Worksheets for Gifted Children

It’s ironic that gifted children can be among the most difficult students. They are often bored and blasé. They may switch off in class or become disruptive. Either way, they fail to achieve their brilliant potential. While teachers are coached to work with each child at their own level, some gifted children are too high up the scale to be catered for in the classroom environment. It doesn’t help that some gifted children also suffer from learning difficulties such as dyslexia.



Schools are seldom given any advice or resources to stimulate gifted children, and many parents consider home schooling when they realise their child is underperforming at school.


Home schooling is not for everyone. It takes an extremely dedicated parent to do it well.


On the plus side, home schooling provides the opportunity to better address the child's particular learning style.


Many parents choose a halfway measure: still send the child to school, but provide him or her with stimulating worksheets that allow the child to explore topics outside the school curriculum, and also to set aside special homework time to make sure the child is still on track with their school work.


Creating the special worksheets takes a lot of thought. You need to select something that will interest the child and at the same time will not be studied at school next year. You need to gauge your child’s skill level. Finally, you need to present the worksheet in a way most palatable to your child’s learning style.


For some children, this will mean lots of colours and pictures. For others, it may be a project made out of plasticine. It all depends on the child’s sensory modalities.


Find out more about your child’s learning needs here.

Classroom Lighting Helps Pupils Learn

In the Netherlands and Germany, a new concept is spreading through the education echelons: lighting helps pupils learn! Scientists have confirmed that changing the intensity and colour of the light (the students can choose from normal, focus, calm and energy settings) can alter the children's mood and behaviour. Teachers say that the children "are able to achieve more and feel it is part and parcel of a learning environment they can be successful in."

At Creative Learning, we feel it's nothing new, although we're delighted to have our methods confirmed by yet another scientific experiment. Our Learning Style Analysis has always included Light as one of the important environmental elements to consider when designing the perfect learning conditions, be it at home or in the classroom.

Incorrect lighting can make the pupils feel lethargic or hyperactive, bored or stressed. Prolonged exposure to the wrong kind of light can make the children's behaviour unmanageable and can even influence their health.

Check your whole family's lighting, temperature and noise level tolerance today. Click here to begin your journey.

Daniel Sieberg's Digital Diet

Our blog's guest today is Daniel Sieberg, an EmmyÒ-nominated reporter who hosts Tech This Out! for ABC News NOW. Daniel asks:
Have you ever felt that something hasn’t really happened until you post it on Facebook or Twitter? Does a flashing red light on your BlackBerry make your heart flutter? Do you know you shouldn’t be texting and driving—but still do it? If you said yes to any of these questions then you’re not alone; you’re among the millions of people who can relate to being overwhelmed by technology.  

Family Tip

Chill out — the next time your son or daughter comes to the dinner table with a smart phone or iPod or laptop, try putting it in the fridge during the entire meal. It won’t do any harm to the device. Then serve it as the final course, after the dessert.

E- obesity

It’s not a revelation to say that this country has an obesity problem. But there is mounting concern that gluttony for technology is creating what I call the “e- obesity” problem. By that I mean that our increasing appetite for gadgets and the Web has made us lazy and less active. Most days, the only parts of our bodies that are getting a great workout are our fingers and thumbs, and they are often being overworked.

First let’s look at the numbers as they apply to the young generation. The Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project recently found that half of American teenagers send more than fifty text messages a day and that one-third send more than one hundred a day. Every day. Add that up over a month and we’re talking easily in the thousands.

Two-thirds of the texters surveyed said they were more likely to use their cell phones to text friends than to call them. Fifty- four percent said they texted their friends once a day, but only 33 percent said they talked to their friends face to face on a daily basis (a probable harbinger of the death of “small talk”). The Kaiser Family Foundation reported that young people between the ages of eight and eighteen spend on average seven and a half hours a day using some sort of electronic device, from smart phones to digital music players to computers. In essence, they’re online for the time spent at a full- time job, which is a number that likely startled many of you, even those who keep your smart phone in plain sight during waking hours.

The role of technology in childhood and adult obesity has now been proven without a doubt. More than forty studies have been conducted on the matter, and many indicate that the availability of technology contributes to a sedentary lifestyle and weight gain in children. A Canadian study conducted in 2003 and published in the International Journal of Obesity linked seven- to eleven- year- olds’ television and computer use to a significantly increased risk of being overweight or obese. The study found that children who spent three or more hours a day using technology had a 17 percent to 44 percent higher risk of being overweight and a 10 percent to 61 percent higher risk of obesity.

