How do I recognise giftedness in my children?
|6yr old drawing of Blue Tongue from predator view|
- The ability to invent or create novel or original things, or look at their world in unusual ways (and I'm not talking about a six year old making a paper aeroplane).
- The desire and ability to investigate their immediate world, to see the unusual and observe things that others don't notice.
- Extreme curiosity demonstrated by experimentation, investigation and in depth study.
- Using extended vocabulary, complex sentence structure and varied language forms.
- Understanding and using imagery and metaphorical language at a young age (often under 5 years).
- Exploring varied interests often at depth, well beyond their years.
- Being able to learn rapidly and easily compared to other children.
- Gaining great pleasure and excitement when they are learning new and difficult things.
- Outstanding memory demonstrated by encyclopaedic recall.
- A desire to spend time with older children or adults and to learn with and from them.
- Being able to cope with the introduction of many new ideas, sometimes simultaneously.
- Wanting to spend large amounts of time learning about a favourite topic.
- Capable of generating many solutions to verbal or mathematical problems.
- Enjoying and seeking out frequent intellectual challenges.
- Demonstrating unusual imagination that is stimulated easily and sometimes independently.
- Ability to generate multiple ideas and solutions to problems.
- Showing preparedness to question assumed knowledge or ways of doing things.
- Often preferring individual work rather than group work and able to work well independently.
- Demonstrating a highly mature and unusual sense of humour.
- Sometimes having expectations of themselves that are too demanding and unrealistic.
- Demonstrating single-mindedness and extreme determination when pursuing interests.
If you think about the above characteristics it should be easy to see how they might well be misinterpreted by teachers and parents who don't understand giftedness. For example, wanting to work independently could be seen as anti-social, single-mindedness can be seen as self-focussed, questioning the assumed knowledge of the teacher could be seen as rudeness and so on. This is why the gifted need to be understood and supported; they are different.
|Sketch of 'A Camel & Its Reflection' (Lydia aged 3yrs)|
Imagination requires the mind to take existing data or knowledge and reintroduce it in a variety of new forms. If your child demonstrates to a significantly greater extent than most children - a large number of the following types of imaginative activity, they are likely to be gifted. If so, they will need support, encouragement and some adaptation by teachers and parents. I will list just some ways in which imagination is demonstrated and how each form can be stimulated.
1. The ability to invent or create novel or original things, or look at their world in unusual ways?
|Here a 6 yr old looks at prey from above|
2. Using real world objects and knowledge in unusual ways?
Most 'what if' questions can end up here but there are other paths. It requires children to investigate their immediate world (this requires skills), to see the unusual and observe things that others don't notice.
|Simple cubby made from a box|
- Make a cubby house from boxes, old sheets etc (see previous post on cubbies HERE).
- Create a clubhouse in the back yard with membership rules, club motto, a logo and so on.
- Create a new board game with a theme of interest. You can use many formats adapted from existing games or create a new form. It requires them to think of a theme (dragons, 'Polly Pocket', Spider Man etc), a format (e.g. series of boxes with a start and finish), rules for playing and scoring etc.
3. Encourage the child's extreme curiosity that is typically demonstrated by experimentation, investigation and in-depth study
HERE), or write their own blog (see my post on children as bloggers HERE).
4. Encourage children to use extended vocabulary, complex sentence structure and varied language forms.
- This is perhaps the easiest area to enrich. Immerse your children in a rich diet of poetry, literature and drama. Share literature and talk about it, make it a key part of the home or classroom.
- Play with language, rhyme, introduce new words and technical terms never use an approximate word in the face.
- Play with words as part of life, as you play with your children, drive with them in the car, walk with them along the road.
- Play word games with them and make it fun! Dr Seuss is a great place to start with general language silliness (see my post on Dr Seuss HERE).
- Give them new words in the midst of real life experiences.
- Introduce them to literature beyond their immediate experience.
5. Introduce your children to imagery and metaphorical language.
The gifted child will begin to become aware that language has more than literal meanings. Point out some of this richness, encourage them to observe it, and eventually to use it. Point out that language is enriched by simile, metaphor, homophones, homonyms and so on. Again, this can be done in everyday life as you play, travel, share meals (see my previous posts that deal with this HERE , HERE & HERE)
6. Encourage imaginative discovery in as many varied situations as possible.
Play is one way to achieve this, sometimes with adults, sometimes alone, and also with other children (see my previous post on this HERE).
Another way is to provide rich firsthand experiences from a very young age. Many of these are very basic:
- The squelch of mud between toes on a wet day in the back yard.
- Running on a sandy beach for the first time.
- Watching a worm wiggle in the palm of a small hand.
- Going outside on a dark and cloudless night to gaze and talk about the stars (if you have an iPad, you might use Star Walk).
- Watching a bird build its nest in a tree in the playground in spring.
- Doing hand painting.
- Observing chickens as they grow bigger day by day, collecting the eggs, sweeping the cage.
7. Encourage your child to try to imagine and generate multiple solutions to problems of varied kinds
This will include problems that are verbal, mathematical, scientific and even practical in nature. Let your children see how you or others solve problems. Draw attention to novel solutions that engineers, doctors, builders and artists come up with. Encourage them to discuss and generate novel solutions to hypothetical as well as real problems.
|Imaginative play starts early|
You might like to consider some of the other ideas in my previous post on giftedness HERE
|Jacob (4 years) draws Grandad from the unusual vantage point of the fish inside the aquarium looking out|