Smarty Pants!

Ok...let me begin by saying that I know every parent thinks they have the smartest child on earth & they really don't. It's just that our love for them & hope for their future makes us biased. The other night, however, proved something to me that I wasn't aware of. Josiah really is a very smart boy.

Josiah has been very interested in the alphabet lately, so we have been embracing that. So, I went out to my old Kindergarten teacher boxes to dig out some games & flash cards. Of course, I have a million boxes & couldn't find what I went after. So, I grabbed a few things I did find & decided to give them a whirl.

The first thing I found was an old interactive bulletin board that was ALWAYS hanging in my classroom. It was a simple game of matching uppercase letters to lowercase letters. The uppercase letters were glued to library card pockets. The lowercase letters were glued to Popsicle sticks to make them look like lollipops. The idea is to stick the lollipop into the corresponding pocket.

As soon as I began laying the materials out on our area rug, Josiah began to jump up & down. He had already figured out what to do before I gave him any direction. He immediately grabbed "lollipops" & started sticking them into the RIGHT pockets.

OK...let me explain further. Josiah is 3 years old. I had some Kindergartners that still had trouble with this when they were turning 6 years old.

OK...Let me explain even further. The #1 problem with this game is that the kids cannot figure out the difference between the following lowercase letters because they look so much alike: b, d, p, q. Josiah named EVERY letter & put them in the correct pocket the 1st time WITHOUT any help from me at all! I never even gave him hints.

Here is Josiah placing the last two letters in the pockets!! Boy was I proud!!!

"Ok," I thought, "That was just a simple game of matching. Maybe it isn't as hard as I think it is. Let's try this next game & see how he does" (never thinking he would be able to do it).

I didn't think this next game would be exciting to him because it is just flash cards. I really wanted to see how smart he was, though. So, I began flashing the cards & saying, "What's missing?" I didn't read any of the letters to him or anything. I would show him a card that said, "H__ J." He would say, "H and J. Hmm...I is missing!" WHOA! So, I continued. At first I only showed him the cards that had uppercase letters on it. Then once I saw he could do it I showed him lowercase letters. Then, I began mixing it up by both uppercase & lowercase letters on one card.

I was so shocked to find that he didn't miss one. He got them all right within seconds. It was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. I have had some of the smartest Kindergartners in my class have trouble with this game. After 26 cards, I could tell that his brain was getting fried. I have over 100 cards like this, so I thought I had better stop.

I knew my son was smart, but I had no idea what a smarty pants he was!