Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources Books for me and him

Hi,

There are many books out there about raising a gifted child but I'm not sure where to start. Can you please recommend one that you found particularly useful for a beginner?

Also DS5 would really like to work on multiplication but needs to memorize his fact and times tables. Any suggestions on a book, or online resource, that can help make this fun.

Thanks!

Have you seen Timez Attack? It's an on-line game that teaches multiplication. My friend has her daughter play it instead of doing memorization drills (blech, lol). There are two version - a free download as well as a paid version that has more stuff. Not sure how different the two versions are - I think my friend just uses the free version.

www.flashmaster.com

It may look clunky, but both my 8yo and my 4yo enjoy this thing.

Khan Academy is one website that comes to mind. At one point DS used IXL, and found it fun, with lots of different types of exercises which can be picked in any order. We also tried XtraMath, but didn't find it nearly as good.

Your son might start remembering the facts better in the course of working problems. Flash Skills problem solving workbooks, Ed Zaccaro Challenge Math, Singapore Math workbooks and Challenging Word Problems, Life of Fred, Sunshine Math, and other enrichment may keep him stimulated while cementing math facts and other arithmetic knowledge.

Mathematics Enhancement Programme is a comprehensive online math curriculum for primary grades that is free, and contains both written and online practice. It's quite good in my opinion. Another newer curriculum you might want to explore is Beast Academy, which apparently has lots of fun problem solving built in. Singapore Math is another good one if you're looking for a whole curriculum.

A calculator may be a fun way for your son to explore number relationships and check his answers when out and about. My son loved this solar-powered one when I gave it to him at around your son's age.

Printable times tables might encourage him to recognize and internalize numeric relationships, making everything glom together faster and better. Our educational consultant mentioned in passing that she's a big fan of these Wrap-Up Keys as a quick way to demonstrate mastery while avoiding written drill, but I've never seen them in person.

You may also find this old thread helpful. View the sample Math Mammoth / Maria Miller video for one decent approach to memorizing the times tables.

Regarding raising gifted children, I haven't found any books helpful. I have gotten lots of good information on this site and Hoagie's Gifted, though.

Eibbed

I found a variety of perspectives much more useful than any single book/article. The reality is that different writers are going to resonate with different people. My own journey here was illuminated by Ellen Winner's book "Gifted Children:Myths and Realities"

as well as Genius Denied, by Jan Davidson.


and by bits of many other works. I literally went to my public library's stacks and pulled out four or five books at a time on education and parenting-- anything that seemed remotely related.

Key authors I found helpful include Miraca Gross, Lisa Rivero and James Webb. I found that many authors (Susan Winebrenner, James DeLisle) focused on what I'd consider "bright" children or lower levels of moderately gifted ones (MG), and those were sometimes very discouraging and unhelpful to me as the parent of a PG child. They made me question what we were doing instinctively for our daughter, and made me feel lonely (which was, incidentally, quickly reinforced by community contacts that didn't like a PG child because other parents of MG children found us "threatening" to their self-identity). I don't consider those "bad" resources, by the way. Just that they didn't help me much because my child wasn't in the target demographic, and in fact were a little scary for us as parents because they made it clear just HOW far from the median our daughter is. So maybe that is some helpful information, too. If your child is doing a LOT of the things on Deborah Ruf's highest LOG (which I don't put tons of stock in as a diagnostic tool, to be clear), then it's helpful to be aware that a lot of typical literature about gifted children is NOT aimed at parenting your gifted child. It becomes more true the more profoundly gifted the child, and particularly with 2e children, whose profiles may be truly unique.


For web-based resources, I recommend exploring the library of materials from Davidson, from SENG, and exploring at Hoagie's. I also found the materials at Duke's TIP (mostly archived newsletters) VERY helpful.

I got this book a couple of weeks ago based on a recommendation here, and it has become something of an obsession with DS4: You Can Count on Monsters. It won't teach him math facts, but it is definitely a book about multiplication (and prime numbers). DD8 likes looking at it, but DS4 loves it. We read it over and over and over, and talk about the monsters, and recognize the different ones, and count the dots to do the multiplication. I expect that he will be totally solid on multiplication facts just by osmosis after he's been into this for a while.

Thank you so much! DS5 is going to LOVE Timez Attack. I can't wait to show it to him! Computer time I won't have any problem saying "Yes" too. I'm going to look at all the other suggestions as soon as I have time.

Loving all the resources mentioned here. I want to check out the "Monsters" book! That sounds right up my ds' alley.

We are doing Xtramath for addition/subtraction as part of DS K curriculum. It's very minimalistic. What I think is good, however, is that it truly is a site that pushes MEMORIZATION of facts. Give a short amount of time, ds can work through a lot of problems in his head, but he doesn't have any math facts memorized other than VERY basic.

Can't wait to check out a few more of these sites.

I introduced DS5 to Timez Attack this afternoon and after a little bit of a learning curve he just devoured it! He is so proud of his progress and can't wait to continue tomorrow. At this rate we might be through the program in a week or so!