American Mensa, Ltd.

Arthella Starke of Sherwood, Oregon was selected as the Mensa Education and Research Foundation’s 2012 Distinguished Teacher Award recipient. Starke, a Special Education teacher at Sherwood High School was nominated by the parent of a student.

Looking for things to do to keep kids cognitively challenged this summer? Want to do it without breaking the bank? Here are the Mensa Foundation’s top seven tips for avoiding summer brain drain. Enjoy!
 

When summer comes, there is more time to play and explore. The activities shared inside
are a blend of colorful art projects and ideas for some outside activities.

This series of educational programs was designed to simultaneously entertain and
challenge gifted youth in their time outside of the school setting, although the activities are
appropriate for broad ranges of ages.

From our earliest childhoods, we are fascinated by space. We wish on stars and read of cows jumping over the moon, and the fascination grows along with us. This series of lesson plans explores the area of space closest to us - the solar system in which we live. It begins with this introduction to our very own star, the Sun.

Virtually everything we use had to be invented, and behind every invention is a person who saw a problem or an opportunity and invented a solution or a new device. Through this lesson plan, students will describe the development process, evaluate the usefulness of various inventions, and devise a solution to a problem through their own invention.

As the environment becomes an ever-increasing matter of national and international importance, students' knowledge of ecosystem dynamics gains in value. In addition to being a core requirement of science standards across the country, the study of ecosystems is interesting to students, creating an arena in which complex ideas become accessible to learners.

ARLINGTON, TEXAS (11/3/11) – Dr. Joyce VanTassel-Baska received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Mensa Education and Research Foundation for her vast contributions to the field of intelligence in a ceremony preceding the National Association of Gifted Children Convention in New Orleans. She is the founding Director of the Center for Talent Development at Northwestern University.  The Center, which has been in operation for more than 30 years, has produced research and development in the field of talent development, along with 50 doctorates in gifted education. 

By learning the techniques marketers use to try to get them to buy products, children can become more informed consumers of products and information in general. Many of these strategies are strong rhetoric techniques, making this lesson an accessible segue to logical reasoning and argument.