F is for Fertilizer

It is amazing! The speed that a child is able to absorb and comprehend new information is even faster then a bullet train.While walking from the car to the shopping mall this evening, Ryan suddenly turned to me and asked,
“Mummy, how do you spell Fertilizer?”
” Fertilizer?” I was puzzled at the sudden request. ” Why do you need Fertilizer for?”

” For the plant to grow well”, replied Ryan” Don’t you know that plants need Fertilizer, soil, water, sunlight and seed to grow?”

I was very impressed by his knowledge of plant life. Normally a child’s first knowledge of Plant life would be during Science Lessons in Primary 3.

” Mummy, I asked you how to spell Fertilizer,” he repeated his question.

“F-E-R-T-I-L-I-Z-E-R, ” I answered him.

“F-E-R-T-I-L…..” Ryan tried to repeat after me but couldn’t remember the whole sequence.

“Mummy spell again, but this time SLOWER okay”, he said.

I spelt the word out letter by letter much slower and he was able to get through the whole sequence. However he couldn’t spell the whole word by himself without any assistance. I didn’t expect him to do so anyway. Being able to spell slightly more then half of the 10 letter word is already excellent for a 4yr old.

“Mummy, next time you write out the word for me ok”, said Ryan ” so I will be able to spell it better.

I am really glad that he shows such a keen interest in learning and spelling. I really hated having to memorize the name of items and spell them out when I was in school.

I should start the lesson on photosynthesis with him soon since he has already grasp the basic concept of plant life.

March 13, 2008

Is My child Gifted/a Genius or both?

Dominique Parenting Views gifted or genius?, Personal views

While surfing the net yesterday I stumbled upon a post talking about Gifted & Genius kids. .The mummy there quoted an article about the Gifted child from Readers Digest.She posted and I quote :

‘It is important to recognize a gifted child in order to help promote his or her intelligence, curiosity and desire to learn. Most of these children are never recognized and so their potential is not developed correctly.

A gifted child is not genius and knows that does not have to know everything or do things out of the ordinary, such as play the piano at the age of two or speak several languages at the age of three. They are children who are basically differentiated from others in their ability to learn much faster and go more deeply into subjects.

Some of the characteristics of a gifted child are :

They generally walk and speak before their first year of age
They tend to use very rich language and adult like vocabulary
They easily understand and remember the information they are given
They generate a great quantity of ideas and solutions to problems
They have a well developed sense of humor
They have a great deal of curiosity, which makes them question everything
They usually worry about the problems in the world
They adore reading

They like complicated board games
They are leaders
They persevere (they concentrate on a task and persist until they finish it)
They have a high level of self-judgement ,demand much of themselves,and tend to be dissatisfied
They prefer to work independent and do not need much help
They are vulnerable to the rejection of their classmates

I am very puzzled by the definition as it puts me in a dilemma on how my elder boy Ryan would be classified under. I am wondering why a gifted child is NOT a genius. There is no clear definition given on being a genius as some relate it to IQ level while others refer to their unique ability to create or be creative in a given situation.

He has all the characteristics listed above PLUS he does know how to play the piano and speak more then two languages which is considered out of the ordinary? So does it make him Gifted & a Genius?