National Network for Child Care (NNCC) unites the expertise of many of the nation's leading universities through the outreach system of Cooperative Extension. The goal is to share knowledge about children and childcare from the vast resources of the landgrant universities with parents, professionals, practitioners, and the general public. They network with committed individuals around the country to bring you practical information and resources that will be useful to you in your everyday work with children. The website contains over 1000 publications and resources related to childcare and much, much more.
As one of the nation's largest organization for studying young children and their families, the FPG Child Development Institute of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill conducts research and provides outreach services. Find online evaluations of public programs.
Every child is a genius to his or her parents, but not every parent has the knowledge or confidence to develop their child's creative, intellectual potential to its fullest extent. This book by Shakuntala Devi helps create a constructive, fun and supportive learning environment for children, from babyhood through school. It offers practical, manageable advice and accessible, step-by-step methods designed to bring out natural abilities.
This book is the definitive reference book for those searching for a summary and evaluation of the literature on giftedness and gifted education with summaries of important topics in the field, providing relevant research and a guide to how the research applies to gifted education. Sample topics addressed include alternative assessment, counseling, early childhood, highly gifted students, homeschooling, parenting, and policy and advocacy.
Author Kenneth Lane outlines 103 activities that are designed to help give a child the necessary perceptual motor-skills needed to succeed in school. Categories covered are motor, visual motor, ocular motor, vision, laterality, directionality, sequential processing and simultaneous processing.
Written by Nancy B. Hertzog, Ph.D., this book presents an array of strategies that facilitate the growth and development of young gifted children. From creating a literacy-rich environment to affording opportunities for inquiry, the implementation of the strategies presented is sure to empower young children to pursue and develop their gifts and talents.
Written by Paula Olszewski-Kubilius, Ph.D., Lisa Limburg-Weber, Ph.D. and Steven Pfeiffer, Ph.D., this book offers sound advice and guidance for parents of gifted and talented children of preschool and elementary school age. The authors detail how parents can create a home environment that both elicits and develops their child's special abilities through activities, games, and play.
The authors join together to prove that training preschoolers with flash cards and attempting to hurry intellectual development doesn't pay off. In fact, the authors claim, kids who are pressured early on to join the academic rat race don't fair any better than children who are allowed to take their time. Alarmed by the current trend toward creating baby Einsteins, the authors urge parents to step back and practice the "Three R's: Reflect, Resist, and Recenter." Instead of pushing preschoolers into academically oriented programs that focus on early achievement, they suggest that children learn best through simple playtime, which enhances problem solving skills, attention span, social development and creativity.
This book by Dr. Miraca Gross provides an account of the development of 15 children with IQs exceeding 160. Gross examines indepth the children's developmental and educational history, and common characteristics. As well, it identifies educational strategies and adaptations for exceptionally gifted students. This book is must read for anyone raising, teaching, counseling, or assessing highly and profoundly gifted children.
Written by Audrey Grost, this book is a mother's story of the early development of her profoundly gifted, extremely mathematically precocious son, Michael, and her struggles to obtain an appropriate assessment and educational provisions for him. Audrey Grost discusses family issues and educational problems as well as how the family dealt with extensive media coverage when Michael became the youngest college student ever.
This book presents research on the early developmental history of children who come to perform at the gifted IQ level during middle childhood, representing an integration of the four authors' interests in the fields of intelligence, psychometrics, and developmental psychology. The research presented is based on the Fullerton Longitudinal Study, which entails the systematic investigation of a single cohort studied from infancy onward.
Aletha Solter presents a new approach to parenting which respects the child's needs and feelings. Without using punishment nor rewards, children are allowed to reach their highest potential.
Play is the child's way of learning about, adapting to and integrating with his or her environment. In addition to adequate sports and recreation facilities children need a wide variety of opportunities, choices and raw materials that they can use as they see fit for free constructive creative play. These essays, drawn from papers given at the International Playgrounds Association's Seventh World Congress, focus on the social significance of play.
Author of 10 books that concentrate on early child development and education, John Holt is widely considered the father of the modern-day homeschooling movement, because he grew to believe that schools stifle the learning process. In this, his final book--compiled by colleagues from drafts, letters, and magazine essays written by Holt before he died in 1985--he strings together his own observations and philosophies to show how young children can be encouraged to learn everything from reading and math to music and science.
Feldman's study of six male child prodigies includes extensive descriptions of the children's development in babyhood and early childhood. This volume includes case study material on an "omnibus prodigy" who scored well above 200 IQ.
James Alvino details a practical, informative primer for raising and educating our gifted children from preschool to adolescence. Strategies are provided for determining whether a child is gifted as well as ways to nurture a child's gifts and talents, and explains how gifted children can become bored, socially aggressive, and even underachieving if not appropriately challenged.
While this digest includes articles, research reports and advice from Gifted Children Monthly, it also contains original work by author James Alvino on emotional needs, perfectionism and the superbaby scourge and gender-specific issues.
This book from Bob Murray and Alicia Fortinberry, offers a safe, drug-free approach to protect your child from depression. Parents can learn how to spot the early signs for depression and even prevent your own depression from influencing your child.
In this book, author and therapist Steve Biddulph explains to parents how to embrace the differences between boys and girls and work with them. Citing such gender specific risks facing boys as a higher percentage of learning disabilities to greater threats of violence and suicide, Biddulph maps out parenting strategies for three distinct stages of growth.
Authors Robert Brooks and Sam Goldstein present a set of 10 essential parenting behaviors ("guideposts") - a prescription of sorts, for nurturing resilience in kids. Each chapter describes a different guidepost and illustrates what can be done to foster psychological strength, hope and optimism.
