Encouraging Your Gifted Child to Explore STEM

For parents of a gifted and talented child, the questions never end! “Why is the sky blue?’ “How does a car work?” “What does E=MC² actually mean?” