Fabulous Fudge Fantasia

Today we enjoyed tasting delicious fudge. The purpose of the day was to learn to establish and apply criteria in order to judge something. Next week we will be applying this learning when selecting the best solution to develop into an action plan for our Global Problem Solving Booklet. Today Noah's fudge was selected as the winner!

Thanks to all the children for their enthusiasm although it is easy to get excited about fudge!

Here are some of the recipes.

Lucy used the Edmond's recipe

 Noah's winning fudge!

 George's unique fudge

 Emily's Russian fudge

Dabrowski's Overexcitabilities

Gifted children are often prone to sensitivities and being extra sensory. This is a great article to start you thinking about whether this sounds familiar at your home or workplace.

The five areas identified are:

• Psychomotor
• Sensual
• Intellectual
• Imaginational
• Emotional

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is gaining popularity at the moment and simply put means being present in the moment with openness and curiosity. This is a useful reading from the Institute of Educational Advancement that explores the concept of mindfulness and how this can be a very useful tool for gifted students.

Creative Writing With Heather

Some talented writers from Year 6 are working with Heather today. They are working on creative writing via googledocs and Heather will given them feedback over the next few weeks as they continue on with their work both in class and at home.

 Hard at work. Children will have tired brains today!

Heather also shared a simple but effective quote about poetry.

First FPS Session Today

Today we had our first FPS session and the group worked very well. The treatment and rights of animals is certainly an interesting topic and the group enjoyed the start of their research.

Remember to follow the links on the FPS Research if you have time.

If you find other sites that others would find interesting you can email me, claire.howison@stalbans.school.nz and I will add them.

Here is our work on linking our thinking to some of the FPS Categories.

GATE Review for St Albans School

Back to the Mindlab for Robotics

On Wednesday we have another session at the Mindlab and this time we were led by Josh. It was another fabulous session. When we walked into the room there were kits for every person sitting on the desks. Creating the robots was a lesson in following instructions and they took about 40 mins to build. It helped if you liked playing with lego although the pieces were more pliable than lego.

After we had created our robots we plugged them into the computer and programmed in much the same way as we did last time. We added sensors that responded to light and dark and programmed using the senses as well.

Thanks Josh and Mindlab, it was another great session.