Dr. William Pollack provides an inside look into the secret emotional lives of boys. The reader is able to hear boys speak for themselves, in their own voices, about everything from violence, school, parents, depression and girls to suicide, sports, sex and spirituality.
This book, written by three pioneers in the new field of cognitive science, discusses important discoveries about how much babies and young children know and learn, and how much parents naturally teach them. It argues that evolution designed us both to teach and learn, and that the drive to learn is our most important instinct. It also reveals as fascinating insights about our adult capacities and how even young children -- as well as adults -- use some of the same methods that allow scientists to learn so much about the world.
This Gifted Child Today reader, by Susan Johnsen and James Kendrick, covers some of the most important issues facing gifted and talented girls during their school years, from elementary school through college. Included are specific chapters on counseling and classroom strategies for help ensure these students' future success.
Renowned developmental psychologists and experts in gifted education come together to explore giftedness from early childhood through the elder years. Focusing on the practical implications of emerging theoretical perspectives and empirical findings, contributors examine prediction and measurement, diversity issues, and psychosocial factors as they relate to developing talent in different domains.
Tracy Cross, Ph.D. is considered the nation's leading authority on the psychology of gifted children. In this book, he helps provide a framework for understanding the wide range of needs gifted students have and the potential role that differing groups of adults undertake to help these students. Cross' Continuum of Psychological Services, makes it evident that parents, teachers and counselors need to work together to cover most of the services gifted students will need and that no one person can assume all of the necessary roles. Click here to read a review of this book.
Bringing together theoretical research and empirical data on infant biology, developing infant capacities, animal models, and the impact of various social forces, this volume presents these disparate approaches in an attempt to examine uncommonness in children.
This book from Karen Miller offers more than 400 actual activities, techniques and designs for toys that are effective in working with very young children in home and group care settings.
This book offers insights into the intellectual and emotional development of exceptional children. Contributors explore the nature of giftedness and how to recognize it in youngsters; the complexities of the creative process; standardized tests and their effectiveness in asserting potential; and developmental theories and how they relate to the identification of gifted children. Several chapters also examine young prodigies and the diversity of personalities and talents that exist among the gifted.
This book by Bertie Kingore and Glenda Higbee contains 30 units of study organized into nine monthly sections, each unit includes hundreds of activities in multiple curriculum areas, and all units have been classroom tested. It provides a well-balanced curriculum in an easy-to-follow organizational format and has been proven to have effective content for two through five year olds. This book can be a tool to enrich each child's educational opportunities.
Written by Chip Wood, this is a guide for anyone working or living with children ages 4-14. Written for teachers and parents, it offers clear and concise descriptions of children's development. A comprehensive, "user-friendly" reference that helps translate knowledge of child development into schooling that helps all children succeed. Yardsticks includes charts summarizing physical, social, language, and cognitive growth patterns, suggestions for curricular areas, thematic units, and favorite books for different ages.
This entry level book is written by Judy Galbraith for parents of children ages 2-8. It includes characteristics of gifted, descriptions of terms used in gifted education, perfectionism, parenting the gifted child, working with the schools and the rights of parents.
This book is the result of a group effort of more than 6,500 members of The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP). Many of the most common physical, emotional, behavioral, cognitive, social and moral issues and the challenges of parenting that you will confront in raising a child are discussed.
An estimated 500,000 potentially gifted children are born each year. Since most schools don't begin to test for giftedness until about age 8, it is left to parents to recognize and nurture their children's special talents and abilities in the early critical years. Written by Joan Franklin Smutny, Kathleen Veenker and Stephen Veenker, this intelligent, insightful, and useful book is a complete guide to identifying gifted children and helping them develop to the fullest.
Young gifted children, although a diverse group within the population, demonstrate a number of distinctive characteristics particularly in the cognitive, social and emotional domains. This paper explores the nature of the young gifted child's thinking during the period of early childhood. The discussion is illustrated with examples provided by the families of young gifted children. The examples of children's conversations, drawings, and work samples from the study highlight the reality of the rived experience of young gifted children. They also challenge adult preconceptions of the young child and suggest the need to reconceptualize the roles and relationships within early childhood pedagogy.
This article, hosted by the North South Wales Association for Gifted and Talented Children website, provides general advice and suggestions for parents of school-aged children whose children exhibit some/all of the characteristics of academically gifted children. Author, Jane Beattie, outlines nine informative steps parents can follow to better understand the process of raising a gifted child.
This site gives parents a perspective on their child's drawing and how it compares to other children their age.
A section for education is located on The World Bank's website, which contains information on early childhood development. You will find concise, thorough descriptions of each developmental stage among young children on this page.
Earlychildhood.com is an online resource for parents and teachers. This website has a variety of resources including an online discussion group, arts & crafts, the EarlyChildhood News magazine, online curriculum and much more.
The term social thinking encompasses many treatment programs described as "teaching social thinking and related social skills." These strategies share common traits: How their own social minds work - why they react and respond the way they do, The behaviors that make others feel good and bad, How these behaviors are affecting their own emotions, responses to and relationships with others across different social contexts.
This is a great site that gives parents of young children a great source of information about the developemental milestones while contrasting normal children with gifted children.
This article hosted on the Hyper-Parenting.com, is authored by Jan Dehner and covers the topic of children's hectic schedules. She reveals that according to a recent to a study by the American Academy of Pediatrics, over-scheduling can lead to increased stress, anxiety and physical ailments.
Zero to Three's mission is to support the healthy development and well-being of infants, toddlers and their families. As a national nonprofit multidisciplinary organization, Zero to Three informs, educates and supports adults who influence the lives of infants and toddlers.