Exquisite Minds: Creative and Gifted Children

Exquisite Minds believes in the importance of cultivating creativity in bright and gifted children. We believe creativity can solve almost any problem; rather than why something can’t be done, it’s how it can be done. Exquisite Minds offers support to parents and educators who want to challenge children to find new and constructive ways to look at the world.

Holiday Stress: When Traditions Change

It is hard to believe it is almost that time of year. As we enter the holiday season, you can almost smell gingerbread and panic in the air. In order to keep our anxiety in check, most of us find …
Continue reading

Good Study Habits: How to Help

Parents can help with good study habits by creating a comfortable environment and a set routine which allows for the least amount of dissent. As we know, studying hurts, but failing hurts worse.
Continue reading

Changes in Teaching

Where has the creative teacher gone and how is this loss affecting our children? Changes in teaching: When I first began my teaching career teachers were allowed to manipulate the provided curriculum, teachers could even write their own lessons and supplement with …
Continue reading

Teaching Creativity

Michael F. Shaughnessy, a columnist with educationnews.org recently conducted an interview with Abby Connors who wrote the new book, Teaching Creativity. I found this to be an excellent interview and well worth reading. Below is an excerpt from the interview about approaching …
Continue reading

Gifted Testing

Gifted Testing: IQ Tests for Children Gifted Testing: For lack of a better method, individual standardized tests are used to determine a person’s level of intelligence. Level of intelligence can be used to determine who qualifies for the label of …
Continue reading

Fundraising Ideas for Kids

Fundraising ideas for kids: Children and young adults often want to know what they can do for others in times of great tragedy. This can be a teachable moment...
Continue reading

Creativity Scores Going Down

“While IQ scores continue to rise an average of 10 points with each passing generation, researchers are finding the opposite is true of creativity scores. They’re going down.” –Nick Meyer As Nick Meyer writes about the recent Creativity World Forum held …
Continue reading

Creative Toddlers Tell the Best Stories

Laughs from the Gifted Side True Story: A three year-old boy was recently potty trained but was still having trouble during the night. When his father walked in one morning and found his son had wet the bed, the boy …
Continue reading

Parenting Styles: Choosing Your Child’s Activities

A parent’s approach determines how much time their child spends in extracurricular activities. Some of the more common parenting styles are:
Continue reading

Google Search Tips: Helping Kids Google

Life gives you questions, Google gives you answers. As teachers we spent time helping our students learn to be good Googlers. This was so they could get correct information as fast as possible. You too can use these Google search …
Continue reading

Creativity Scores Falling in the US

Recently, I’ve read in the news that creativity scores are falling. I was left to wonder, where was this data coming from and should we prepare to alert Chicken Little? While I did not really doubt what I read, I …
Continue reading

Gifted Thinking: Where’s the Rest of the Moose?

True story: A three year-old boy was in a rustic restaurant with his parents. He became very agitated and said he could not and would not eat the food. When his father asked him why, the young boy pointed up …
Continue reading