Thank you to all who attended the March 24 seminar co-sponsored by CANDO and BPS101. Liz Selander Hutchins' presentation, “How Well Do You Know Your Gifted Child?” identified a cluster of characteristics common to gifted learners, dispelled prevalent myths about gifted students, and provided a number of suggestions and strategies to work successfully with and nurture this unique population of students. In addition, Ms. Hutchins shared valuable insights from her many years of experience working with gifted students while teaching at BPS101, and invited parent discussion to share strategies that have helped their children with some of the challenges associated with giftedness. We hope you were able to join us and benefit from Ms. Hutchins' considerable expertise.

Below are links to some of the books and resources that she mentioned.

• Genius Denied by Jan and Bob Davidson
• Some of My Best Friends Are Books by Judith Wynn Halsted
• articles by Sylvia Rimm on giftedness and underachievement

We hope to offer more such seminars in the future!    

At 7 p.m. on Monday, March 24, we are hosting a seminar for parents and educators about common traits of gifted students: "How Well Do You Know Your Gifted Child?" presented by Elizabeth Selander Hutchins, BPS101's retired gifted coordinator. Please join us in the Rotolo LMC (library). More details are available here. See you there!

Summer is coming! A number of local summer enrichment programs are open for registration:

• summer camps at IMSA for students from 3rd through 8th grade
• NIU STEM summer camps for students from 5th through 12th grade
• Waubonsee Community College offers Xcelerate summer camps for kids ages 4-14
• NUMATS Center for Talent Development  summer programs for kids from pre-K through 12th grade
  
• Camp Invention has an early bird discount for signing up before March 28
• The Center for Gifted has a spring weekend series and summer programs

Does your child enjoy creating things? Entries are now being accepted for the 2014 Torrance Legacy Creativity Awards. These awards honor the legacy of C. Paul Torrance, a pioneer in research on creativity in education. Children from ages 8-18 are encouraged to submit their original work in writing, the visual arts, music composition, or inventions. The deadline for submissions is August 8.

Have you seen ...?

• In this article, Mindy Solomon, a psychologist at Colorado's Gifted Development Center, explores the question, "Are Individuals with Eating Disorders More Likely to Be Gifted?"

• The Twice-Exceptional Newsletter offers a list of issues to consider when faced with pronounced underachievement in gifted students. For those with 2e students, the newsletter and its free briefings are wonderful resources.
  

• Are you on Twitter? Check out #gtchat. It is a global forum that takes place at 6 p.m. CDT on Fridays for educators, researchers, advocates, and parents to share and discuss ideas about gifted and talented education. Find out more information or dig through the transcripts of previous #gtchat topics here (you can read them even if you aren't on Twitter!).

• NAGC's publication Parenting for High Potential has a page on Facebook that can be a great resource.