Last Saturday morning, a long-time student (since the late 90s) JEM came for our last 2006 session. He came with a big smile and a bag with a gift as well as some Christmas goodies. The goodies are almost gone, that being one of the favorite food of my three kids. I put my Christmas gifts in a big paper bag because up to now, we haven’t finished putting up the tree. Anyway, I got curious and opened JEM’s small box.

And this was what I found, along with his gift.

THANK YOU JEM!

You may not know it but I am very proud of you. Merry Christmas to you! Mwah!

I do not really know what these eggs are but I think these are caterpillar eggs laid on a flower’s petal.
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My son Julian, in my opinion, has traces of giftedness, suffice to say his skills in numbers and reading are well within the categories of being a gifted child. Alright, I am not a certified psychologist nor a developmental pediatrician but working with children has at least taught me to recognize skills at par, below or above the chronological age.

At present, his age is 5.5 and he has NOT been formally schooled yet, just being taught by me and attending social skills, language and conversation classes which I teach. Anyway, he has an amazing ability to remember dates and days. Ask him the day of a date, he will tell you. There is one glitch though, he has to have a point of reference, like a date a few days/weeks near the date you are asking him. He has developed a pattern which he uses to extract the date from his reference. The pattern? Ask him and he will probably explain it to you if he is not too shy to talk (read: it is his secret). Whenever he sees a calendar, he gets excited. Does this qualify him to be gifted?

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Kuya took this photo of his favorite car, Mazda FD3S aka Mazda RX-7, using a camera phone (N7610). He got so excited when we saw one in Tiendesitas last week.

Here are some food facts that may be helpful:

• pineapple has enzymes that may bring relief from pain
• onions are natural antibiotics
• mushrooms can ward off colds
• eat chocolate, live longer (yey! )
• sniffing a lemon can help beat asthma
• barbecued food can cause cancer
• watermelon is good for the prostate
• artificial sweeteners can make you fat
• sesame seeds can lower blood pressure
• drinking fruit juice can rot your teeth due to their high fructose levels
• fizzy drinks can lower your immunity

These are just a few (very few in fact) food facts and I am sure there are more. Can you add some more food facts?

There are a few “early warning signs” to watch out for in young children to know if they will be having troubles or challenges in learning, specifically learning how to read. These observations can probably be seen to those young children who have not been diagnosed with other conditions like congenital aberrations and autism. The following are:

• LANGUAGE OR SPEECH PROBLEMS

• those who talk late
• those who say very few words
• those who have trouble pronouncing words
• those who have difficulty expressing their feelings and needs verbally

HEARING IMPAIRMENT

• difficulty in understanding and hearing the individual sounds in words would have problems in how these sounds connect to the written words.