Gifted children enjoy the opportunity to challenge themselves with competitions against other gifted kids. Provided they are not obsessed with attaining a big win in the end, and can see this as a fun and games opportunity, the activity can be a motivational exercise worth the investment in time and energy.
Unfortunately, many gifted children do not feel as challenged by their academic structure as they would like to be. Therefore, contests designed for them make sense and can lead to new contacts with gifted organizations and other gifted kids.
Hoagies Contests for Gifted Children
Hoagies is a remarkably detailed and resourceful website for gifted programs, studies, contests, camps, and affiliated organizations for gifted children and their parents to peruse. They have an extensive variety of awards programs in different areas from essay contests to mathematical challenge type competitions.
Some of the specific contests include a Word Masters tournament, aimed as expanding the young vocabulary and verbal reasoning, to the national toy design challenge for the youthful inventor. Several of the contests are actually international in scope, like the International Math Olympiad, which is participated by eighty countries.
There are also very specific interest competitions including rocketry, journalism and even a film making contest. Some of the awards involve scholarships as well as trophies and certificates.
The Johns-Hopkins Talent Search for Gifted Children
This university has a special program for 7th and 8th grade students who have scored in the top five percent on the Sate exam and are invited to take the SAT. The program is a summer enrichment course for these highly intellectually gifted students by national selection.
There are a number of other similar university based summer programs for gifted students. Some are focused on mathematics and others on engineering principles. Catering to the child's interests and talents may help him to identify a range of fields he may wish to study in college and pursue as a profession. Even if a child happens to be particularly superior in math skills, but has no real interest in that area, the perceptive parent will allow the child to guide his own destiny without pushing him into an given area of study.
Other Competitive Programs and Events for Gifted Students
There are several national spelling and geography competitions for gifted students to engage in, if they are particularly adept in these areas. Many public and private school teachers will also conduct in house contests with their high achieving population in an effort to keep the children challenged and highly motivated.
The Davidson Institute is another web-based organization with a broad scope of programs and resources for the gifted child and her parents. Many contests and affiliations with competitive programs are only a click or two away from the informed parent.
The tough part of any competition is the fact that there will be winners and therefore, also some losers in each event. Some gifted children will have difficult with the reality of losing since they are not accustomed to coming out at the bottom. Further, because gifted children are so defined by their giftedness, this may be a blow to their sense of self-esteem to lose a competition.
That being said, everyone loses at some point in some way. Losing can present a good learning opportunity for the child who has not experienced much of the negative side of competing. Even though it may prove initially painful, the gifted child is one who can certainly learn from his mistakes and experiences.
Reference:
Tallent-Runnels, Mary K. and Candler-Lotven, Ann C., Academic Competitions for Gifted Students, TX: Corwin Press, 2008.
Therese Haberman - With a MS degree and 25 years in HR mgmt, in 2005, Ms.Therese began a writing career specializing in children and HR.
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