Gifted and Talented...continued

My friends blogged about their experiences of GT, so I'll go ahead and add that too...

Well. Contradictory to my friend's entrance to the Gifted and Talented Center, I was raised to go in. Although I don't remember 'training' to take the test, my dad informed me that I knew exactly what was going on, and studied for the test. Apparently I memorized the questions I didn't know and brought them home to my dad who explained them to me. I do remember, however, getting the letter and trying to figure out what "eligible" meant.

Since my dad realized that I liked math in early Kindergarten, he set up a study time from 8pm to bed time. I looked forward to that time every day. By the first week of 1st grade, I finished a 4th grade workbook. I was raised to get into the GT center.

All my friends knew about the GT. We played games to help us study during recess, because we thought it was fun. And then I read about my friends not knowing anything about the program and I think, "Wow...so different..."

Even before I knew about the GTC though, my recesses (at least the inside ones) were spent discovering tessellations and making the Great Wall of China out of the shapes. Or  using those little blocks to discovering how many blocks were in a cube with a side of 3 blocks, 4 blocks and so forth...

Thinking back, that was the biggest waste of free time I had ever spent. What kind of 1st grader goes around memorizing perfect cubes (I didn't know they were called that though)?! I kinda wish I played tag like the other kids...

And then in 3rd grade, at the beginning of the year, we took the 3rd grade math SOL, I think, to see what we already knew, and I got 100% on it. My teacher explained to me that I already learned the entire curriculum, so I could do "Advanced Math' or something, and I was sent out of the room everyday to do my advanced studies. These were standardized test questions students did to improve their math. It was so friggin boring. And I got lonely doing math outside by myself. :(

And then more people joined the group, and I made friends. But since I was so ahead of them, having done them since the beginning of the year, the time spent outside consisted of chatting, helping them, or doodling.

After that, I pretty much relaxed into a normal learning rate, without my 8 o'clock learning block. I can't say that I don't wish that I used that time better, but thatcertainly did free up my recess time, now that I could care less about how much mulch was inside the playground... ;)

What I learned from my experiences is that it's good to learn, but when it's taking up your precious recess time, it's gone too far. I should write down to tell my children that...

Smile!