She may be scary smart. Or she may just be ahead of the curve now and will hit her peak early.
It is too early to tell.
Read to her. Keep on doing it even after she can read herself. Non-fiction as well as fiction. Also, I’m +1 on praising her for her effort, not intelligence. Studies have shown that makes kids try harder and succeed more.
Scary smart is my niece who, at 8mos old, could read the number 8 and the word EXIT. Freaked my sister out. She maintains a high level of intelligence to this day, at age 27. She received numerous academic awards and achieved perfect scores on standardized tests. She is a sweet, lovable girl and is currently working on her doctorate. She was scary smart and stayed that way.
My oldest daughter could sing the entire ABC song correctly at age 18mos. She had a large vocabulary and a large repertoire of songs to which she knew all the words. I thought I had a genius on my hands! She turned out to be an overall mediocre student, better in English/History/Social Sciences and not so good in math. She has recently gone back to school and has a 3.5 cum so far. I could not care less that she is not a genius- she is an awesome human being, caring and loving with a strong moral compass and a great sense of humor.
Her son, my grandson, is about to turn 2, can count to 13, has an extensive vocabulary and is speaking in short sentences. I don’t care if he’s smart, scary smart or just a bit ahead of the crowd in his vocabulary skills. I will read to him, encourage him to learn, teach him what I can and hope that he does well in life. He will be who he will be and I will love him regardless.
Your daughter sounds bright and that is wonderful. It sounds like she has good memorization skills, which is a great tool for future learning. Continue to challenge her and expose her to many different types of learning experiences. She may or may not be scary smart. You’ll figure it out as you go along. But don’t let too much ride on it. She needs the same thing that all kids do-- opportunities to explore and learn and unconditional love.
I’m betting you’ll wind up with an extremely bright, but not “Little Man Tate” level kid. Which is good, IMHO.
As for what to do, I speak from my experience as a gifted child, the parent of a gifted child, and from reading a bit on the subject: DO NOT PRAISE YOUR KID FOR BEING SMART. Praise her for thing she can control, like effort and daring. If you emphasize their smartness and praise them for being smart, children (actually everyone) tend to avoid challenging activities and play it incredibly safe, to protect their self-image of “smart” from the contrary evidence of failing at something. But of course, trying challenging things, and having a tolerance for failure and resilience, are all far more important to success and happiness than the number on an IQ test.
Like Joel Fleischman said in Northern Exposure, “There’s nothing sadder than being a 30 year old child prodigy.” What that character meant was, when you’re six and smart, it seems to amaze a lot of people. When you grow up, you will find out there are a lot of smart people out there. Some even smarter than you.
Or like the immortal words of A. Whitney Brown (not THE Whitney Brown, just A. Whitney Brown), “There are a billion people in China. It’s not easy to be an individual in a crowd of more than a billion people. Think of it. More than a BILLION people. That means even if you’re a one-in-a-million type of guy, there are still a thousand guys exactly like you.”
Reward effort. Make a point of emphasizing that hard work is praiseworthy.
I don’t mean to make things hard for her. I mean that, when you praise her, praise things she worked at, not things that she did very easily. Make sure she knows that hard work is necessary to do the important things in life.
Being smart is like having a big stick: It will let you move a lot of rocks with less effort than everyone else is using, but, first, you still need to put some effort into it, and, second, eventually you’ll run up against a problem that’s either just massively big (so you need a big stick and a ton of work) or not really amenable to being solved with a stick of any size.
It was a Lady Remington.
I’m 29. I’d like to meet her.
What’s really freaky is that at 8 months old she could read the number 8.
It was put there by the tiny pianist.
First, kids mature at different ages. 3 is way too young to be drawing any conclusions, unless there is Mozart level giftedness going on. So relax.
But while you are relaxing, observe what she is interested in and follow where she leads. Give her music lessons if she seems interested in music, not before. Teach her to use the computer if she shows interest. The last thing any kid needs is to be overwhelmed by lessons and such.
Very gifted kids are often not interested in every thing, but when they are interested they go to incredible depths.
