Mona Chicks recently posted an article as a guest blogger on Creating Curriculum's blog, Top Ten Things I Wish All Teachers Knew About Giftedness. She offers a parent's perspective on the subject, and we like what she has to say.  Chicks also offers her insights on her own blog at lifewithintensity.blogspot.com. 

 

 

 

A client of ours recently recommended the Mother Daughter Book Club, which gives lots of ideas and support for families to share a love of reading. The website owner, Cindy Hudson, is author of Book by Book: The Complete Guide to Creating Mother-Daughter Book Clubs. She also offers meeting planning kits for specific books, book lists and reviews arranged by age recommendations (including adults), a list of favorite authors, and even suggested books for boys! There are lots of resources included in this website that will help you find the perfect books to read and discuss.

 

PBS Parents, which is a great resource generally, also offers some good tips on how to start a book club, whether it be for mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, or any combination of parents and children. The site also posts book club basics, how to foster great discussions, and the many benefits of book clubs.

 

 

Here are some good resources for the child who wants to continue learning over the summer, as posted by the National Association for Gifted Children:  

PBS Video and PBS for Kids: Many PBS shows and specials are available to view online.

iTunes U: This is Apple's site for educational media. Approximately 400 colleges, schools, museums, and other approved institutions provide content through iTunes U.

Annenberg Learner: This project produces videos that are primarily intended for teachers to use for their own professional development or to show in their classrooms.

MIT OpenCourseWare: MIT, one of the first universities to open online learning to the public, offers college-level courses, many including lectures, assignments, and exams.

 

Our publishers, Great Potential Press, recently made us aware of LibraryThing.com, which is a cataloging and social networking site for book lovers.  

 

No doubt many of us have so many books it's hard to keep track of them. Well, here's the solution, where you can group your books by what you own, what you've read, what you'd like to read, or even books you've lent out. This site will also help you gather cataloging information for your books.  

 

As I mentioned, LibraryThing is also a social networking site, where members can participate in forums or join the Early Reviewers program, where you will connect with people based on the books they share.

 

So check it out!

 

 

Application requirements have recently been posted for Davidson Fellows Scholarships. Students who are 18 or younger as of October 4, 2012, may submit projects that have the potential to benefit society and are equivalent to the depth of knowledge at college graduate level. The categories include science, mathematics, technology, music, literature, philosophy, and outside the box. Scholarships will be awarded in the amounts of $10,000, $25,000 and $50,000.

 

 

If you have any interest in constellations, Astroviewer is an intriguing resource to help you identify stars and planets. The site provides downloadable and printable maps of the stars, including the night sky as it currently appears over your area of the world. The site also has an interactive night sky map. And it's available in six other languages.

 

 

Here's an interesting article published in The American Scholar - Blue Collar Brilliance: Questioning assumptions about intelligence, work, and social class. This was written by Mike Rose, who is a faculty member of the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies and is also the author of The Mind at Work and Why School?: Reclaiming Education for All of Us.

 

Rose looks at the assumption that intelligence is closely associated with formal education, which then follows with the additional assumption that work requiring less schooling requires less intelligence. "Generalizations about intelligence, work, and social class," says Rose, "deeply affect our assumptions about ourselves and each other, guiding the ways we use our minds to learn, build knowledge, solve problems, and make our way through the world."