people, and I'm sure you can think of a ton of others). Okay, sorry, one more comment. Tangrams are real puzzlers and might be wonderful reasoning tools for your daughter; and, as far as art activities, if she doesn't like getting her hands into fingerpaints, you can put a bit of fingerpaint or pudding into a large zip-loc bag, lay the bag flat on the table, and let her use her hands/fingers to make designs, which she can then wipe out and start again. Have fun with your daughter's explorations!
Peace,
Nancy
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4Real Forums : Nurturing the Years of Wonder
Topic: What to do with a gifted 3yo?
