When should a gifted child start kindergarten?

Jokingly, my friends and I will say that all our children are gifted.  In fact, in all the conversations I've had with parents about when to start a child in kindergarten, absolutely no one has said that their child isn't smart enough to start - it's inevitably about social or athletic concerns. It's sort of assumed that the intellectual development of the child won't really be impacted either way.

The President of the Montana Association of Gifted and Talented Education's post on Teacher Magazine's EdWeek suggests that for gifted children, perhaps we should be considering EARLY start - or, as in the case of fall children/boys kids, ON TIME.  She cites 50 years of research (summarized and available at the Acceleration Institute which is focused on Gifted and Talented education) on the benefits of acceleration (skipping grades).  Certainly something to consider for the parents of bright children considering holding their children back for non-academic reasons.

Whatever you believe about skipping grades, its virtually undisputed that schools should challenge every student and encourage students to go beyond their comfort zone of abilities. How to do this without creating pressurized schools is a challenge. Personally, I like the project based learning models that I see at our school and others as a way for each child to learn according to their learning style and push beyond their comfort zone. 

An example - the fourth grade at my school started their year learning the scientific method and immediately applying to an experiment testing different brands of paper towels. They 

A quick review of the scientific method:

1. Observe something
2. Form a hypothesis that states the explanation of the observation
3. Predict what would happen if the hypothesis is true or false.
4. Create an experiment to test the predictions.
5. Analyze the results and determine if the hypothesis is on track.

So the fourth grade observed that different paper towel brands are different and ran experiments on absorbency and strength over the course of a week.  Then the kicker...when the experiment was done and the data collected, each child had a week to create an advertisement for the brand they chose - a poster ("print" in my world), jingle or video. Their ads were to be "big, bold and beautiful", make and defend scientific claims and engage the audience. The criteria for excellence was written and distributed to students (and their parents).  The result was every child strove for public excellence and expressed themselves and their abilities - whether or not they are gifted in science.  Or writing. Or art.  And when they presented their ads, the classroom erupted with support and feedback - from the students and staff. 

There are possibilities to challenge every child every day. What is unacceptable is letting students disengage from learning because they are either bored, lost or something else. It seems to me that finding a school that will engage and challenge your child appropriately is crucial - whether they are truly gifted or not.

Healthy lunches

The more I exercise, the more I care about what I put in my body. And the more I care about what I put in my children's bodies so that they are strong and healthy, but not neurotic.  I remember thinking my friends had crazy parents when they wouldn't eat certain foods or only ate organic.  Low and behold, I'm becoming one of them.

One of the most challenging meals to make healthy for my kids is lunch. It's challenging because sometimes they're eating at school and I don't control the menu. It's challenging because it's always time constrained. I'm trying to steer them towards eating raw fruits and veggies - albeit the sweeter veggies like carrots and peas. We eliminated high fructose corn syrup years ago and I minimize soy because it's fed to the animals that become the meat we eat. I'm also trying to limit the amount of bread.  Which makes sandwiches a real issue.

Over a recent vacation, my husband and I tried to eat lunch without eating bread or pasta for an entire week. Our favorite trick was to take a slice of cold cuts (turkey, roast beef) and put sliced avocado and tomato (for hubby) on it and roll it up. Then we brought small amounts of mustard, olive oil mayo or other healthy fat aioli to dip our cold cut rolls in.  The result - delicious and satisfying.

We're going to try this lunch with the kids. I also want to try cold grilled chicken with honey or aioli in which to dip. Hard boiled eggs are a hit too! And good news - our local grocer, Piazza's Fine Foods, is offering kosher cold cuts -

• Turkey sliced salami
• Turkey bologna sliced
• Oven prepared Turkey slices
• Chicken bologna slices
• Turkey pastrami slices
• Smoked Turkey breast slices

And that's enough for some real variety in our lunch options. I'm trying to give them protein, simple carbs in veggies and fruit, and nuts (as long as no one is allergic).  Same things we're trying to eat.

What are you putting in your child's lunch box for back to school?

And if you haven't already - order your kosher grass fed beef before August 24, 2010 to have it for the High Holidays!

Tips for getting your kids ready to go back to school

I was shocked in June when Target was promoting Back to School - hadn't we just finished the school year. But now it's August and it's really time to start the "re-entry" process. Here's our back to school acclimation program that is more productive than a shock to the system on Sept. 1.

Tip One: Don't stop reading

We've encouraged reading throughout the summer and my eldest has an assignment to write a report on two books he's read. We let the kids choose books to read for the summer and enticed them with a slight extension to bedtime exclusively for reading. I'm pretty sure parents have been trying that trick for generations.

Tip Two: Clean the desks - but make it fun

My family has a paper problem and I'm pretty sure the sheets of paper have learned to reproduce in our welcoming environment. I hired an organizer to help me deal with my husband and my issues.  So far, so good and it's been a couple of months.  For the kids, we let everyone know that Saturday morning was desk cleaning day.  Dad led the removal of everything from the desks and the initial garbage disposal. Mom led the review of what to keep and what to relegate to memories.  Empty desks ready for the next year of work.

Tip Three: Take inventory

School supplies aren't particularly expensive, but so many of them come home at the end of the year that it seems wasteful not to re-use the ones that are still virtually new. We put all the existing inventory on the dining room table, tested pens, pencils, erasers, markers and more until we had everything sorted. Compared our inventory to the school supply list and highlighted what was left to buy.

