How to have a Perfect Summer....or a Really Good School Year

My friend and colleague (and parent of gifted children) Anne Marie passed this link on to me and even though it is now mid-summer, I think it is still worth including here...in part because some parents out there may be entering the mid-summer "I'm bored" blahs, but also because essentially, for homeschoolers, her "Perfect Summer" recipe is also my "How to have a Really Good School Year" recipe. (I try to avoid the word perfect around gifted folk - pushes too many buttons...grin).

A Prescription for the Perfect Summer

Dr. MacEachron (co-founder of the CT Center for Exceptional Learners) writes:

In our practice of meeting the needs of gifted and twice-exceptional learners, our “prescription” for the perfect summer is “Take two genuine interests, explore them thoroughly, and call us in September.”

Tips for Parents

Summer is almost upon us. How can parents go about designing an enrichment-focused summer program for their children?

Begin with a careful assessment of their genuine interests.  In a non-judgmental way, directly ask what they want to learn more about, from anthropology to zoology, archery to yoga, animation to video film making. Making a list of various hobbies and fields of interest and discussing them with children can be helpful. Parents can reflect on how their children choose to spend free time, the books that absorb their interest, the kinds of exhibits that engage them in museums, and any other clues to what intrigues them. Even interests that on the surface don’t appear to lend themselves to productive enrichment can provide valuable clues. For example, if your daughter spends most of her free time on the phone with friends in meaningful conversations, recognize that this suggests she may be good at and interested in helping her friends solve problems, and consider exposing her to psychology.

Once parents have a better understanding of their children’s interests, what should they do with these insights?

• Embrace them. Don’t try to re-channel your child into something you consider to be more impressive or marketable, or something that you wish you might have done but didn’t. Remember that it’s your child’s life, not yours.

• Start searching for opportunities for your child to delve deeply into exploring his or her interests. Discourage your child from following friends to a camp that may interest the friends but might not be a good fit for your child.

• Don’t limit yourself to organized camp programs (although there are many terrific and specialized ones), and don’t feel limited to the menu of activities offered in formal programs in your area. Often the best opportunities for your child are the ones that the two of you initiate together. 

• Don’t be shy about asking experts in a field for their advice. Most people who have a consuming interest in something are flattered when they are approached by a parent with a child who is intrigued by learning more. Professional musicians might be able to recommend teachers, competitions, and schools. A scientist or professor might be able to recommend a colleague your child can intern with. We know children who have co-published articles in journals by the time they were out of middle school – all of which started when their parents asked if their children could help out in a lab.

• Check local high schools and colleges for courses your child (or you and your child) can audit.

• Plan family vacations around your child’s interests. Paleontology fits well with a trip to the Southwest to volunteer on a dinosaur dig. Engineering fits well with outings to science museums and factory tours.

• Enlist the help of your local children’s librarian. Find books and do internet searches about your child’s interest areas. Discover magazines about particular fields, from National Geographic to MIT’s Technology Review. Find out about conferences and special events.

• Learn about local special interest clubs and organizations. Most communities have star watching groups, book groups, birding clubs, and other such groups that offer events and information.

• Be involved. Don’t just sign your child up or dump resources on your child. Accompany him or her to events. Help him practice. Read the books he is reading and discuss them over dinner. Be an active partner in exploring your child’s interests and how he or she might pursue them in the summer. Studies repeatedly show that parental involvement is essential if children are to fully develop their potential.

If you follow this “prescription” for the perfect summer, your gifted child will begin the school year with renewed energy, enthusiasm for learning, and one step closer to achieving the joy of true fulfillment. And you’ll have quite an interesting ride along the way!

Link to full article from SENG and Dr. Devon MacEachron

Summer Camps

So I'm passing on the list below as suggestions for the gifted kids in your life.  I got this list from another person who got it from someone else...so not recommending or taking responsibility for the camps listed below, but think they sound like fun and are worth checking out.  Well, except for SALTS - that one I've been on and can personally recommend, without reservation. So fun.

