Is he unique?

Don had to take N to the crap school yesterday afternoon for assessments. They tested him on his ABCs, numbers, colors, shapes, and so forth. He knew all of his capital letters and most of the lower case, knew all of his colors, and knew all of his shapes. They wanted to see if he could recite the numbers 1 to 10 which he could but he could beyond that as well as recognizing the printed number. The teacher was apparently quite impressed with that as it is not common in their pre-testing. They tested him on sounds associated with letters and he did great on all except "L". Not a surprise to me for the boy who will exclaim, "I wuv Wiwy!" ("I love Lily!) The teacher was absolutely blown out of the water that N knew many 3-D shapes and said she'd never seen an entering kindergartener who knew what a "cube" and a "cone" were. 

I know that N has an amazing vocabulary. I've never babied my vocabulary for my kids. We've had a heat wave the last few weeks and just yesterday he took a water bottle and said, "Mom, I need to stay hydrated." He amazed his pre-K teacher last fall when he wanted her to draw trapezoids with him on the sidewalk with chalk. She often had to turn away from him to hide a smile or stifle a giggle because of the words that would come out of his mouth like the time she told me he was with another child at a table and they both were working with the same materials and N told the child, "We need to make a compromise."

I think my kids are smart. I just didn't think that these things were so unique that a teacher should be floored over a cube and cone. Is it the school? Is it my son? I'm not running out to sign him up for gifted classes. I'm very proud that he did so well on their testing. I had been worried about him since he has been much more resistant to paper and pencil tasks than his sister was at the same age. I just didn't think he was exceptional in terms of academic skills. 

I guess he is going to do alright. Phew!