Ahh, thanks for the list of books. My 4 year old DD has her own Kindle, as do I (I have a very generous mother in law) and I've been struggling to find something quality for her to read.

Okay, need help, what is BFSU and what is a history pocket? Thanks for the suggestions :-)

My DD is 4, turning 5 in June and starting kindergarten in the fall. She goes to a private school for now, and I have hopes of homeschooling in the future but right now I need to work. I'm a speech path in a public school, so I will have this summer off with her. Right now she's reading on about a late 2nd to early 3rd grade level. I have no idea where she is in math, but in our free time at home when she wants to do "Molly school" we've been working on place value with tens and ones, counting by 2's and 5's etc. She is advanced, maybe gifted, I don't know really. What would you suggest for summer enrichment? We'll do a lot of reading of course, lots of trips to the library. I know I've heard that with gifted kids you can broad rather than deep. What are some fun things to study and do you have any resource suggestions. In her interests she is a pretty typical 4 year old girl though she's had a few obsessions. A year or so ago it was all about the human body and she would explain how the digestive system worked to anyone who would listen :-P She was also into weather for a short time, mostly tornadoes and the like. So, what would be fun and high interest for a newly five year old girl?

Netter's Human Atlas is a great human body book. It's the one I used in grad school for anatomy, but it's all illustrations and very colorful but incredibly detailed. I kept it for my 4 year old in the future since she's very biology/anatomy oriented as well.

Can anyone share some free online resources for children to learn additional languages? DD is very language oriented and we are struggling to find something to broaden her learning rather than going deep in any one area. I think learning another language would be right up her alley. I've heard of Muzzy, but to be honest I don't want spend any money since this is just for fun and to give her something else to occupy her mind.

No, I don't. I was actually referencing another board I'm on. Pretty much anytime a parent asks a question regarding an advanced child they get shot down by many other mothers (many of whom are teachers). Pretty much the only place I talk about my DD is with close family and on this board.

Wow, I've never thought about that, but I think you bright up a good point!

I keep hearing that more than likely by 3rd or 4th grade most of the kids will have evened out ability-wise. My precocious talker/reader likely won't stand out by that time, her abilities will be nothing special because all the kids will be around the same level. Why do people say that? Do most kids even out? I have mixed emotions. Yes I would think that lots of children that are slightly ahead when they begin schooling will level out and be about even, or still slightly ahead. My DD seems to be more than slightly ahead. She's not PG or anything, I know that, but I'm sure she is gifted to some degree. She started reading at 3, and now at 4 years, almost 3 months she is reading on about a 2nd grade level and is suddenly FLYING forward in her ability. It's like everything is sliding into place and she is understanding and reading longer and longer words. She is writing sentences (using creative spelling, but doing pretty well, haha). She's been talking since she was 8-9 months old. She was an early talker and a good talker. Again, not profoundly early...not quoting Shakespeare by 16 months or anything, but short statements by 16 months (I'm a speech path, so that's one thing I do feel knowledgeable about). Are all the other kids going to "catch up" with her? Ugh, I swear I feel like this makes no sense. I guess I just feel like she's special (of course she'd be special to me no matter what, but you know) because of her abilities and I'm proud of her. I'm proud to have a bright child and it's like on all sides I keep hearing "well, she's really not THAT special, and the older she gets the less special she'll be." Does anyone understand what I mean or am I rambling, heck, I don't even know what I mean? Okay I figured out a reason why I am asking this. DD is currently in private pre-k though I am hoping to HS after K (long story as to why). I'm thinking about all this because I don't know whether or not I should make a point to talk with her pre-k teachers about her abilities and seeing if they can work with her on her level, like she is a super smart kid, or just leave it alone, because hey, she's not THAT abnormal and her peers will catch up eventually anyway (and make her sit through letter of the week EVERYDAY, though she's known all her letters since she was 16 or 17 months old).

Yes, this is what my daughter does, well sort of. When we turn the page, she immediately starts scanning the pictures. She will sometimes want to look at the picture for 30 seconds or more before she starts to read and then while reading her eyes will dart back and forth between the words and the pictures. I always figured she was using picture clues to help her more full understand what she was reading and to give her help in deciphering words that were a bit beyond her ability to read.

My DD turned 4 in June and is reading on about a late 1st, early 2nd grade level. The issue we are running into is the amount of text on each page can be overwhelming for her when we try to read books that are reading level appropriate, even if the words themselves aren't. She gets lost on the page when there are more than 6 or so lines of text. Is it okay to continue to read picture books and things like that even with her reading skills blooming? Is it normal for them to be overwhelmed by the sheer number of words on a page?

Ellen Tebbits is a Beverly Cleary book, the same author as all the "Ramona" books which we are about to start. She also has many other good books for children.

We don't really have any options. We don't have any family here that could babysit while I work and I'd rather send her to pre-k than daycare particularly since her school is fairly small and I'll only be working 3 days a week, so she'll be there for pre-k 5 half days and then she'll be staying for mother's day out the rest of the day on the days I work. She already knows many of the other kids there and the staff. I keep telling myself exactly that, it's an expensive "play time." Which is really okay since she is just 4. We will keep moving forward at home no matter what, it's not like I could stop her, haha. She's flying forward so fast with next to no help from us. We are just facilitators and give her what she needs and she goes on her own. Thank you! This is exactly what I needed to hear. That also sounds exactly like what her pre-k class will be like and also most likely what her attitude toward it will be. She doesn't seem to even know that she can do things that most kids her age can't do.

We don't have any in our area. We live in Oklahoma City and the nearest one I know of is in Tulsa which is about two hours away, that would be awesome though. I do want to bring her home after I finish my two years of work, hopefully life will work out well enough for that to happen.

