Like the therad!
I was reading adult level in the first grade (remember Dick, Jane, and Spot? Yikes!) I made crystal radios from library books at 5 or 6 yrs. old. No diode; the detector was made from a pencil lead on a blue razor blade.
(Okay, I made them from wire and parts; I learned how from books.)
My son, who will be 18 in two weeks (Yikes again!), read Green Eggs and Ham to his pre-school class when he was 4! How? "Hooked on Dad", that's how. Every day was a chance to teach him something.
He could do multiple-column addition at 5, too. He thought carrying to the next column was such an interesting concept back then, and adjusted to borrowing for subtraction quite well.
He is still an avid reader. His last book was The DaVinci Code, and he loved it. I don't have the patience to read novels, but I read a dozen or so technical magazines monthly, and keep a copy of the NEC with me at all times.
