Smarter than your average bear?

I have always said that K got her Daddy's intelligence. I mean, I'm not stupid...I was in a gifted class in elementary school, but I also know that T is on a whole other level. In school when we would study he would only have to go over something once or twice and it stuck with him, whereas I had to spend a little more time on it so I am pretty sure that K got his brains. Often times I am astonished and a little bit frightened of how darn smart she is. We admit to being biased in thinking our kids are adorable and brilliant, but K seems to honestly be above average.

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My first clue was when she learned her letters at 18 months, and I didn't even have to teach them to her. I think she just picked them up from the several ABC books we had, but I never actually went over them with her.

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I have been trying to get her to write lately, but she's had absolutely no interest...until a few weeks ago. I have been making the little dashed lines for her to copy for ages and she would never even attempt it. Then when we were making Daddy and Papa's birthday cards she just all of the sudden went for it. This was her first attempt...pretty legible! Only the Y is unrecognizable since she crossed the top as well. :)

But the thing that really freaked me out was her "reading". She started "reading" books to S the other day. These were all books with one word that matched the picture so she was able to read through it just fine, but then one night I was reading to her before bed and there was a stop sign on the page. She pointed to it and said, "sss-tuh-ah-puh STOP!" I thought, okay, she just recognized the stop sign.

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She knows all of the letter sounds so that wasn't too shocking, but then we read a little further and she sounded out and said the word "Plop" and then "Bonk" and finally "Crash". I was flabbergasted. Surely she couldn't have accidentally done all those ones. This was one of our new books so I knew she couldn't have had it memorized. Since then we have been trying out all sorts of words and I have to admit that she is pretty darn close to reading. She can sound out anything and most of the time she figures out what it is.

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Not even three and she's already almost reading! She definitely got her Daddy's brains. Scary. How am I supposed to keep up with this kid??? Of course every time I try to take a video the skill somehow vanishes. This one below is the best I have gotten so far. She was reading several words for Noni and Papa so I ran and got my camera, but of course once I turned it on she stopped doing it. She does not like to perform unless it is on her own terms. :)

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Hopefully I'll get a better video soon, but for now I'll leave you with this one...she really doesn't sound anything out in it, but you get the idea.

P.S. She learned her letter sounds from a video. It's the Leap Frog Letter Factory. She got it for her birthday from her friend Rowen last year. I would definitely recommend it! It's only half an hour and it teaches the letter sounds in a fun, cute way.