Hope you find the fun in the summer!  Carmen

SALTS - Sail and Life Training Society

Beyond the Books Summer Camp

Jabber-Wacky
Offering kids a chance to be totally creative including making things that go zoom, building towers from balsa wood, exploring inventions and making prototypes

Mindstein
Strategy-thinking puzzles and games, critical thinking strategies, generating many ideas and finding new ways to think for children in grades K-7, Coquitlam B.C.
-small safe, group environment fosters a willingness to take intellectual and social risks

Think Tank Challenge Center
Innovation and problem solving in a cooperative group setting, Maple Ridge B.C.

SFU Summer Camps 

Maker Camp  - online

MindCraft Summer Camps - online

Quiring Chamber Music Camp
Musicians aged 5-20
Combination of chamber music, master classes, composition/art classes and concerts providing a well- balanced, engaging and enriching experience for music students

Pedalheads Bike Camp
Multiple locations including Coquitlam or mountain biking on SFU trails

Bard on the Beach 
Main camp at Vanier Park with satellite camps in Burnaby and other communities

Academie Duello
Knightly training including falconry, heraldry, swordplay, archery, strategy and medieval games

BC Youth Writers’ Camp, Okanagan College, Penticton 

University of Toronto Youth Summer Programs in Law or Medicine 

Satori Summer Camp for Gifted Teens  -a summer experience for gifted students aged 12-18
On the campus of Eastern Washington University, July 21-27

St. George’s School
Fun topics include Lego, engineering, alien guide to planet earth, junior robotics, cartooning, digital media, web design, chess & puzzles, circus skills and Shakespeare

The Quantum Cryptography School
Waterloo University offers grade 11 and 12 students a week-long summer immersion program in quantum cryptography,

International Summer School for Young Physicist 
Waterloo For grade 11 and 12 students with passion for physics and who intend to pursue physics at the university level

Concordia Language College
Flagship Youth Summer Villages, where students are immersed in a foreign language for one week, two week or month long residential camps in one of 14 languages
High school students receive credit for a full year of language study

The Doug Tarry Young Ornithologists Workshop 
offered through Bird Studies Canada. All expenses paid; student must get themselves to and from Longpoint, Ontario.
LEAP 
9 days of outdoor transformational outdoor living and learning. It is free, provides course credit, and takes place in Powell River. Hands-on summer outdoor immersion for kids from around the world 

Catching the Spirit
Their camps are FREE and provide certificates of volunteer hours. Once a student has attended a camp or camps, the student can apply the next year to be a peer leader. This organization is allied with Metro Vancouver and BCIT and offers excellent leadership training including free First Aid training.

TUTS, Theatre Under the Stars, is often looking for volunteers for their box office and a few other duties. There are some perks in terms of tickets and the kids can gain experience that may be useful later for employment in or out of the arts.

This Little Piggy Went to Market...

Okay, so some of our little piggies will be intrigued by the stock market. (I had a question from one of my families on this topic, hence the post). I'm more of the little piggy who stayed home and ate roast beef (can I be two piggies at once? I think I can) but still, for those market-going kids, here are a few resources.  Again, not my forte, and I've just found these via google reviews, so if you have good resources to share in this area, please let me know!

Also a note: successful entrepreneurs, out there changing the world, are often found in the gifted/LD crowd - too ADD to be excited and sit still for purposeless school work, but a real job, a real goal, with the chance to hire people to do the stuff they aren't interested in...brilliant!  TED TALK: Let's raise entrepreneurs

Something to think about...

Carmen

1.  Investment Camps for kids:

Calgary, Alberta (SAIT Ploytech):
Investment Masters

Toronto, Ontario (Seneca College)
Wealth Rules 12 - 14
Camp Millionaire 9 - 14
Review Camp Millionaire

