In this article we would like to present a case of good practice. We are presetning a gifted pre-school child case study in which we linked our practical experience with theoretical knowledge.
We describe identification of a gifted child, co-operation with his parents, specific activities and adjustments in the pre-school care.
Our activities and steps in the process of gifted child's treatment in pre-school:
­ Regular co-operation with gifted child's parents: exchange of information, frequent discussions about the child.
­ Assessment of gifted child by the psychologyst.
­ Pre-school teacher, teaching assistant and counsellor prepared an individual program that defined adjustments and work methodes for the gifted child. The program included activities that took place parallely in the pre-school and at home. ­ The pre-school connected with primary school. Several volunteers from the 9th grade of primary school were actively involved in »tutoring« the gifted child.
The fact that importance of early discovery of gifted children is ever more significant also increases the importance of the role of pre-school teachers in working with gifted children. In our article we are also presenting results of the questionnaire, answered by professionals working at our pre-school. With the questionnaire tried to find out the following: the level of awareness about the importance of early discovery of gifted children, which adjustments the staff would be ready to apply in their work with gifted children, and what kind of experience do our pre-school teachers already have in this field.
The results of our questionnaire show that appropriate encouragements of gifted children in the pre-school period are very important and that gifted children tend to stay overlooked among other children. It is very important to establish good co-operation with gifted child's parents. But on the other hand it is equally important to let the child enjoy its childhood and not to burden it with high-performance expectations.