Summer Activities for Intermediate Gifted Children

Summer Activities for Intermediate Gifted Children

Inexpensive and Fun Art, Math, Spelling, Reading, and Writing Activities for Gifted Kids

By Millie Smith, Yahoo! Contributor Network

Do not let your gifted child's mind go to waste this summer. In the summer bridge, make sure you keep the mind ticking and focused so when school rolls around again, your child is ready to move forward and not backtrack. Gifted kids especially need stimulus so they are not spending hours in front of the television set and playing video games. Gifted kids are always ready to learn and fortunately learning is usually fun for them. Here are a few ideas to keep your exceptional child on track this summer and explore new avenues and reap the intellectual rewards. These are very economical as well.

Create an art space in your home. Fill a drawer or crate with art supplies and paper. Try to stay away from coloring sheets as much as possible-someone has already created that. You want your child to create original works all their own. Find all kinds of paper to create upon-scraps even. Try painting on a piece of cardboard from a disassembled box-or paint the box itself!

Experiment with different mediums. Always buy the cheapest, smallest art supplies first-if they really like the medium, then you can always buy larger sets. Pastels are wonderful to introduce the blending and muting of color. Pastels are like soft chalk-and should be used lightly and gently. They can be very messy so protect the surface where your child is working. Wax paper works well. Blend colors with fingers-dry fingers. Water and wet hands should be avoided when first working with pastels. If they need to wash their hands to remove a certain color, then they should dry hands thoroughly because water will make the pastels completely melt. After more experience, they could do a damp water wash across the pastels to further blend the effect. If you have this in mind, use very thick paper.

A finished pastel can be sprayed with a clear art binding spray, or you can use hairspray. Either way, the finished project will often be messy to the touch. Put the finished piece in an inexpensive frame or create a portfolio if it is small enough by placing the piece into a clear sheet protector. Actually, most gifted kids like the idea of a personal 'portfolio' and will like to fill it up with various creations.

Whip out the cameras. Let your child experiment with cameras-and not just digital. Although digital is really the way of today and may eventually take over the photographic world, many magazines and newspapers still prefer photos from film. Let them figure out the intricacies of that durable old 35 mm camera that you have shelved. Experiment with black and white film. Buy slide film and create a slide show-in fact, 'transparencies,' which are actually slides are still used for photography for many publications, because of the beauty in the color and the durable quality of a slide. It could be fun to do a slide show of the entire summer-if you can still find a slide projector these days.

The digital version of this for children would be a PowerPoint presentation, used from digital shots. If you are thinking that you could not possibly teach this to a child, think again. My first grader is better at PowerPoint than I am! He learned at school in a special class for kids that are far ahead. Instead of playing games on the computer, let your child play around on PowerPoint. Many schools are requiring this now as opposed to the old-fashioned book report. Times are changing. Your gifted child needs to be exposed to this as early as possible.

Another activity is spelling with panache. Okay, most kids consider spelling a chore. But many gifted kids are naturally talented at it. You want to take the focus off the mundane for the summer. Try spelling the names of twenty-or one hundred-popular restaurants. Or arrange the spelling to gravitate towards the vacation you are about to take. If you are going to the mountains, try words that revolve around forests and trees and rivers. If you are going to the beach, try spelling words that revolve around marine animals, seashells and ocean life. Your child really should keep a summer speller in an inexpensive bound black and white notebook over the summer. Take these thematic words and create stories or even tales about your trip in this notebook. It will be a wonderful keepsake for you in later years, and it also provides the ever-needed documentation that is required for gifted resource programs.

When your child returns to school in the fall and is asked to write an essay about what she did over the summer-well, she will be prepared. Also allow your child to illustrate the black and white with small paintings with thick paper cut to fit the book or with colored pencils and crayons right on the notebooks pages. Decorate the outside of the book with favorite stickers rewarded for correct spellings or one for each day's work. Encourage them to decorate it and make it their own. If, for example, they take pictures at your trip to an amusement park and write a story about it-then have a few extra prints made and then tape them into the black and white. These activities will enhance your child's language ability, spelling ability and artistic eye.

Make math practical for your child. Let the teachers handle the boring repetition work while your child is in school. What you need is for your child to get down to the nuts and bolts of common sense math. The easiest way for them to learn this is right in the grocery store, and especially in the produce aisle. Have them take a notebook and a calculator and add, subtract, multiply and divide both on paper and check their work on the calculator. Another fun teaching tool is to start out with a budget of something like $100 and subtract down each item as it is placed in the cart. The side benefit to this is that you will stay in a budget and this will teach them about budgeting.

Along this line, your gifted child should learn to create a menu and then make a list of the items needed to create the meal. Cooking should be available to every gifted child in the summer-by learning to read a recipe and measure out in measuring cups and spoons, you will provide your child very valuable math skills. Then, there is turning on of an oven and understanding the chemical process of heat and degrees of heat.

