First Food For Your Baby

* Iron-enriched infant is a good first food for your baby

* Rice cereal is not likely to cause an allergy, so it is good first food

* Try first feeding of cereal at a time when your baby is well-rested and not too hungry

* Use a spoon to feed cereal to your baby. Do not put a cereal in a bottle; your baby should learn to eat from a spoon-even if it seems to take a long time.

* First feeding should be just a few spoonfuls of a very thin mixture of cereal and formula or breast milk. Thicker cereal is fine for older babies.

Source :Feeding Your Children.Wisconsin Nutrition Education Program.2002

Understanding Giftedness [ 6 ]

For self-motivated learners, parents need to be careful about giving external rewards (for example, a gift for completing a good project) because the learner may begin to feel that the effort was really for the reward, not for the joy of the journey. Curious children need teachers to expose them to the various lessons, but then their curiosity and thirst for knowledge should help guide them through the maze toward mastery of the topic. If your curious learner isn’t burdened by self-inflicted,undue pressure to succeed and learn, and can still work within the confines that society sometimes imposes (for example, a tour guide at a museum cannot always stop to answer all of the questions posed by a particular patron), then the drive toward independence and self-learning can be one to encourage and foster.

In recent years, society has certainly witnessed the fact that childhood is not always carefree and that children sometimes have serious emotional struggles. A child that has advanced emotional maturity and social skills is a learner who is better prepared to weather the frustrating periods in life. The ability to cope with stress and the ability to empathize with others are valuable skills in personal as well as professional success. If your child has the emotional tools to overcome obstacles and frustration, this will help the learning process. Learning involves being receptive to information that may not have been presented earlier. If a learner only feels comfortable exploring topics that have already been mastered, then the learning process can be rocky. The emotionally mature learner may verbalize some discomfort with a new lesson but can focus the needed energy on the learning process and not on the anxiety of not knowing all the answers immediately.

A few other areas of giftedness are worth mentioning. Some children have keenly developed smell discrimination and/or taste discrimination. For instance, John can tell when his mother varies the amount of onions used in a particular recipe. Is this talent useful? Certainly if one aims to become a chef, then this skill is extremely useful. It can also be helpful in the learning process. For instance, a lesson in chemistry can utilize the combination of various food condiments to drive home the point that the end product can be greater than the sum of its parts. Some learners have gifts that are directly related to academic work. The child who has a talent in the area of written language may be encouraged to vary the form of writing (such as memoir or poetry) to generalize the gift to many areas of written language. The child who has advanced reading comprehension skills might be encouraged to read and discuss many forms of literature.

However, it is always important to remember that a learner may have advanced reading skills
but not advanced emotional maturity. Therefore, book selections must consider both factors. The math whiz could utilize this talent in everyday life. For instance, one activity could be to calculate how much money should be saved each week in order to get the “must have” videogame. Whenever lessons can be fun for the learner and also practical to the everyday lessons of life, then two important goals have been accomplished—academic growth and life preparedness!

The list of specific talents and gifts can go on and on. The important point is to highlight the fact that no two gifted or talented children fit one mold or profile. Therefore, you should interpret the information provided to you in upcoming chapters in the context of your particular child’s areas
of giftedness and needs.

Source : Lee Wherry Brainerd. Homeschooling Your Gifted Children. 2002

Understanding Giftedness [ 5 ]

Memory skills are a vital part of our functioning, since individuals build on prior experiences
as they grow and learn. Some learners have amazing gifts to remember factual information. For instance, Sam may be able to recite all the states at 24 months of age, while ten-year old Sheila may be able to spontaneously tell you the birth and death dates of all the American presidents. Alexandra is a different learner. While she doesn’t have the advanced memory for concrete facts, she is able to vividly remember events that have occurred in her own life. Therefore, there are many components to memory and many ways that children can be talented in their memory skills. Memory is not a single skill, and it involves many different steps and cognitive operations.

First, a student needs to immediately remember information just learned; then he needs to begin to store it for a longer duration; then he will need to consolidate it into long-term memory; later be able to retrieve it. At times, a student has one part of this process mastered but struggles in another area. For instance, a learner may have no problem listening to a phone number, then going to the phone and dialing it. However, if that same learner is asked to retrieve the number from memory a few hours later, it may be difficult or impossible. Memory is multi-faceted. Some memories are auditory, visual, tactile, or olfactory (associated with smell). If you think back to your own recollections of situations, there are times that you may vaguely remember a trip to someone’s house but have a clear recollection of the smell of something baking in that house. A learner who remembers information best by storing it through tactile (or touch) channels, may benefit from being able to touch and manipulate the materials in the lesson. Many math lessons can be taught utilizing objects to highlight points. For learners with an extremely accurate, detailed memory (sometimes labeled as a photographic memory),they may look at a page in a book and may not need to reread it when studying or reviewing the information. Rather, the learner may just need to reflect on the image that has been imbedded into memory.

