Guides for Parents of Gifted Children Released

This month, we've released three exciting new books that I think will be fantastic resources for parents of gifted children. Each book focuses on a different area of talent and offers parents practical ways to help encourage their children in those areas. With this series (we're calling it the Involved Parents' Guide series), I wanted to create a series of handbooks for partents that would offer guidance and resources for specifics areas of talent. With these first three books, we've targeted the talent areas of math, science, and writing.

If your child exhibits precocious writing, math, or science talent, then check out The Involved Parents' Guide series, an exciting new addition to Prufrock Press' line of parenting materials for use with gifted children and advanced learners. These three books are filled with useful, practical, and engaging advice for parents who want to help their child's natural talents thrive.


Encouraging Your Child's Math Talent
By Michael Bosse, Ph.D., and Jennifer Rotigel, Ed.D.
Parents of kids who show precocious advanced math ability will love Encouraging Your Child's Math Talent, a comprehensive, helpful guide to supporting a child's mathematical talent. The authors guide parents in recognizing advanced math ability in their children, working with the school system, and encouraging children to pursue their mathematical interests outside of school, and offer tips for connecting a child's math ability to his or her everyday interests.


Encouraging Your Child's Science Talent
By Michael Matthews, Ph.D.
Parents of children with precocious science ability will find the suggestions in Encouraging Your Child's Science Talent engaging, encouraging, and practical advice. The author provides parents with advice for recognizing early science ability in children, helping that ability flourish at home and in the classroom, setting up science-related projects, and enriching a child's science education.


Encouraging Your Child's Writing Talent
By Nancy Peterson, Ed.D.
Encouraging Your Child's Writing Talent brings a new perspective to teaching kids writing--one that helps parents encourage and cultivate a child's creative insights and love of words through the writing process. The author introduces parents to the characteristics of the gifted writer, provides them with tips to include writing in day-to-day activities, and leads them through the process of setting up writing workshops within the home.

Teach Creative Writing With a Bit of Humor

Guest Post by: R.E. Myers, Ed.D.

About This Blog Entry's Guest Author
R. E. Myers, Ed.D, began his career in education as an elementary teacher in Santa Cruz County, CA. While pursuing his doctorate, he become a graduate student of the late Dr. E. Paul Torrance. That association led to a variety of experiences in the field of creative thinking. His newest book, Motivational Writing Lessons: Clever, Humorous, and Altogether Creative Lessons, is available from Prufrock Press.

There are still teachers who require students to write about their summer experiences at the start of the school year, and I suppose there are many of us who have written accounts of six or seven summers during our own school years. A number of us have also been forced to write, as everyone in our classes was required to do, a composition entitled "My Favorite Hobby" or "The Person I Admire Most." These aren't necessarily bad writing assignments when they are presented in a stimulating way and when students "get into" the subjects. On the other hand, they can be dreadful when they are introduced in a sterile and peremptory manner and when the students know that the assignment is just one more in a long series of such writing chores.

It is far better to inject some humor and excitement into your writing program by doing something a little offbeat. For example, you can put your students into hypothetical situations that evoke realistic, whimsical, or fantastic reactions from them. Below is one that focuses on sense experiences.

What would you suppose might be going on if you:

. . . walked on hot sand that burned your bare feet and felt perspiration running down your neck and looked out to the sea and saw a gigantic wave and realized your mouth was very dry?

. . . turned a corner and felt a stiff breeze that smelled strongly of garlic and heard a distant rumbling and saw hundreds of crows in the sky?

. . . climbed a hill by taking a rocky path that hurt your feet, picked up a leaf that got your hand greasy, and heard a lot of laughing and then saw a bunch of newspapers scattered everywhere?

. . . looked out of a window and saw lots and lots of ants and heard metal being scraped and smelled something burning nearby and then felt the building shaking?

By combining either logical or unusual sense experiences, you can create hypothetical situations that will stretch your students' minds—and that should be fun for them and for you.

Middle School Gifted Students Taking the SAT

Yesterday, National Public Radio (NPR) ran a story about middle school students taking the SAT. The piece reports that more than 100,000 middle school students are taking the SAT each year.

Some are taking it for early practice so that they will do well when it actually counts for college entrance purposes (scores on the SAT aren't recorded or reported to colleges before a student's ninth grade year). Other students are taking it as part of the process of getting into the various talent search programs (e.g., Center for Talented Youth at Johns Hopkins University, Center for Talent Development at Northwestern University, and the Duke University Talent Identification Program). All of the major talent search programs require high SAT scores as part of their admission process.

To listen to the story, visit "Taking the SAT, Graduating Middle School" on the NPR Web site.