Surprising Variety/Kids' comments

One of the wonderful thing about children is what they say. Gifted children are not excluded from this general rule.

I overheard a mother talking about her son and their experience when they first found out about the giftedness assessment. She had been in the car. Her son told her that he realized that "fire needs four things: oxygen, fuel, heat and time." He was five years old. After a breath, he added, "Scooby Doo and Shaggy are so funny. They just do such funny things" I decided it is a very relevant description of life with a gifted child.

We did some standardized testing for the state, as a part of our decision to homeschool. The results showed that her least advanced area was political science and environment. She is quite young, so that means things like knowing who invented the lightbulb and that paper is made from trees. My husband has a political science degree and is fascinated with maps and history. I really should do more about this topic, as it is definitely NOT my strength, although I do realize that paper comes from trees . . .

Stumbling across a used US History homeschool curriculum, I decided God was leading me . . . that, and I have no time to look around - it came from a someone in a group of people like us, so I jumped on it. We are reading a chapter and the questions aloud on our drive to her homeschool group meetings. This way, I learn along with her, as my mind has purged much of the information.

Today, she told me, "Scientists believe that when the voyagers walked in the strait, there wasn't water in it." This was out of the blue. "The Bering Strait?" I asked, remembering it as one of the vocab words from the last chapter almost a week ago. You'll have to find it on a map yourself, or my daughter can help you . . . I cannot. She confirmed and started telling me more about that. The curriculum is sitting on our coffee table, and apparently, she's been reading it on her own. I wonder if she'll start where we left off last time, or if I'll have to read on my own to keep up.

On the other hand, she tells us jokes like "What do you get when you cross a mouse riding in a car?" "A mousemobile!" Hysterical laughter from her. Amazing when you think of those two scenarios coming out the mouth of a single child. It is amusing and surprising on a regular basis.