Little Prodigies

The 14th national contest of talented kindergarteners was held last year.

The contest, aimed at discovering a larger number of children with aptitudes for creative and conceiving abilities, and sports and arts and training them, was held divided into panels of intelligence, arts, sports, calligraphy, drawing and handicraft.

The following are some of those who drew the attention of the audience.

Amazing Hearing Ability and Memory

  

                 

 Kim Jin U, a six-year-old boy from Mirae Kindergarten, possesses amazing hearing ability and memory.

He heard the keyboard sounds of dialling ten random numbers of a mobile phone once, and after hearing them, guessed right all the ten numbers. And he answered over 100 mobile phone numbers he had memorized after hearing their keyboard sounds. He was awarded the top prize in the memory event.

There are some tales about him.

According to his mother Pak Mi Yong, she purchased a thing at a shop with her son when he was four years old. After some months, she wanted buy the same thing, but she forgot the phone number of the shop. When she asked her son, he immediately answered the location and phone number of the shop.

And when his father was going to the house of his relative together with him, he told his father the number of cars, trucks, tramcars and their colours which passed by.

Such things continued afterwards.

Kim Sun Jong, his teacher at the kindergarten, said: Jin U remembers not only the figures and numbers he saw once but also the colours, shapes and types of things. He is also good at sound detection and sight-reading and playing the piano.

He guesses right over 500 mobile phone numbers he had memorized just after hearing the keyboard sounds, and once a number is wrongly dialled, he immediately detects the mistake through the wrong keyboard sound.

The participants and jury said that they had seen such a child for the first time.

Outstanding Intellectual Potential

Kim Po Yon

Kim Po Yong playing intellectual game

Divided into several stages, the intellectual event presented riddle, composition, playing cards memorizing, and two- and four-digit addition and subtraction problems.

Kim Po Yong, a six-year-old girl from Changgwang Kindergarten, was highly appreciated in this event.

In particular, she answered fluently in English all the problems to be solved through abacus imaging, astonishing the jury. Education experts evaluated her as a child with outstanding intellectual potential in natural sciences.

According to her parents, she was less than two years old when she showed her inborn talent.

She just began to read dozens of words in picture cards at a nursery. Then one day she read through a title of a newspaper.

The titles she read consisted of new words utterly different from those as tomato or cup, which the nurses used to show children in order to develop their imaging capability.

This meant that she read the newspaper title by combining by herself the letters which she had learned through picture cards and which her parents had taught her.

Having discovered her inborn talent, her nurse directed efforts to give her intellectual education in close contact with her parents.

Having possessed a surprising ability to concentrate and persevere, she was able to cultivate her intellectual capability on a higher level thanks to the various kinds of intellectual education at kindergarten.

She is now updating her records in Rubik Cube (one minute), card memory (two packs) and calculation by abacus imaging.

Kim Yong Sim, vice-director of a department of the Education Commission, said: The children with outstandingly developed brains and good observation, who were present at the contest, proved once again how important the combination of kindergarten education and family education is. This contest provided a good opportunity for us to reaffirm that children’s inborn talents are displayed in their nursery and kindergarten days. Much is expected from the children who fully demonstrated their talents at this contest.

Ri Yong Chol    2023-02-19