Showing posts with label Resources for parents. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Resources for parents. Show all posts

Saturday, 2 May 2020

ACTIVITIES FOR GIFTED STUDENTS WHILE PRACTICING SOCIAL DISTANCING



The Summer Institute for the Gifted has complied this list of several activities for gifted students while your family practices social distancing.

40 social distancing activities for gifted students:

  1. Read a book that you have been curious about.
  2. Read a book that you think will not interest you and see if there is indeed something in it of interest to you.
  3. Write a book or booklet about something you know a lot about.
  4. Create a brochure, flyer, blog, article, or video about something you really enjoy and know a lot about. Share it.
  5. Write a story about your experiences with social distancing; illustrate it.
  6. Write a futuristic story about the long-term effects of social distancing.
  7. Find a pen pal among your relatives and start a correspondence.
  8. Create a personal logo that you can start to incorporate into social media, if that’s appropriate for your age and situation, or for a business you might want to start at some point.
  9. Start a family or neighborhood newsletter by writing articles about what’s happening in local areas of interest to your audience.
  10. Make up a board game.
  11. Make up a physical activity or sport you can enjoy inside or in your yard or neighborhood.
  12. Write a thank you note to someone you appreciate.
  13. Design a flag for your family that expresses what you’ve learned about each other while spending more time together.
  14. Create a comedy routine and entertain those you are spending time with.
  15. Write a song about your experience with social distancing. Share it.
  16. Plan a meal for your family that creatively uses ingredients you already have at home.
  17. Plan a future vacation or reunion when you can get together with new friends and family you won’t have seen for a while.
  18. Design a T-shirt for the times.
  19. Write to someone in public office regarding a strong opinion you have on an issue.
  20. Create a decoration for a door in your house that creates awareness about something you are feeling strongly about now.
  21. Create a new project for one of your classes that is unique to you and propose it to your instructor.
  22. Write a poem about something important to you.
  23. Learn about your genetic family tree. Create a “family tree” of those people who are close to you but are not genetically related.
  24. Design a special backpack for your fresh air outings in days of social distancing.
  25. Draw the room you are sitting in to scale and figure out the area of the room.
  26. Draw people you know from memory.
  27. Draw a self-portrait.
  28. Plan an exercise program that is individualized for your current needs, situation, and goals.
  29. Set your goals for the next school year.
  30. Write a scene for your family to act out.
  31. If you know someone who is taking a class that you are not taking but are interested in, write questions related to that class and give them to that someone to answer for you.
  32. List the leadership qualities you would like to have and assess where you need to set goals to improve your leadership ability. Have your opinions about leadership changed during the current pandemic?
  33. Research viruses, vaccines, and public health policies. List the five most surprising things you learned.
  34. Write an editorial about a current event that you have strong opinions about.
  35. Design a new fashion item reflective of the pandemic and survey your friends about whether they like it or not.
  36. Create a new fad and see if you can get others to join in while at home.
  37. Create a new riddle and see if others can solve it.
  38. Create a crime mystery for others around you to solve.
  39. Try out various methods of meditation and determine whether there is one method that particularly works to release stress for you.
  40. Add your own ideas to this list!
Looking for more social distancing activities for gifted kids? Click below for even more ideas and tips!

Helpful Resource from Bright and Quirky: Pandemic parenting, 2e Autism, Siblings


Helpful opportunities being offered from Bright and Quirky during May:

If you're like most bright & quirky families, online schooling and sheltering in place have been challenging. Here are a few resources that may help:
How to Help Bright Kids with Autism Cope During Challenging Times: Free webinar with Dr. Barry Prizant, author of Uniquely Human
If things feel challenging at home, without the typical supports in place during COVID-19, you're not alone. Navigating these uncertain times, with 2e kids on the spectrum, can present unique challenges. That's why we're organizing this very special opportunity to pose your questions to Dr. Barry Prizant, leading autism expert and author of Uniquely HumanSign up is free.
Has sibling rivalry gone up in your home as you and your family shelter in place? While most of us understand that sibling rivalry is normal, there comes a point when many of us wonder whether the fighting and teasing that goes on between our children could be harming them emotionally--or physically, when frustrations take the form of physical aggression. In truth, research suggests that despite longstanding attention on how the parent-child relationship affects childrena youngster's relationship with his or her siblings may have an even greater long-term impact on their development. Enroll here.
Join 20 experts, including Debbie, to discuss challenges related to the pandemic. We'll discuss: How to survive and thrive during the pandemic, how to reduce your family’s stress levels, how to recognize and understand your child’s behavior, and how to apply simple, actionable steps. Regisration is free.

