DH and I are new to the challenges and to-dos of parenting a HG child. We have come to the realization that whatever DD 4 1/2 school environment is, we will need to take a more planned and prepared approach to supplementing at home. We will not be homeschooling but would love some ideas and suggestions from this forum on how to supplement at home to meet DD's learning hunger. What kind of activities do you giuys do? Do you take your children to other after-school classes? What kind of resource do you rely on and how do you plan what to do?

thanks

Lalitha

Hi Lalitha- great that you are aware that you can help your child heaps! A couple of quick tips:
1. READ to her, HEAPS. Choose high-interest books that may be well beyond her own reading ability - this will teach her vocab and language structures, as well as to get ideas bursting in her head.
2. Provide lots of odds n ends to 'make' - paper-towel rolls, coloured scraps of cloth, cotton wool, markers etc etc.
3. Read to her still more!
4. Play thinking games (from I-Spy to mameory games, cards...)
5. Things for little fingers and big imaginations- start with PlayMobil type stuff (bigger for small fingers) then progress to Lego. Great for imagination, critical thinking, spatial visualisation.
6. Watch movies to gether and TALK about them afterwards.. ("What if...?" "Why did you think that .....?"
Cheers
JEAN

With our DS5, we haven't done anything formal yet. We basically just follow his lead as to his interests. What does your DD like to do? We do experiments in the kitchen, he creates things with his legos (i think he finally has enough now that we've run out of room for them!) We play board games with him. He likes blokus and chess right now. He likes to sit around and make designs with pattern blocks.

He liked learning software for awhile (like jumstart), now we let him do webkinz, where you can earn the most "webkinz" cash by playing games.

As for things outside the house, we go to children's plays, and read the related books ahead of time and talk about them. We go to science museums. He's in a gymnastics class. We're hoping to start him with piano lessons soon.

If she likes to write or wants to learn math, you could get some workbooks. DS5 doesn't really care to do them.

We'll be looking into summer classes this year too, since DS is now 5. There are usually some fun-looking classes at the science museum.

We continue to read to him every day. Have fun with your DD. I think it's hard to plan anything too far ahead for these kids -they sometimes quickly change their interests or move beyond what you thought would be good. I wouldn't recommend buying presents early and stashing them!