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I have now had my son assessed and his IQ turned out to be 140 (In the top 1%) and his reading age at 8 (he has just turned 4).  We are looking into a school which caters for gifted students and the psychlogist has given us insight into how our son thinks, and ways to deal with him (as he is becoming a real handful these days.)

It was well worth the money getting him assessed.

thanks to those with an interest in this subject.

Thanks for the link to the yahoo group, I've joined and awaiting a reply for membership, look forward to reading about other people's stories with gifted children.

Really appreciate our help, good luck with your daughter too!

Mum taught my brothers and I as a safety precaution (so that we could write our names, Mum & Dad's name, phone number and address, etc. and it just went from there) in case we ever got lost or separated from her.

As a primary schooler I had an adult reading age, which Mum fostered by joining me up to a book club and allowing me to choose a book a week to read.  I was encouraged to read poetry, write stories & sketch animals, etc., outside of school to maintain interest.

I wouldn't worry too much about your tot being bored at preschool.  I don't recall being bored then (later in school - a little different) - it was too much fun being with friends!

I've heard there's gifted children's associations for most Australian states, including national Mensa, a quick google turned up these sites which may be worth investigating:

http://mensa.org.au/?q=faq/children 

http://www.nswagtc.org.au/ 

Lots of luck to you.

My son knew all the alphabet & numbers when he turned two, and could read common words at three.  He's been diagnosed with autism at two and a half.  I've been advised by the speech therapist that we should dampen that ability (put those alphabet childs games in the bottom of the toy box).  Unfortunately he gets so distracted by words and numbers that we can't move on with the lesson or game until he's exhausted that need to read and recite the letters and numbers.  The point is that he misses out on learning other necessary skills, like social role play and proper circle of conversation, turn taking and other things we take for granted in learning.

Of course, this isn't an issue for your son but I've decided that we should aim for breadth of knowledge rather than depth, and try to expose him to as many experiences as possible to make him a well-rounded person.

Find his passion, avail him to as much assistance as you can and let him change the world with it.

When my son was 4.5 years, he had started doing Year 4-5's maths, but he found writing and language was hard. He told me that the numbers were like mucis notes for him. His teacher suggested us to send him to a gifted kids workshop ran by Uni of Sydney. We were not interested. We'd rather him to grow up as a well adjusted person.

By the way, we send our kids to Montessori pre and primary school. They design programs for individual kids to cater their individual learning style and development.

My son is 6 years and at stage 2 of Montessori program (for 6-9 years kids). He doesn't want us to read books to him at night any more because he wants to read BIG books. His maths is still better than his other subjects, but he works hard on the weak ones.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

you bub is surely gifted....tell us how it goes....

*****Han-Mum of  3years Ryan and 4month old Dylan*****