Ike the Scientist

Ike was born with a scientific mind. He is an amazing problem solver. When he was 18 months old he got a Tonka dump truck for Christmas. He was happily loading it up in the living room when he stopped short with an epiphany. As fast as his fat little legs could go he pushed the dump truck to the baby gates in the kitchen and scaled the baby gates.

Ike loved tools from a ridiculously early age. He got a toolbench for his 1st birthday but those were pretend tools. He wanted the real McCoy. His first actual sentence:

I need more tools.

This is Ike at about 17 months helping out with drill that I really hope has the safety on.

In some ways Ike sometimes comes across as unsympathetic because he can always see things from a rational scientific standpoint. A few months ago Duane hit a small bump in the road and for some reason, he told the boys he ran over the neighbor's cat. (Apple doesn't fall far from the tree, eh?) Simon got all upset but Ike simply looked out the back window and said,"I don't see the remains."


Ike surprised both me and his preschool teacher by developing his own technique for figuring the sums of small numbers.

So the big question of the day at our house is how does a very smart, very clever, not overly mature 5 year old boy do in a regular kindergarten?

So far we're hanging in there but the jury is still out. We've had several notes home, met with the principal once, and the teacher more than a few times.
The issues:

1. Ike gets bored and then starts getting in to trouble.
2. When he does get in to a project he wants to keep working on it instead of moving on to the next topic after the allotted time.
3. The girls are getting on his nerves (his words -- and I think this is actually very common in kindergarten.)
   

Anyhoo - we'll see if he can manage the year and hopefully adjust in to 1st grade at his public school next year.