Well, for my DD specifically I think they would be right in that, at least right now. She is very much socially/emotionally a 4 year old. I don't think at this age she'd function very well in a 1st grade classroom, she'd probably do okay in K, but nothing higher. I seriously doubt they'd even considering letting her go to the K class instead. At her school there is actually a pre-k class ahead of hers since they divide pre-k into young 4s and then late 4s/early 5's. She's in the young 4s class.

My DD is 3 and will be 4 on the 15th of this month. I'm going to work this fall so she's going to pre-k at the private school I had her in for 2-day preschool this last year. She is reading somewhere around a mid first grade level (with very little help from me) and is doing math somewhere around a late K-early first grade level. She is also very science oriented, loves it, and I assume she is ahead since she knows a ton about all sorts of subjects but that's not really as measurable as math and reading. By the end of the summer I estimate she'll easily be around 3rd grade for reading because of how fast she's progressed since she started, and if we continue in math she'll be probably mid-late 1st grade level. I'm freaking out a little because her pre-k is SO far behind where she is. I know pre-k is more about peer interactions and working in a group setting etc but they do have a plan of attack for every academic subject area and knowing what they are doing is making me worry. I don't want DD sit through an entire year of stuff that is much below where she is. I guess it's upsetting me that I am going to be paying for her to go to school and she might not learn much. I know the school says they work with the kids on their level, BUT she will be with the same kids she was in school with this year and none of them are where she is, so she'll be one out of an entire class. Should I expect the teachers to take her aside and teach her on her level? Is it reasonable to ask if she can join the first graders for reading and math, even though she'll be a young 4 year old (I don't know if the first grade teacher would like that much). My plan is for her to go to private school for pre-k and K while I finish my certification years (I'm a speech path) and then bring her home by first grade and work from home while homeschooling, but this is looking like a long two years...and I just feel bewildered.

We have listened to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on CD in the car and DD really loved it. This was after we'd watched the movie several dozen times. She also loves Matilda in movie form though I hadn't thought of reading it to her yet. We've read other children's classics though, or rather listened to them in the car. We've been through The Secret Garden, it didn't hold her attention very well, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh, she like it pretty well, Charlotte's Web, probably her favorite so far, Ellen Tebbits, which she also enjoyed and a few others that I can't remember right now.

We've had inklings since she was born. She was another super alert newborn and would get so mad if we tried to cradle her in our arms, she wanted to be upright so she could see everything going on around her, dang it! I see other newborns and she was so different from them. She never seemed like a newborn except in size. She talked early and very well, could count to 10, knew all her letters, shapes, colors by 18 months. That was when I thought "well...maybe." She's also always been very social and talkative and will try to strike up a conversation with anyone and everyone. It was really cemented though in the last year when she's been spouting off facts and intricacies of the human body to anyone in earshot. She about blew the doctor away back in January when she had a UTI and the doc came in telling us she found white blood cells in DD's specimen. DD pipes up "I know what white blood cells do!" and proceeded to explain to the doctor exactly what function they served. The doc was flabbergasted and we were pretty amused. She loves science and the human body is her "thing." She could name many bones in the body before she was three.

Thank you all. We are headed to the library sometime today so I will if I can find those books.

My three year old began reading on her own about 6 months ago. Since then we've started working through OPGTTR, and we are somewhere around lesson 45 I think, but we haven't done a lesson in a couple of weeks. I've been more informally teaching her some rules using starfall.com and just playing and reading together. The problem I'm encountering is words that don't follow the phonetic rules, but look like they should. For example she knows "when two vowels go a-walking the first one does the talking" and that the first one says it's name while the second one doesn't say anything. Most words follow that rule like, near, fear, dear, hear, but tonight we encounter the word bear for the first time with a short E sound. Of course she says BEER, but no, it doesn't sound that way. I don't remember my own reading education, so is there another way of teaching that, or are words like that more sight words? How much of learning to read is just repetitively seeing words and remembering them rather than learning them phonetically? I need advice as to how this will work out. This is pretty tricky for a three year old and I just want to do it right and not expect too much or too little from her.

So sad that I can't remember DD's first word or exactly when she started, but I know it was well before her first birthday, probably around 8-9 months or so. By a year old she had a zoo's worth of animal sounds and quite a few words and was speaking in short sentences by 16 months or so. We've always gotten comments about how well she talks, both because of how early she spoke and how clearly she spoke. By 3 she had all of her sounds including the hard ones like L and R.

I don't want to name specific shows, but the Discovery channel, history channel, National Geographic channel, animal planet all have good content that we each find interesting. Not everything on each channel is worthwhile, but there are very educational programs on each channel. The LIFE series is on Discovery right now and it's been fascinating.

I don't have a teen, but I was one once :-) I was never limited to how much time I could spend in my room alone and I'm very glad for it. I think with how volatile my emotions could be at that age, forcing me out would have been a negative experience for everyone involved. I know I would rather spending time with my DD when she wants to spend time with me rather than time I'm forcing her to spend with me, against her will. How pleasant can that really be?

We probably read 30-45 minutes a day, my DD is almost 4. Some days it is much more, other days none at all (not often). I do get physically tired of reading, so I do 2/3rds of the reading and DH does the other 1/3 before bed.

This is where we are. We do reading/writing pretty regularly, because she wanted to, and asked to. She's going to public pre-K this fall and I plan to start doing something with her daily this summer, and after school (actually before since she'll be in PM pre-K) once school starts. After pre-K or K, I haven't decided yet, I'll bring her home for school full time.