Oakville, Ontario (Appleby College)
Money Smarts for Kids

2.  Free Stock Market Game:
Market Watch

3. Clubs
Junior Achievement  - Investment Strategies
JA Competition

4.  Online Resources about Finance and the Stock Market and becoming an entrepreneur:
Money Savvy Kids - Google Book

Lemonade Millionaire and LM Young Entrepreneurs

Khan Academy

Money Smarts 4 Kids

Canadian Banker Association Student Education program 


5. A bit of Biblical perspective:
...because if you are like me, you may be questioning why the focus on funds, friend?  Shouldn't our focus be on making the world a better place, feeding the poor etc. etc.? But I sometimes think we throw out the baby with the bathwater in this area rather than being aware that good stewardship starts with understanding what you are stewarding.  We grow our gifts - creativity, playing piano, listening, scientific inquiry - why not grow our ability to handle our finances? The results - whether  we become artists, performers, counsellors, scientists, pastors or money mangers - and how we attain and use those results - are a reflection on the people we are, the people we are becoming as followers of Jesus and his way ...and, I would hope, would thus be to the glory of God and for the care of the people on this planet.  Just my 2 cents.  (Ha. Money joke. How timely.)

And some a site for these type of questions:
  
Got Questions
Christian curriculum Financial Literacy for homeschoolers - personal finances
Monarch curriculum

Spelling from Greek and Latin Roots

Just a thought for parents looking for a spelling program for their advanced speller.  Perhaps you want to look at a program that teaches spelling from Greek and Latin Roots?  It ties the spelling words into in interesting and logical framework and may spark an interest in your student learning those languages as well!

Google away and see what you find!

Here are a few of my finds:

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Greek-and-Latin-Word-Root-Spelling-and-Vocabulary-Program-805577

https://www.spellingcity.com/latin-greek-root-words.html

http://www.readingrockets.org/article/root-words-roots-and-affixes

reading The Spark: A mother's story of nurturing genius

I just finished reading this book, The Spark, by Kristine Barnett, (about her son, Jacob (Jake) Barnett), and loved it.  I gobbled it up in one sitting and thought I would just mention it here in case you haven't had a chance to read it yet yourself. The book brought out what I have seen, time and again -  that connection between the sensitivities/excitabilities/the deep diving that we see in the gifted -  and then those same qualities are somehow seen through a different and intensified lens with those on the ASD spectrum.

Now, I have to say, that was not the point of the book.  The Spark tells the story of Jacob, his diagnosis of autism and how his mom didn't give up on him, but managed to reach him - and many others - by tapping into and connecting around areas of strength, interest, passion.   I was gratified to see the mantra that I've been saying a lot this year - if they are struggling, make it more difficult - played out in the extreme with Jacob (as he moves happily from his grade 3 class into college level astronomy and math courses).  It is a fascinating fact that for gifted kids, and adults, a challenge is as good as a rest and stimulation is vital to happiness.  How many of our kids today are struggling with "school work", with behaviour, because they are bored?  This point was driven home last year when I took my wiggly nephew for a walk to the park (after he couldn't sit still in the house) and he turned from distracted  5 year old into a kid with laser beam focus when he were offered a ride on a mini dirt bike and then allowed to drive it with shaky balance around the park.

It reminds me too of this quote I read a few months ago:

"A noted scientist observing that "early voyagers fancied that the coral-building animals    instinctively built up the great circles of the Atoll islands to afford themselves protection in the inner parts," has disproved this fancy by showing that the insect builders can only live and thrive fronting the open ocean, and in the highly aerated foam of its' restless billows.  So it has been commonly thought that protected ease is the most favourable condition of life, whereas all the noblest and strongest lives prove on the contrary that the endurance of hardship is the making of men, and the factor that distinguishes between existence and vigorous vitality."  - Cowman (Streams in the Desert)

So there we have it: work hard. The other side is play hard.

Kristine did exactly that.  She encourage play and a childhood rather than endless therapies (or endless classes or endless programming or endless drilling). The mix of challenge and play that Kristine talks about is exactly what I see gifted kids wanting and thus recommend - hard work and then time to integrate that work/learning with play, rest, sandbox silliness.

All in all, an accessible, inspiring read about real lives, about raising twice exceptional kids, living with courage, faith, and a spirit of abundance.

Enjoy!

Carmen

Embrace the Shake

Following up on the thought that where perfectionism can limit, embracing limitations can be a source of creativity and freedom, this 10 minute Embrace the Shake - Ted Talk talks seems like a good follow-up to [Welcome to] the Dark Side, last week's post.  It is a reminder that struggle, limitations, are a gift in life - that your weakness can be your strength.  So counterintuitive, like the meek inheriting the earth, last being first, power made perfect in weakness, foolish things confounding the wise.