And of course make sure she has play dates and stuff.
To illustrate, over the period of a few weeks in first grade I went from Dick and Jane to reading full Jules Verne books, with comprehension. When I took speed pre-K my mother was told I was smart, but I don’t know how she figured out to let me have those books. By the time I had kids and realized that my reading wasn’t normal it was too late to ask.
My daughter is not eve two yet, and she just rebuilt the carb on my '72 Stingray. But just to prove that I don’t push her, I only let her do one or two carbs a week for some extra cash we are using to pay her greens fees. She can drive the ball about 250 yards, and is 2 handicap from the ladies tees.
My wife and I are pleased that she is becoming so well rounded. We have never pushed her, and yet she has found these things on her own to experiment and enjoy. She even gave her mom and me a shouting on her website about how we never push her in one direction. I really appreciated that, as jealous friends, relatives and neighbors just didn’t want to believe that.
(ok, I may have embellished this a little bit, but I’ll let you all decide which parts.) 
The KEY though is to remember to not push her. If she’s as smart as you say, she will get bored with things she has mastered or is uninterested in and she will start to resent doing things that you may be forcing her to do. Steering her a bit, or guiding her ever so slightly (so she thinks it’s her idea and not yours) is the best way.
Seconded. Carol Dweck’s work is of relevant interest.
I still tell my son he’s smart. He is. But I also say it when he’s upset at something he can’t do very well. I’ve told him that being able to solve problems makes you smarter than people who never have to. He is a very logical child and this helped when he was struggling in reading. (“I figure things out. I can do this…”)
I was told growing up that I was either a) a little dumb or b) too average. Neither of which were true, but perhaps I’m projecting a little bit here. 
When she makes a couch cushion fort, is it in the shape of a skull or a volcano?
Then I’d be worried.
Another vote for probably smart, but not scary smart, from what you’ve said. My just-2.5 year old knows all the letters, can spell her name, knows my 10 digit mobile number by heart, knows all the words to My Favourite Things from Sound of Music and can count up to 10 in 2 languages.
We don’t consider her wildly smart, It’s just stuff we’ve exposed her to, that she’s familiar with. So my only suggestion is to keep pushing her knowledge boundaries - lots of new experiences, books and lots of talking about the world around.
And an article I read suggested not complementing your kid on being smart - they begin to put value on that, rather than the effort in trying and can get disheartened if being smart is not enough (which it is not always). Great job, I’m proud of how hard you tried, etc, rather than being smart or clever.
500 billion times this.
I was horrified when my (quite honestly, pretty freaking smart) brother-in-law cautioned me that all parents think their kid is SMART!!!111!!! but then they get to grade school and see that their kid is one data point on a continuum of smart.
I thought he was an ass. My daughter is SMART! She was burning up the leagues. Throwing off the class curve, even before she was even in class.
But..he was right.
I don’t take pleasure in bursting balloons, but what your daughter can do sounds to be high end of normal. Period. My son was spelling words with the fridge magnets at that age. We just had him evaluated for ADHD and part of that was the WISC. Come to find out, he is high average in a lot of areas, average in others, and below average in those that require processing speed and focus.
He’s still teh awesomemostest, though.
Yeah, my kid was about seven when she was assessed (WJII)and it was a long and expensive process. Worth it for us, because she was starting to have the classic problems that academically gifted kids have.
I figure if she was gifted at music, sports or art I’d be finding support and extension for those things as well as a broad range of other opportunities. Academics is her strength, it doesn’t make her better than anyone else, it’s just who she is.
At 3 years, the (however) bright kids need the same stuff that all kids need. Which is pretty much what I posted before.
Bright smart-ass kid checking in!
At three, she’s not around many of her peers for very long, so there’s not much comparison going on. You’re fine for now. Talk to her, encourage her to be interested in things and to explore and learn on her own. Let her be a kid, even if she’s a bright and very intellectual kid.
