We have just added a new feature to the TalentIgniter website - Parents' Picks! Please browse our extensive - and growing! - list of recommended books, toys, supplies, websites, and other products that will help you know how to keep your bright child happily growing and learning.

These selections come from the parents of children in the age groups noted. We're starting with infants and babies, but as the families grow and our contributor list expands we'll add recommendations to cover your needs - and your children's interests - throughout their childhood years.

If you have comments or suggestions yourself - or you wish to become a contributor to this section - please contact us.

In addition: If you are looking for a gift for parents of young, bright children, please consider The Ruf Estimates of Gifted Online Assessment. What better way to start the New Year than to have a better understanding of a child's abilities and needs.

On Saturday, January 29, 2011, Dr. Ruf will join with Mary St. George of New Zealand as speakers for the Fourth Global Virtual Meeting in Secondlife. The topic is "Underachiever."

Secondlife.com, by the way, is a free 3D virtual world where users can socialize, connect and create using free voice and text chat.

Roya Klingner of the Bavarian Centre for Gifted and Talented Children has organized these global events with the purpose of sharing knowledge and experience about gifted education for students, educators, teachers and parents. She has given us the following information on how to sign up for this virtual meeting, which will take place at 9:00 p.m. CEST/8:00 p.m. UK (please check for the correct time in your time zone):

1. Please create an avatar in secondlife (http://secondlife.com/whatis/avatar/?lang=en-US)
2. Send your avatar´s name to info@begabungszentrum-bayern.de
3. To participate in this meeting you need a headset.
4. The meeting will take place in (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Degar/229/86/59)

Bullying is a topic that has been in the news too much lately. We have read too often of the tragic results of students harassing other students. Now the Boston Globe has reported some disturbing long-term effects of bullying.  A new wave of research suggests that bullying can leave "an indelible imprint on a teen's brain at a time when it is still growing and developing. Being ostracized by one's peers, it seems, can throw adolescent hormones even further out of whack, lead to reduced connectivity in the brain, and even sabotage the growth of new neurons." Read the complete article, Inside the Bullied Brain.

Mensa's Mind Games^® is one of the most respected national games competitions. Every year since 1990, manufacturers and inventors from around the world enter new-to-the-market games. Over a three-day period, Mensans gather at the host location, divide into groups, play the games, fill out score sheets and comment cards, and rank their favorites. Of 50 games submitted, five will win the prestigious designation of Mensa Select^®.

Mind Games 2011 will be held in Albany, NY, from April 15 to 18. So there's still plenty of time to join Mensa, time to sign up to play, and maybe even time to submit games. Check the Mensa website for more information.

Billed as "playful learning for inquisitive kids," Imagination Soup is a fun blog and a colorful site that Melissa Taylor started in 2009. She is the Book Editor-at-Large for Colorado Parent Magazine, and also teaches writing classes out of her home in Denver. She started Imagination Soup, she says, partly to promote her writing classes and partly to share ideas about what she was doing at home with her young children. There are tons of fun ideas for toys and games listed under many different categories, such as reading, science, math, active play and more. Guest bloggers, many of them authors of children's books, have added their voices to the site. And readers generously add their comments to the mix.

As residents of Minnesota who are still digging out from the fifth worst blizzard in the state's recorded history, an article posted by Miller-McCune - A Compensation for Cold Weather: Higher IQs - caught our eye:

Apparently a research team at the University of Central Missouri calculated the mean year-round temperature for each state and compared it with estimated IQs. Those scores were measured by a standardized test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which is administered to fourth-, eighth- and 12th-graders across the nation. What they found was a significant connection between year-round temperatures and IQs. Yes, the colder the temperatures the higher the IQs. These results seem to match a similar study, conducted in 2006, of more than 120 countries.

Miller-McCune.com, if you're not familiar with it, is an online community of the Miller-McCune Center for Research, Media and Public Policy. They harness current academic research with real-time reporting to address pressing social concerns.