Tip Four: Make a playdate

My kids go to a bunch of camps over the summer where they make new friends and explore their interests. Sometimes there's a schoolmate at these camps, but usually not. August is a great time to reconnect them with their friends. We're doing a Giants game with one friend. Working on more (social calendaring is not my strong suit). If your child is at school with my sons - want to have a playdate?

Tip Five: Talk about school positively

It doesn't take much for kids to realize that summer is a lot of fun. No homework. No tests. No reports. Lots of sports and fun. Our kids usually find school to be fun too (not like summer, but still fun) - they like learning and being with their friends. Instead of bemoaning the end of summer, we talk about what they're looking forward to in their next year of school and what they want to learn. We convey our own genuine excitement for the experience they're about to have at school. A little bit of the self-fulfilling prophecy - you get what you expect.

Tip Six: Squeeze lots of memories from the dog days of summer

We're going to extract every last morsel of summer from the season. My sons and husband are going camping/rafting this summer with Dads from our school. Next weekend, my kids join my parents in the mountains by a lake...while we get a couples weekend.  Then we go to the lake.  Tired yet? And there's the possibility of a short, impromptu family vacation when none of the kids have school. Of course, we don't get those sorts of vacations from work!  Have fun and good luck.

Tip Seven: Plan the afterschool activities

Our kids are pretty active and we want them to run around and play a lot after school. Because we both work, we need to put a little structure into that playtime. Each son gets to play one organized sport a season - their choice. They have music instruction. And they get to do something else they like - active. Sometimes two something else's depending on proximity. So now we're choosing what the activities will be (except for soccer, that has to be chosen in April for the fall season). It's fun and builds anticipation with the kids.

Tip Eight: Make a big deal of the haircuts

Somehow, my kids have fallen in love with the haircut experience. It's likely the lollipop for the little girl and the Pao de Queijo for the older two. But in any case, before they go back to school, they need to look sharp and making this a fun outing reduces the amount of complaining it could otherwise entail.

Tip Nine: Ask your friends for their tips

So?  What do you do to get the kids ready to go back to school?

I wrote this blog post while participating in the TwitterMoms blogging program to be eligible to get a HarperCollins book set. For more information on how you can participate, click here.

Cursive and brain science

I believe the purpose of school and education is to establish brain circuitry that enables our children to absorb and evaluate information, make choices and act upon those choices. So – does cursive have a role in wiring the brain?  If yes, then it likely needs to be taught.  If no, then it’s an antiquated tradition.  Today, I explored the science, rather than the opinions. 

Our local newspaper, SF Gate – the online version of the San Francisco Chronicle, published an opinion blog today on the question of cursive instruction.  The problem is the debate is between personal opinions and preferences. Most of the debate is belief-based – ranging from cursive is a traditional part of elementary education to "I hated cursive/ never use it/my child hates it/isn’t typing a better use of time".  Full disclosure – I take copious notes in all my meetings and they are all in cursive – it’s simply faster for me.

Andrea Gordon of ParentCentral from the Toronto Star sources some excellent research on the impact of cursive on neurological development.  Read her full article.

According to Toronto psychiatrist and neuroplasticity expert Dr. Norman Doidge - When a child types or prints, he produces a letter the same way each time. In cursive, however, each letter connects slightly differently to the next, which is more demanding on the part of the brain that converts symbol sequences into motor movements in the hand.

That sounds like brain development.

In the September 2007 issue of Brain and Language USC Neuroscientist Dr. Joseph Hellige and Stanford/VA Aging Clinical Research Center post-doctoral fellow Dr. Maheen Adamson published a study of "hemispheric asymmetry for native English speakers identifying consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) non-words presented in standard printed form, in standard handwritten cursive form or in handwritten cursive with the letters separated by small gaps".

These results suggest a greater contribution of the right hemisphere to the identification of handwritten cursive, which is likely related visual complexity and to qualitative differences in the processing of cursive versus print.

Also sounds like brain development.

Andrea Gordon sourced another neurologist who ties cursive writing to emotional circuitry as well. 

Dr. Jason Barton, a neurologist and Canada Research Chair at the University of British Columbia, whose research focuses on the role of the human brain in vision. Barton's findings, using brain imaging, suggest we recognize handwriting the same way we distinguish faces, triggering similar emotional responses.

His studies, among the first of their kind, show that while the left visual word form area perceives and decodes words for their meaning in written language, the right side is where we interpret the style of writing, allowing us to identify the writer rather than the word, just as neighbouring areas in the right brain play a key role in allowing us to recognize faces.

As soon as that recognition kicks in, it activates what's known as a memory trace – a biochemical alteration in the brain created by something learned – and fans out, setting off other sensory memories.

"Once triggered by perception – whether of a face, a voice or handwriting – memory reverberates through all the senses and in all the corridors of your brain, bringing back emotions, knowledge, all the different facets of information and experiences with that person stored from the past," Barton says.

Our children will learn to type.  And email, IM, txt are all very impersonal – wrought with opportunities to be misunderstood.  Cursive may be tedious and as adults we may choose not to use it, but it helps our children’s brains develop and it can be fun.  It can be taught when they are in pre-school and kindergarten and apparently, it’s better for lefties and children struggling with dyslexia. So I vote for teaching cursive.

My children are excited to  learn cursive and our school uses Handwriting without Tears - which seems to be true.  They're also learning to type.  I don't really care what they use as adults - but I care that they think through what they plan to say and ensure that the reader can understand it (because it's relatively neat and coherent).  What do you think – should school make us learn things we might not use as adults because it develops our brain pathways?