Thursday, 23 April 2020

At-home Learning Resources for Kids from the Mensa Foundation

A mother embraces her son in their living room.

During these interruptions to learning, the Mensa Foundation is proud to provide you with resources that can offer enrichment and educational opportunities for your child. Mensa for Kids, powered by the Mensa Foundation, is full of lesson plans, activities, TED Connections, and other learning opportunities.

In addition to the myriad resources the Mensa Foundation offers at Mensa for Kids, including robust lesson plansactivity plans, and TED Connections, they are offering additional resources to engage your young learner. The curated list will be regularly updated as they find quality material that might be meaningful to you in the coming days and weeks.

How to Help Your Child with Negative Self Talk, with Dr. Marc Brackett

Bright & Quirky
It's very sad when our bright and quirky kids develop negative self talk, thinking they're bad, broken, dumb, or a failure. Dr. Marc Brackett, Director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, shares a very important and powerful conversation you can have with your child to shift their self talk to be more positive and healing. This conversation can be helpful whether the challenges your child is facing are social, emotional, academic or behavioural. 

Click here to listen.

Free SENGinar recording: Gifted School-at-home during COVID-19

 This is a link to a webinar presented recently by SENG, exploring how we can help support our gifted students through these challenging times: https://vimeo.com/410207654
'Supporting academic resilience with our gifted children requires parents and teachers to first examine the intersection of individual and family support characteristics of each child. Gifted students who possess a deep sense of justice or empathy for others may not be available to learn at the same rate and depth as before the pandemic started. Reassuring these children that it’s okay if their learning slows down will be critical to their overall health, well-being, and ability to successfully return to academics once the coronavirus crisis passes.

Alessa Giampaolo Keener presents the basic principles of trauma-informed learning, as it applies to school-at-home and homeschooling during COVID19; address the social-emotional needs of three different categories of gifted families; and offer tips and reassurance on how parents and teachers can support a gifted child’s learning needs during a time of crisis.'



Sunday, 19 April 2020

We Empower “Gifted” Children

We partner with parents to provide
lifelong strategies that help bright children
manage their unique challenges and
access their full potential.
Tina, from Guiding Bright, offers some useful suggestions here on how to weather the uncertainty surrounding us these days. While she is in the US and some of the examples and situations she uses are US specific, her information is still widely applicable and very useful.


Thursday, 19 September 2019

Bright and Quirky - A wonderful resource to explore!


Bright and Quirky is a wonderful learning community providing information and support to those raising and educating gifted kids with Learning, Social Emotional or Behavioural Challenges including ADHD, Autism, or Anxiety.

Friday, 13 September 2019

Are you looking for some useful resources to provide support to your children?

These associations have wonderful links to resources, both online and physical resources, along with great communities that you may wish to connect with.

 

AAEGT - Australian Association for the Education of the Gifted and Talented http://www.aaegt.net.au/




Supporting Emotional Needs of the Gifted

Thursday, 22 August 2019

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)


I've recently become aware of these online courses and can't believe the learning opportunities that are available! Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are free online courses available for anyone to enrol. Do you know someone who would enjoy one of these courses? I'd love you have your feedback on any courses that you or your kids complete.

Monday, 10 June 2019

100 RESOURCES FOR GIFTED KIDS (FROM THE ARTS TO THE SCIENCES AND EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN)



A re-post as this is a fantastic resource with wonderful links to all sorts of amazing websites - 100 of them, in fact. Talk about rabbit holes worth exploring!!
Feel free to send me some reviews from the kids (or yourselves) to share on the blog.

