Does your homeschool family love books?  Do you especially love kids' books that explore characters learning and growing through experiences outside the traditional classroom setting?  Do you feel like your family offers a unique perspective on books because you are homeschoolers?

Let your voice be heard!! Join other homeschoolers across the country taking part in the first annual National Homeschool Book Award!  This new book award is a readers' choice award created by a group of homeschool moms to recognize and celebrate current juvenile fiction that resonates with kids learning at home.  Let's make our collective voice of 2 million (and counting!) homeschoolers heard in the U.S. and encourage authors to continue to write great books that speak to us!

It is free and easy to get involved - just read the four books that were nominated in March and place your vote for your favorite in October.  In between, there will be opportunities to learn more about the books and their authors through kid-friendly blog posts that feature information on topics in the books and ideas for activities you can do together to enrich your reading, including tips on how to start a National Homeschool Book Award book club in your own community.

For more information, please stop by the National Homeschool Book Award's website, where you can read more about the award and the four books nominated for 2011. While you're there, sign up for email alerts during the year about new blog posts and when to vote. 

Here's an interesting article by David Brooks from the New York Times, Social Science Palooza.

The article consists of brief synopses of scholarly studies into human behavior, compiled from daily email postings. Here's one example: According to John Gaski and Jeff Sagarin in the Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology and Economics, there is a surprisingly strong relationship between daylight saving time and lower SAT scores.

Stressors in the life of a gifted child abound. Perfectionism, sensitivities, moral concerns, peers, expectations, and career confusion are only some of the issues facing gifted youngsters.  

The next SENGinar, presented by Michele Kane and scheduled for Tuesday, April 26, will examine the sources of stress as well as explore specific strategies designed to minimize stress and develop self-awareness. Since each gifted child has a unique, differentiated profile of affective characteristics there will be a discussion surrounding matching specific strategies to specific affective profiles to reduce stress and enhance well-being.

For more information and to sign up, go to www.SENGifted.org. 

Here's an article from the Online Wall Street Journal in defense of the daydreamer! The author, Jonah Lehreron discusses distractions, ADHD and creativity.

Registration is now open for the 2011 SENG Summit in Seattle, which will be held July 15 to 17.  

SENG believes that the first priorities for teachers, parents and counselors are to  recognize, understand and accept the unique social and emotional needs of the gifted. While SENG supports strong gifted education programs, they also believe the emotional piece is the foundation for the development of healthy, happy, well-adjusted, appropriately educated, and contributing gifted members of society. And this will be the focus of the SENG Summit.  

For more information, and to register, visit SENG'S website.

In last month's issue, we noted that one of our young clients (Nick Florentius) had taken part in the FIRST Robotics Competition through the Lighthouse Program in Spring Lake Park. We have since learned that another of our clients, Christopher Fahey, was also involved in this program through St. Paul Prep and his team came in second in the finals.

Congratulations to both Nick and Christopher, and to all our readers who take part in these challenging programs! We appreciate your keeping us informed about these wonderful opportunities for our students.

Camp Invention and Club Invention are programs offered across the nation by Invent Now, which offers the wonder and excitement of science, technology, engineering and math programming disguised as hands-on fun! Registration is still open - and you can get a discount if you register with a friend! Visit for more information. 

In addition, find information about specialty camps in Minnesota at Family Times Inc.  From horse camp to leadership programs, this is a good start for finding just the right fit for your child.

Lakeville Area Public Schools is proud to present Ignite! Challenge and Choice for Highly Gifted Learners. Ignite! is a full-time elementary program opening in the fall of 2011 for students entering grades 3 and 4, and is intended for highly gifted learners scoring at the 98th or 99th percentile in ability and achievement. The program will be offered in a school-within-a-school setting and will expand to fifth grade in future years.

Please visit the district's website for more information, and go to Departments/Gifted Education.  Interested families are encouraged to contact Holly Traub with any questions.