An important part of any learner’s success is to have well-developed executive functions. These include planning skills, impulse control, the ability to pay attention, and the ability to organize tasks. If your child excels in these areas, it makes learning most lessons a little easier. A student with this area of talent can display more initiative and independence when completing projects and will likely gain self-esteem and self-confidence in the process. Similar attributes of motivation—being a self-starter, being curious, with a thirst for knowledge are characteristics that can generalize to most academic lessons as well as life lessons.

Source : Lee Wherry Brainerd. Homeschooling Your Gifted Children. 2002

Pregnancy Series : Preparing A Room for A Baby

Before you bring a baby home, it would be an especially good idea if you have a place ready for it to stay. This is something that should be done sooner rather than later. For example, it’s nearly impossible to put up ducky wallpaper while your wife is complaining that her water just broke. And, it’s totally impossible to assemble a crib while rushing a pregnant woman to the hospital.

You might think you’ll have time to prepare a room while your wife is in the hospital recovering, but trust me, you won’t. After the baby is born you’ll be too upset thinking about the medical bills and about having to change diapers to do much of anything that requires the use of tools. So, start early—sometime in the second trimester (when your wife is at least near normal) is probably best.

Preparing the baby’s room is actually quite easy and far less trying then dealing with a pregnant woman. In fact, it is probably something you may want to do from time to time just to get a break from your wife. Just remember that babies are very simple people. They basically just look around, poop, eat, spit, cry, poop, eat, spit, and cry. Therefore they really don’t need a lot of excess stuff in the room. Just make sure you have a nice safe bed and some cool things for them to look at. Unfortunately though, no matter how many footballs you place in the room, the baby is not going to think of these as anything other than something else to spit up on.

Source : John Zakour. A Man's Guide to Pregnancy.2003

Understanding Giftedness [ 4 ]

Processing speed is also an area that is often equated with intelligence. However, the specific information processed can vary from one learner to another. One child may quickly process the direction of a sound, another person may quickly look at a brainteaser puzzle and arrive at a method for solving it, while another individual may quickly grasp a new lesson. In some of the formal tests of intelligence (such as the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, Third Edition), some tasks are timed to ascertain not only the child’s ability to master an item, but also the child’s ability to master it under a time pressure. Students who are quick processors may need less time to complete certain work. However, just because a student quickly processes, say, a word analogy question, it does not necessarily mean that understanding other concepts will come as rapidly. Jorge rapidly completes puzzles and grasps scientific concepts. In contrast, he needs more time to understand grammar concepts. In this case, Jorge’s processing speed gift is specific to certain areas of learning and thinking.

At times, a child is impulsive and quickly finishes assignments or tasks. If the end product is haphazardly completed and does not display the learner’s best efforts or level of reflection, then
speed does not constitute a gift, but rather an area for discussion. Speed along with successful mastery are both important for this form of giftedness. This brings up an important point: as the parent/educator, please resist the urge to condense lessons into shorter time frames and cover many topics in the course of a day simply because you understand that your learner can process information quickly. Some children think intensely and rapidly but require more frequent breaks. This is where the balancing act, between focusing on intelligence and emotions, becomes so important. As the parent and the teacher, you are uniquely able to determine the most suitable way to meet the multitude of needs that your learner has.

A strong ability to think in both divergent and convergent manners is another area that can be
considered a talent or part of giftedness. Convergent thinking is the ability to determine how various objects or events are similar. For instance, a learner may be able to draw comparisons about how words that appear to look so different actually follow similar rules. In addition, your child may be able to draw parallels between historical situations that preceded wars.

On the other hand, divergent thinking skills reflect a learner’s ability to determine how a single event, object, or word can be looked at in different ways. The learner may be able to generate numerous uses for a typical household object, such as a stick of gum. Young children often are called “creative” when they can utilize their divergent thinking abilities to make a piece of candy into a warrior or a pencil into a phone. Inventors may also display their unique divergent thinking skills when they take common materials and create a novel product. Learners who have advanced divergent and convergent thinking skills may be able to find several ways to communicate an idea, but can also narrow down ideas to arrive at the most common feature.

Creativity taps into divergent thinking skills and may be viewed as a specific area of giftedness.
Creativity comes in many forms, such as talent in the performing arts, musical endeavors, ability
to arrive at novel conclusions by synthesizing new and old information, and the ability to problem solve and arrive at a unique way to resolve a dilemma. A child who is talented in singing, but struggled early on with reading skills, may benefit from singing the words aloud initially. The actor may bring to life a character from a book by trying to identify with that character and understand the subtle nuances of being that person in the historical or fictional time of the story. A problem-solver may enjoy brainteasers that require the use of logical inference and creativity in order to arrive at a conclusion. Creative learners may ask to complete an assignment in a way that deviates from our own ideas of how it should be done. If your learner can explain the rationale behind the creative approach, and it is educationally sound, then supporting the idea also can support your child’s belief that venturing out and offering unique thoughts to others is worthwhile.

Source : Lee Wherry Brainerd. Homeschooling Your Gifted Children. 2002