Therese Haberman, Jun 28, 2010

Nature Camps and Museum Trips for the Gifted Child

An overnight camp for kids, which entails lots of physical activities intermingled with crafts and fun events is ideal for any child. The gifted child can further benefit by de-emphasizing on the intellectual activities he is involved in much of the time.

Getting the opportunity to connect with the natural world is exciting and the friendships formed at these camping trips can turn into lifelong relationships. Even a day time arts and crafts camp or a museum campership program represent less expensive alternatives worth considering. Let the child's interests dictate the direction taken in choosing a camp environment or specialty.

Summer Opportunities
for Gifted Kids
NAGC is pleased to provide a listing of summer programs, summer camps, enrichment programs, academic programs and special schools*.

*Listings do not imply nor carry an endorsement from NAGC. Please contact the individual, camp or organization directly for more information on their program.

12 Ideas for Summer Fun for Kids

Fun, Challenging (and Cheap) Activities Gifted Kids Will Love

By Carol Bainbridge, About.com Guide

When we are on a tight budget, it can be hard to find interesting and challenging activities for our gifted children. However, with a little thought and sometimes just a little planning, we can find plenty of summer fun activities. Here are just a few suggestions.

1. Plan a Picnic
   You don't have to travel far to have a picnic. In fact, you don't have to travel any farther than your own backyard. The fun isn't only in the picnic alone, but in the planning of it. It is a perfect way to create some cheap summer fun.

1. Plant a Garden
   Gardens offer kids a perfect opportunity for learning about plant life. If you start early enough in the season, you can start the garden from seeds. That is the ideal way to start a garden since the kids can watch the garden grow from the very beginning sprouts. However, if you start too late in the season to plant seeds, you can buy a few seedlings from just about anywhere, including many grocery stores. The kids can still watch the plants grow. Have them keep a chart of the growth every day or two. They can even draw pictures of the plants as they grow. And be sure that your child waters the plants and gets rid of the weeds.

1. Visit the Library for Summer Fun
   Libraries are wonderful sources of free fun for gifted kids. For one thing, libraries often have free programs for children. But it's not just the programs that make libraries fun for gifted kids. It's the books the libraries hold that gifted kids will also find fun and exciting.

1. Plan Some Family Fun Nights
   Families don't need to go on vacations or spend lots of money to enjoy some time together. All they need to do is plan some fun activities to share. Among the possibilities are watching movies or playing games together. Family nights can provide summer fun anytime, but especially on those rainy days when the kids can't play outdoors.

1. Camp in the Backyard
   You don't need to travel any farther than your own backyard to plan a camping trip. Part of the fun is in the planning, so take your time to find the right spot to pitch a tent and decide on activities the whole family can enjoy.

1. Create a Backyard Waterpark
   A waterpark in the backyard? Absolutely! If you already have a playset, all you have to do is get a hose (or two) and prop them up to spray water on it. If you don't, this might be the time to get one. You may have to spend money on one, but it will still be cheaper than what you'd pay for a family vacation. If you don't want to go with a playset, get a small backyard pool. Again, all you have to do is set up some hoses to spray either over the pool or around it. You're limited only by your imagination!

1. Plan a Scavenger Hunt
   You can encourage your children to explore nature with a nature scavenger hunt which could include items as simple as different shaped stones and leaves. Or you can hide objects of your own around the yard and give your children clues that will help them find them! Do you really want to make the activity challenging? Draw a map of where you have hidden the clues and let them analyze where the clues are located.

1. Make Music
   You can create music with just about anything that makes a sound. You can buy cheap kazoos or make your own by covering a comb with waxpaper (a clean comb!) Pots can serve as drums and lids can be cymbals. Empty jugs can be used, too, to make "music." It's easy to kids to get carried away with just making noise, so be sure to make this activity a musical one. Help your kids learn about music, while having fun.

1. Have a Yard Sale
   This activity can have several goals. You can get your house cleaned of clutter, give your kids something to do, and make a little money! You can also take the opportunity to teach your children a little about economics!

1. Make a Map of the Neighborhood
   This activity can provide a little exercise, too, since children have to walk around the neighborhood to make notes of what they see and determine what belongs where on a map. You should set boundaries so your children don't go farther than you want them to go. For areas farther from your house than you would like your children to go and for children who are too young to walk around the neighborhood on their own, you can go with them and get a little exercise yourself!

1. Conduct Simple Experiments
   Most of us don't have a handy list of easy experiments to draw from, but libraries have plenty of books with experiments for children. Plan a trip to the library (another great activity) and find a book or two with experiments.

1. Put on a Play
   This activity can be as simple or as complex as your children would like it to be. The simplest way to put on a play is to act out a familiar story (like Little Red Riding Hood), using whatever you can find around the house for costumes. The more complex methods of play production would start with the children making up their own story, writing a script, planning the costumes (that mom and others might help make), rehearsing, creating a flyer, and making tickets.