When she hits school, if she’s still way ahead of the curve (no promises that she will be) then there’s a good chance that she’s going to notice that something’s fishy with all the other students (and if she’s really bright, God save you, the teachers, too). When she asks, don’t pussyfoot around it.
Tell her straight out: “You are much smarter than a lot of other people. It’s something that happened in your brain that you didn’t cause, just like Daniel’s eyes are brown, and Melanie has that pretty curly hair that you’re jealous of. It can be helpful to be very smart, but it is nothing that you caused, so don’t be vain about it.” Then explain the concept of vanity and showing off, or purposefully making other kids (or God help you, the teachers) look bad, and how that’s not acceptable in polite society.
Then, if she stays intellectually bright and ahead of the curve past preschool-kindergarten (no promises that she will) you have to really hammer home that just because 90+% of life, especially academics, comes to her “naturally” that isn’t an excuse to not TRY and put effort into the things that don’t.
Perhaps they’re physical things, perhaps there’s one subject that’s “just too hard” but don’t let her slack off - actual mental effort is rare and difficult and scary for her, because her mental image is of herself as being smarter than everyone.
That’s good in a lot of ways, but the downside is that if a subject is actually HARD? It causes a LOT of stress and anxiety because there’s so little reference for that. As a parent, hunt those subjects and activities down and emphasize the hell out of them. Praise her to the heavens for trying something she finds hard. Make it clear that you’re praising her for the EFFORT, not for the achievement, or because she’s smart. She’ll KNOW she’s smart by that point, and having her parents value her effort instead (even when she doesn’t succeed - ESPECIALLY when she doesn’t succeed immediately) is going to be hugely important.
I never had to TRY to accomplish anything til I was in college, and it was bloody hard to attempt by then - I ended up in therapy because I was too scared to even attempt anything that I wasn’t sure I would succeed at immediately. It was putting a huge dent in my quality of life, but I just didn’t have the mental tools to do what most people figure out by kindergarten. Please make sure that if your little girl ends up gifted, or just really bright, that she has those tools in her arsenal. She’s going to need them eventually.
I can read with my eyes shut!
I was that kid. I am not sure why, but before I was 4 I had figured out how to read partly on my own (I started school at 7).
I was an avid, almost obsessively-so reader by the time I started school. As a result I had a vocabulary far more advanced than my peers and was very articulate. Eventually I figured I didn’t have to work to get good grades, excellent grades in fact. At some point I was left to do my own thing and I coasted through school without much work, basically I bullshitted my way out of high school.
I took a gap year to study Italian and still graduated from university at 20. But here’s the thing I learned at the university: I wasn’t as smart as I was led to believe, I was just average, at best. My advantage had evaporated. I clawed my way to a diploma and was left with a lifetime of self-doubt and a dodgy self-esteem.
My daughter is, if anything, brighter than I was. At 6 she speaks 3 languages at the same level (above her peers), reads and writes all three very well, and is also a curious child and a very avid reader. I am avoiding the same mistakes my parents made and telling her that just because some things are easier now doesn’t mean they will always be. To balance it out she’s in ballet. Seeing as she is a very clumsy kid (like yours truly), this gives her some perspective on the whole “smart” thing. There her not-as-smart peers are much better than her and she has to work hard to keep up with their innate abilities.
In short, give your child some breathing space, teach her that hard work is more important than innate ability. Challenge her. If you just let her do only what she is good at she’ll have an inflated sense of her own abilities, even if they do turn out to be well-above average. I speak from experience and years of regret.
I was bright, not scary smart, but well on the right hand side of the curve. Never studies, and pulled in As, just on the ability of recall what the teacher had said.
When I was taking freshman chemistry, I became friends with a guy who didn’t catch on as quickly. After class, I usually would explain what had gone on.
In the three quarters, I had an A, A-, and finished with an A, with minimal studying. He was a solid B with three to four times the efforts.
Normally, this would be a brag, but after we graduated, and went out into the real world, I took an almost useless ability to regurgitate what the instructor had said, and he had a finally developed study habits including the ability to plan what to study, and when, as well as better critical thinking.