My husband came across an interesting article in The New York Times titled Studying Young Minds, and How to Teach Them. While it doesn’t mention gifted children, it does talk about how cognitive neuroscience is changing our expectations about teaching young children. It’s interesting to see that it wasn’t until recently that scientists realized that children under 5 could grasp early math concepts. Of course this seems shocking to me, considering all the math C was doing before age 5, but the article is referring to ND (normally developing) children. Because preschoolers were largely believed to not be capable of understanding math concepts, they were rarely given the opportunity to learn them. Unfortunately, the same reasoning is often applied to gifted children, that they cannot or should not learn advanced material, and are left to do much of their learning outside of school.
Also worth noting, Davidson has updated its list of Gift Ideas for Eager Young Minds. I’m happy to see that at least two of the presents C is getting are on the list. This year we have tried to stay away from buying books, however. He goes through them too quickly and rarely returns to them later. Instead we’ve been doing well with his weekly trips to his school library and biweekly trips to our local library. I am thrilled that I discovered I could request books online and have them waiting for me!
For those with mathy kids, last month MamaTo2 on Davidson’s gifted forum recommended Think Math, a collection of many Flash-based math games along with math songs and other resources . C has been busy with EPGY math, so we haven’t really explored this site yet, but plan to check it out more thoroughly sometime.
