Determine whether the child is advanced in a particular subject area. Gifted children may have skills in a particular area, such as art, music, oral language, reading, writing or mathematics. Gifted children often begin talking earlier than other children and create sentences that are more complex than those of other children their age.
Investigate whether the child has a well-developed attention span for a particular topic or activity. Gifted children hunger for new knowledge, mastery and immersion in a topic. They may appear obsessed with a particular topic and understand it in great depth. Children who are interested in a particular activity may focus on that activity for a long time and with intense concentration. The child may be unwilling to move to a new activity at the same time as the other children, because he enjoys focusing on the topic at hand.
Observe the way the preschooler interacts with problems. Gifted children use divergent thinking to come up with different solutions to problems. Give a gifted child a problem with an unscripted answer, and she often will come up with a solution that the teacher would not have considered. Gifted children analyze and describe problems using humor, metaphor and complex comparisons that other children of the same age do not. They are able to transfer understandings and problem-solving skills from one topic to another with ease.
Identify skill areas that are far beyond the norm for the age group, combined with behaviors, fears or challenges that are very common to 3- and 4-year-olds. Remember, gifted preschoolers can have advanced skills, but they still are preschoolers. A gifted preschooler may speak in sentences that sound like a much older child, yet he may have fears about learning how to ride a bike or be reluctant to move out of training pants. Physical and cognitive development do not necessarily move forward at the same time in the gifted preschooler.
Look for an emotional intensity and a capacity for empathy that are the characteristics of much older children. Gifted preschoolers understand the world in a different way from other children at the same age level. They ask complex questions about the world and about human relationships, and they seem to understand and relate to situations that should be beyond their understanding. However, gifted children also can be asynchronous in their social and emotional development. They may not have the social skills to relate to their peers, and they can get frustrated by everyday situations just like any other small child would. This asynchronous social and emotional development is another characteristic of the gifted preschooler.