Many - most? - gifted people are asynchronous in their development and sometimes their huge strengths are matched by huge weaknesses. They may be able to remember anything but be less advanced in logic and reasoning.  Or be hugely good at math but struggle with processing speed and working memory; excellent hockey players with massive physical literacy who struggle to read; or may be extremely logical and well-read, but then struggle with social cues.  What does this mean for them? How are these weaknesses a gift?

In the Bible, the passage 2 Corinthians 12 refers to Apostle Paul, and his 'thorn in the flesh', saying is is what keeps him from being conceited. Somehow, humility trumps perfection every time. What a lesson. I wonder if humility gives us eyes to see ourselves and others clearly?  Does it open our eyes and ears to God?  Perhaps true humility allows us to embrace our faults, live with an inner peace and confidence, rather than obsessing about ourselves, or exhausting ourselves by maintaing and projecting/defending an image?  Integrating our strength and weakness. Hmmm...wholeness.  A beautiful thing.  Shalom.

Carmen

[Welcome to] the Dark Side of Giftedness

It is early February and an exploration of the Dark Side seems appropriate for those of us living on the Wet West Coast.  So when I was sent an article recently about the dark side of giftedness - how gifted children are frequently misunderstood - I found it timely for a reposting here.  I encourage you to take a moment and give it a read. Marcello Di Cintio ends his article with a quote and a poem, (bottom of this article too) saying "Unless their heart is intact, no learning can happen".  True of all people, not only the gifted. 

What a precious thing to steward as parents and educators: the intact hearts of the young, as they bring us the treasure of themselves, offering openly and fully their enthusiasm, optimism, passion, and curiosity. And yet so many are wounded so early. So quickly and easily crushed, discouraged, disappointed. (And not uncommonly, crushed by parents and educators, friends, careless and rushed despite best intentions.) While my heart wants to scream and protect and wrap in cotton all the children I know and knew from any pain - the pain of bullying, or abuse, of neglect, of illness, disease, distress, disability - children are 'wired for struggle', for challenge.  As humans we need it, crave it. In our world, we will never be free of it. It is thrown at us or we throw ourselves at it, one way or another. 

Perhaps gifted individuals, often so sensitive to injustice, with that extra capacity to feel and understand, are more quickly and deeply wounded than most. It seems so, in my experience with gifted students. They certainly often have incapacitating anxiety and the perfectionism they deal with can be like a sucking mud around their feet. But again, they are certainly not alone, not in their need of an intact heart and not in feeling the pain of growing up, the pain of living. 

I often come back to an experience in an art class, where the instructor, Wendy, had us spend an hour drawing from a model... only to have us then (unexpectedly) tear the work into pieces, reassemble it in a new way and then create a piece out of that.  It broke my heart a little to tear up what I had worked on, this perfect piece that I was proud of and that had a piece of me in it...but having to work with the torn drawing, having to problem solve, having to make something new from the wreckage struck a cord in me.  I learned not to hold perfection as quite so precious, to be willing to risk and to see new ways to make the broken even more beautiful than the perfect - more accessible, more interesting, unexpected, and even more lovely. 

 My job sees me constantly work with gifted children in crisis, families in distress. So I am constantly reminded and remind others that brokenness and wounding are not the end. If our lives are made and built around our strengths, that strength is made accessible by the humility, the compassion developed in brokenness. And when healing completes the circle, a person of such translucent beautiful strength remains, with so much to offer the world.  

I always figured my role in life was going to be a re-builder of sorts but I didn't quite know what that was going to look like. Now I think that perhaps that is what we are all called to, at times, whether we are on the outside or inside of a life that has broken down. To rebuild and not discard. To rebuild along side that person, even if it is oneself, to put shoulder to the work, to clear a weed or pass a brick.  To not give up and abandon the work. And sometimes,  to lay a hand upon a brow and reteach a thing its' loveliness.

...sometimes it is necessary

to reteach a thing its loveliness,

to put a hand on its brow

of the flower

and retell it in words and in touch

it is lovely

until it flowers again from within...

From Saint Francis and the Sow by GALWAY KINNELL 

Carmen