Gifted children may have unusual situation compared to more normal children. There are things parents can do to stimulate their gifted children at home. Education isn’t about reading book and memorizing information, it is also about implementing the knowledge into real-life application and problem-solving process. With proper analytical techniques, gifted children could be able to synthesize possible solutions and evaluate their options.
There are different options parents could take to allow their gifted children develop a sense of creativity. As an example, a simple activity like painting can help children to express themselves without supervision. This way, children can have a vision of what they want to illustrate and implement the vision.
Many gifted children don’t only make simple objects on the canvas; they could surprise us with very intricate designs, which show their exceptional attention to details. Parents could only make simple inquiries and give children the freedom to choose interactions between paints, choices of lighting, artistic patterns and color choices. Whatever we choose for such a home-based activity, we should make sure that the activity is particularly stimulating.
- Let children cook their unique meals that require only minimal supervision
- Let children build a custom play center in the room with minimal supervision
- Let children paint their own rooms with some supervision
- Let children to balance their checkbook with some supervision
- Let children design the backyard on paper with minimal supervision
- Have children express their opinions through blogs. Blogs could also help children to solve and research on specific issues that they are interested in. Science research is a good topic for gifted children, especially if they plan to become doctors, scientists or engineers. Children can do this with some supervision. We can check their topic, composition skills and grammar.
- Let children make solutions. Gifted children could have the ability to solve a myriad of very complex problems. This well help them to develop their problem-solving skills.
No matter what activity we choose, we should make sure that gifted children are properly trained and challenged. We could discuss with them about process and follow ups on things that they do. We should be sure that our questions can dig deep into their mind and can help to solve specific issues.
There are six levels gifted children must go through
1. Basic knowledge: Parents should make sure that children understand basic knowledge.
2. Comprehension: Children should be able to grasp the real meaning of knowledge that they learn.
3. Application: Perform basic application of the knowledge that they have learned. Children should be able to apply their knowledge to common situations.
4. Analysis: Children should be able to scrutinize their newly acquired knowledge and examine whether it applies to all situation.
5. Synthesis: Children should be able to create derivative knowledge based on the application and analysis of previous knowledge. This step will help children to innovate and discover new things.
6. Evaluation: Children should be able to make sound evaluation on knowledge that they have acquired, applied, analyzed and synthesized.