Current fun

I've been feeling a little confused about Kayne since the parents evening. i have realised that he doesn't really stand out as gifted, maybe he is in that weird stage that has been mentioned a few times. It's odd that now the teacher is 'on our side' I find myself thinking maybe he isn't really all that smart....stupid eh?

He is seemingly not all consumed by maths at the moment or maybe he is doing enough to satisfy him at school? It is like he is filling in 'holes' - i've noticed most of his addition and subtaction between 1-20 is almost instant. He is quite interested in time and he can tell it accurately to :00 and :30. He is also into machines at the moment; he has been playing with different objects e.g. string, a piece of lego and a cardboard tube, playing around with them and then when he can make something happen he declares it "my machine". This probably stems from playing Mechanic Master on the DS ( his perservance in this game is impressive). So i found some videos of Rube Goldburg machines and he watched about 45mins of various constructions - sometimes laughing so much at them that he fell of the chair!!

He is 1/2 way through the reading system at school. I think he is well placed here, it holds interest enough that i can slip in more of the other components of reading than i could before. He is doing much better at not rushing through, actually remembering that there are full stops in the book! I have noticed that each time he goes up a reading band the first few books in the new colour band he races through and it almost seems like going up was a mistake. He has voiced a preferance for non-fiction but at the same time he enjoys humorous fiction. I think the books in this band are much more of an appropriate placement - even if they are of a higher level than his reading age assessment indicated.
I feel more relaxed about his "inability" to read chapter-type books; i think he would just prefer to read non-fiction. I have been reading Greek Myths to him which he views as a kind of semi fiction. In the past month we have read about loads of topics; from maths to volcanoes to greeks to space to pokemon and a few others.

I have an inkling that there is some sort of internal shift happening (maybe a gain of some more maturity?). Whilst he is being more difficult in some respects i think that is related to whatever it is that is going on. In class today he asked for his name label so he could write his surname - i thought this was good, he realised that he need his name thing and asked for it to complete the task he set himself even though it wasn't quite what he was asked to do (they only had to write thier first names).

We have been enjoying playing Cranium Cadoo which i bought a year or so ago for £4!! Another of those is the age really right on this box moments. Kayne loves that 'spy glasses' and making things with the clay - although struggles a bit with the speed of it (30sec timer), his ability to call-out was non-existant (LOL - stickler for rules) until we told him he was supposed to and now he is getting it. But he had no trouble with questions like "think of a word that means both: a group of fish; a place where you have lessons". We had a few mis-reading issues where he had read 'snow-mountain' instead of 'slow-motion' but i guess one could argue they are the same thing?!