Thursday, 21 March 2019

Differentiation in Action - Parent Information Session


At St Mary's we believe in providing an education that suitably challenges and engages all of our students. As an accredited Newman Selective Education school we embrace the philosophy of Cardinal Newman through:

  • fostering a classroom environment where ALL students are challenged and engaged through creative and critical thinking and academic rigour

  • where the students engage with the world through authentic learning experiences and where they are encouraged to deepen their passions

  • fundamentally, we foster collaboration and independent learning to instil a lifelong love of learning in our students

Click here to access a copy of the slides presented at the sessions.

Saturday, 9 March 2019

Differentiation in Action - Parent Information Session


Please complete this google form to indicated which session you will be attending.

Friday, 15 February 2019

Joys and challenges of raising a gifted child



Here's another great article and blog that discusses the joys and challenges of raising gifted children along with offering supports and suggestions.

"Often people think of gifted kids as high achievers. They assume if a kid gets good grades, is bright and working ahead, he or she must be gifted, right? This is a common misconception. One is not necessarily an indication of the other. One measure of giftedness is IQ. A person can be in the gifted range of intelligence (IQ over 120) and struggling academically for various reasons. And a person can be of average intelligence (IQ of 80-119), but be highly motivated and working very hard, and excel."

Full article - click here

Let's Talk About Emotional Overexcitability



"Emotional overexcitability is easy enough to take notice of. The child who is so nervous they make themselves sick. The child who doesn’t want you to leave because they’re so attached to you. The daughter who screams when her brothers laugh at her. The child who hides behind the couch and sobs when Bing Bong disappears in Inside Out. The child who wakes up at 2:30 am every single night just to come get a reassuring hug. The child who cries two months after watching a movie where a character was bullied. The daughter who clings to you, soaked with tears, and cannot stop crying because she just loves you really much. The child who takes offense, builds strong attachments, leaps with joy, holds grudges out of pain and forgives quickly out of hope. The daughter who cries daily, hourly, but also laughs loudly, deeply. The child who is compassionate, angry, loving, fearful, frustrated, annoyed, embarrassed, elated. The child who just has a lot of feelings."

To read the full article, click here.


Monday, 22 October 2018

How to tell if you've got a gifted and talented child, and what to do about it




We are very luck at St Mary's that all of our staff are regularly involved in considerable Professional Learning opportunities to better understand the needs of gifted students and how to cater for them, so not all of this article applies to our context. Some information here is very useful as are the links to the related articles.

Thursday, 20 September 2018

Caught in the middle: How to help gifted children survive the middle school years


Caught in the middle: How to help gifted children survive the middle school years

A post by Gail Post, Ph.D on the challenges faced by gifted children in the middle school age bracket and how we can help them navigate this time.

Bright Now Podcast


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Bright Now

By Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth (CTY)



A podcast about parenting and educating gifted and talented kids from Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth

Bright Now by Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth (CTY) on Apple Podcasts


Sunday, 29 July 2018

Outschool: Live online classes by independent teachers



You and your children may like to explore some of the thousands of online courses available through Outschool. Courses can be one off sessions or run over a period of time. 
For more information see the video below.


Outschool: Small Online Classes for K-12 Learners

To view the latest courses click here.

Please let Mrs Bassett know any of the courses that you have completed and send her a review so that we can share this information with other students.

Gifted Challenges "Beyond intellect: Exploring the social and emotional aspects of giftedness."

Where can I find a friend? How asynchronous development affects relationships.




"Gifted children, teens and adults thrive when they understand the social, emotional and cultural impact of their giftedness, when they feel understood and accepted, when surrounded by like-minded peers, and when they are not criticized for any delays in their social-developmental trajectory. As parents, we must help them navigate the path to adulthood, seek out activities where they can develop healthy social relationships, and encourage them to accept, work with, and appreciate their unique differences."

This blog gives some insight into the challenges that asynchronous development (a discrepancy in skills or development among gifted children) can have on our students and children, along with some great strategies to support them.

Thursday, 31 May 2018

Experts Offer Their Top Parenting Tips for Helping Gifted Kids Thrive!

You may be interested in accessing this free ebook, written by over 27 experts in the field of Gifted Education, including Scott Barry Kaufman, Linda Silverman, James Webb, Carolyn Kottmeyer, Dan Peters, Lisa Van Gemert and MORE!

Click here to access the ebook.