  

• For more information about Daniel Sieberg and The Digital Diet: The 4-Step Plan to Break Your Tech Addiction and Regain Balance in Your Life visit http://www.danielsieberg.com/.
• For your own copy, visit http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Diet-4-step-addiction-balance/dp/0307887383 (print) and http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Diet-addiction-balance-ebook/dp/B004J4WM3G (Kindle)
• To discover whether your Learning Style makes you susceptible to E-obesity, have a look at your Learning Style Analysis report.

Language Styles Count!

In a bid to determine what turns a date into a relationship, USA scientists studied the first dates and text conversations of college students. They discovered that couples whose language use was similar, tended to want to meet again and again.


About 80 percent of the couples whose conversational styles were similar were still dating three months after the experiment, compared with just 54 percent of couples whose styles were markedly different.


The experiment looked at the use of function words such as "be" and "that". Here, at Creative Learning, we are proposing a much more intuitive test.


Compare your own Working Style Analysis Report with that of your prospective romantic partner. In terms of the Senses (sensory input), do you match on the talker-listener scale? Are you both visual or both internally kinesthetic, so that you find it easy to understand one another's NLP Predicate Language?


Look at the top of the WSA Pyramid: are you both analytic or both holistic? If not, you might find it frustrating or confusing if one of you starts talking without giving an indication of where the conversation is heading or what the end goal is.


Skip down to the Physical Requirements layer: are you both night owls or early birds? Your relationship will have a better chance of surviving if you both enjoy staying up late or getting up early to go for a run.


There are many more indicators of a healthy relationship. If in doubt, please contact us with specific queries.



Happy Easter!

If you’re going to be around children this Easter, see whether you can spot a few elements of their Learning Style, depending on how they choose to participate in the activities.



· Those who love the Egg Hunt games, are probably kinesthetic.


· If they enjoy the puzzles and the clues, they must have a preference for analytic information processing.


· If they’ve painted the eggs, their information processing style is closer to holistic and their input preference is visual (external).


· If they love eating all the chocolate... they’re kids!



Whether Easter means chocolate, church, bunnies, eggs or just a regular weekend to you, may you have a wonderful and a wonder-filled one.

Intensive care unit in the sky

Creative Learning is a proud sponsor of the Auckland Rescue Helicopter Trust, a New Zealand accident and emergency rescue and transport service operated.

They provide a dedicated 24-hour, seven day a week service. This service often makes a life or death difference for thousands of New Zealanders. A Rescue Helicopter is necessary when:

• a patient is very sick or badly injured
• medics think getting to hospital quickly will make a big difference
• an accident has occurred in a difficult location.

The Rescue Helicopters are like a fully equipped intensive care unit in the sky. From a defibrillator for a premature baby to full life support systems, they can deal with any situation.

The Auckland Trust operates two helicopters and they do a total of about 2,000 missions per year. The aircraft and crew are trained and equipped to operate day and night, their missions range from emergency/accident casualty transport, to medical transfers/medevacs to rescue searches and airlifts.
 
The Trust does school visits on request, complete with landing the helicopter in the school grounds and telling the children about the rescue missions.
 
To support the Helicopters, please click here.
 

Profit From Your Learning Style

Everybody has their own unique learning style, in other words, a set of needs that determine the most optimal conditions for absorbing and understanding new concepts. It stands to reason, therefore, to capitalise on it and to make your learning effective, efficient and a real pleasure.



1.What you don’t know won’t hurt you. Right? Not really. What you don’t know about your own strengths can hurt you. Of course, you can function in a style that's wrong for you, it'll be at the cost of your stress levels and health. Besides, you will function a lot better when adhering to your own style.

2.Find out what your learning style is. While some preferences are obvious, others are not, so it is important to use a reliable and valid standardized instrument.

3.Read the recommendations in your report. Again, some suggestions will be straightforward: "Study in a room with dim lights" or "Don't force yourself to get up early to memorise your work". Others will provide profound insights into why you have trouble making deadlines or communicating with your spouse.

4.Reap the benefits.