As we are incredibly busy I do a lot of learning with my 4 year old on the half hour drive to and from daycare. We count forwards and backwards, in 2s, 5s and 10s. I have started the MEP maths program and find extra online lesson plans for anything that he does not grasp straight away. I also use the suggestions from Marshmallow Maths. We use apps on my phone while we are out. We use Reading Eggs and IXL on the computer. If we go somewhere special I will do up a lesson plan. For example, we have just spent a week at the beach and I did lessons about the ocean while we were there. My son and I make our own mini books which he reads to family and friends. I test him every few days on letters, sounds, numbers, shapes. I also play songs in the car that enhance learning like counting songs and the jolly phonics song for example. But to be honest, I am quite sporadic in the way that I teach. I mean, we do learn everyday but sometimes not to a huge a extent.
I started my 4 year old in swimming lessons around February. He had experienced an incident where he almost drowned in Fiji and was terribly afraid of swimming. He has gone from that to one level below squad and is overtaking his older brother who has always been an amazing swimmer. He does soccer and goes to a kindy program three days a week. The other parents at daycare have told me that their children are nowhere near my son's level.
The reason I am concerned is that I have only been working with him for a few months and he has just managed to fly through everything. Now that I have realized his potential I have started really putting in some effort and time and I feel like he is going to be so bored at school. I go to university myself and need to work to support our family of 4 children so homeschooling at this point is not an option. I have looked into testing but it is incredibly expensive. I would like a way to gauge his intelligence to determine what future options we should consider.
Having a child with special needs such as my son who has ADHD is just as difficult as having a child who is incredibly intelligent - who would have thought?!