what kind of giftedness is this?

[meg-momto2]

i don't know if DS is truly gifted or just a bit advanced. he's getting assessed in school for behavioral problems and the psychologist said she'll be doing an IQ test. i'm really curious to see what his strengths and weaknesses are.

sorry, getting to the point. DS started collecting Bionicle's about 2 years ago. our collection has slowly grown to more then 20. they're all disassembled and sorted(for my sanity) by body parts. DS can look at a picture on the Lego site or flip through the instructions walk away and put together based on them. he's also strayed to the Power Miners section and is building things with his Bionicle parts that resemble the machines. i'm talking moving and rotating parts, not something the Bionicle parts were meant to do. is this a visual spacial giftedness? are there building sets that you could recommend to keep his attention? we're planing on getting a starter set of regular small Lego's for Christmas and i'm scoping out Ebay for huge lots of Bionicle parts.

[SkySunSea]

Visual-spacial sounds right...from what you describe. But I have no clue really. (scratches head). He sounds like he has a gift for seeing objects and manipulating them in his head and then figuring out a pattern and how they might work together in a unique way. Problem solving. Related to math and geometry I would think. Ask lots of questions about the type of test being given and what it measures. Hoagies Gifted has a great intro to giftedness at www.hoagiesgifted.com. Check out "gifted 101."

HTH! It's so interesting to learn about our kids--and so hard to wait until we get some professional insight, isn't it?

Best, Michelle

[elmh23]

He sounds like an engineer! Check out Knex and Erector sets.

[zebra15]

My DS9 loves legos, If your DS wants a power miners playset then get him one LOL... also my DS loves the creator sets that are 3in1, meaning they come with a booklet that show you how to make 3 things out of one set. So a firetruck becomes a helicopter then a racecar.
http://shop.lego.com/ByTheme/Product...45&cn=348&d=70
http://shop.lego.com/ByTheme/Product...52&cn=348&d=70

I dont know if your ds is gifted, creative, inguitive (sp) determined etc... but get that boy MORE LEGOS....

FYI, the Technic series has the ability to add POWER, my son loves this.
http://shop.lego.com/ByTheme/Leaf.aspx?cn=57&d=70

[MonkeysRUs]

My almost 7 year old is obsessed with Lego. He got his first real set the day he turned five. My mom had bought the big Lego Creator robotic dinosaur that is for ages 9-12. I thought she was crazy, and thought ds would be really frustrated with it, but him and my husband put it together that day, and now his room is overflowing with Lego. I'm constantly amazed at his ability to follow the directions and build the Lego sets on his own, but he tested last year as being in the 99th percentile for spacial ability, and based on that score and several others, he was identified as gifted.
My son loves the Power Miner sets, Space Police and Secret Agents, and he also has a lot of Bionicles. He has some K'nex sets, but prefers the Lego. Recently he has started just building his own creations from the hundreds of Lego pieces we now have!

[karne]

This is something that my middle school dd w/LD's does really, really well. She sees patterns clearly, can build like you cannot believe, moving on to creating architectural structures at this point. She works with unit blocks, legos, k'nex-any building toy you can think of. She now draws her ideas on paper, and we're moving on to some of the Bridge Street toys which work with grids, and of special interest is a water pumping station that you design/build. Pattern tiles are another favorite. Despite many struggles with math, there is a strong correlation for my dd, and I expect that she will "feel" geometry She can "see" in her mind what she wants to create. It is amazing to watch her work.

ETA: www.bridgestreettoys.com

[meg-momto2]

SunSkySee- he definitely fits under the visual spacial description from the link you posted. thanks, there's some helpful info there.

elmh23- i definitely see a future in engineering for him. he takes a lot after me and i loved math, patterns, building.... i stunk at geometry though, lol.

i just ordered two 400 piece boxes of K'nex for him. i really hope he like them. thanks for the info ladies.

[elmh23]

Meg, he sounds a lot like my husband, which is why I said that. When he was 8, he took apart his fathers computer on a morning he woke up at 5am and put it back together by noon. That was his first time messing with the computer and now he's a computer programmer (dude thinks in binary) and is still really skilled with mechanical things. So far my 2 year old is taking after him.

[musikat]

My DS is like that. He got the Power Miner Thunder Driller last spring, just a few months after turning 5 (it was 7+). He put it together with no help, then disassembled and reassembled it several times throughout the week. After that it was permanently disassembled for parts of his own creations. He also likes bionicles a lot and can put them back together from memory. He asked for a 10+ one for Christmas, but for financial reasons I ordered him a 9+ instead. It looks plenty cool, and his birthday comes up two weeks later so if that doesn't satisfy him, maybe then....

I think your son will like K'nex, too. Mine does and Grandma and Grandpa got him one of the robot motorized sets for Christmas. A good 2/3 of all his presents are building sets! One comment about the erector sets, though. I bought a small one for my DS a few months ago and he found it difficult to maneuver the screws with the tools (some of the spaces are tight and I was having trouble!). So physically I don't think mine is ready for true erector yet.

One other thought, although I haven't personally "tested" it yet: Snap Circuits. I just ordered this for my son's birthday. It's electronic but you can make all kinds of cool things with it, and it has great reviews. Also no tools.

[meg-momto2]

thanks Musikat. i don't think we'll get into erector sets for a while. DS has a very short fuse and frustrates easily. something like that would ended up broken out of anger.

[joensally]

Has anyone mentioned STRUXX?

And yeah, that's totally VS. I think the memory for detail, though, is like VS-plus . No, no - VS-high def.