G/T Family Resources
How can I support my G/T student at home?
- Collect resources on your child's topics of interest, such as books, videos, and websites.
- Make time to talk to your child every day and encourage active questioning.
- Find peers or groups who share similar interests.
- Gifted children may have advanced abilities and vocabulary, but their emotional responses may not be to the same level of advancement. Acknowledge big emotions and provide a healthy outlet to address feelings of insecurity, perfectionism, and frustration.
- Gifted children are often highly observant and sensitive to social issues and fairness. Be aware of conversations and media that may have a deep impact.
- Your child will have strengths and areas for growth and development. Don’t expect perfection and encourage your child to persevere through challenges.
- Find opportunities for your child to participate in acts of service that can make a difference.
- Provide opportunities outside of school. Enrichments are incredibly beneficial whether it supplements school content or explores interests or passions. This could be in any area, whether that be through music, sports, the arts, technology, or academic camps.
- Encourage your child to take academic risks. Remember that struggle comes before new learning.
- Celebrate mistakes as learning opportunities. When you make mistakes, model positive ways to problem-solve and grow.
- Set realistic goals and expectations for your child. It can be easy to forget your child is just a child because he may be able to have adult conversations about advanced topics.
How can I get more information about Gifted and Talented Learners?
- National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) NAGC supports and develops policies and practices that encourage and respond to the diverse expressions of gifts and talents in children and youth from all cultures, racial and ethnic backgrounds, and socioeconomic groups.
- Texas Association for the Gifted and Talented (TAGT) TAGT offers a parent affiliate membership that provides various resources to support parents.
- Supporting the Emotional Needs of the Gifted (SENG) SENG’s mission is about empowering families and communities in reaching goals. SENG focuses on the social and emotional needs of gifted individuals.
- Hoagie’s Gifted Education Page Hoagie’s Gifted Education Page, ‘the “all things gifted” page,’ contains many valuable books, articles, and many other amazing resources for parents of gifted children.
Activities to Challenge Creative and Critical Thinking
Tynker Computer Coding Courses-Free, 6 lesson course for students in grades 3-8. Additional courses can be purchased by a campus that focus on math, English, social studies, or life science for grades 3-5.
Scratch-Free computer coding activities for students aged 8-16. Students can program interactive games, stories, and animations.
Code Studio- Free, 20 hour courses in Computer Science for students aged 4-18.
Lightbot- junior coding puzzles for ages 4-8 available on ipads, programming puzzles for ages 9+ available on ipads and Windows.
Ken-Ken Puzzles -free math puzzles (online or printable) that reinforce computation skills in addition, subtraction, multiplication, & division (difficulty level and math operations are customizable) while focusing on logical thinking
Greg ang Math Games -free online math games for kids. There are also downloadable puzzles, etc...that can be printed and used in the classroom.
Wonderopolis-website where a "wonder of the day" submitted by students is explored. Students can read for themselves (or there is audio available for students who need help with reading). Each "wonder of the day" is accompanied with "wonder words" for vocabulary development and a short comprehension quiz.
Poetry 4 Kids -website with tons of poems, poetry games, poetry activities, and other resources
Daily Quiddler Puzzle-from the creators of SET, a critical thinking, word-building puzzle
Daily SET Game- SET builds cognitive, logical and spatial reasoning skills as well as visual perception skills while playing a game! Because it has a rule of logic (three cards that are all the same or all different in each individual feature), and because players must apply this rule to the spatial array of patterns all at once, they must use both left brain and right brain thought processes.
Chess Kid-site to help kids learn and play chess with either the computer or other kids from around the world
Prodigy Game-free online math game targeted for students in grades 1-8, game differentiates to the learning needs of players
Renovated Learning-articles, links, and more Makerspace resources to help you on your journey.
DIY (Do It Yourself)-online platform for kids that offers a variety of skill-building activities and challenges. This is a great resource to help you brainstorm ideas for Makerspace activities.
Makerspaces.com -a collection of tweets that gives great project ideas for Makerspace
Mensa for Kids Games-online games that focus on different math and language skills, best for 3rd grade and up
Mystery Skype-Want to improve your student's research, questioning, and geography skills? All you need is a webcam and internet connection!
Mensa for Kids Lesson Plans -online collection of inter-disciplinary lesson plans for students at a variety of grade levels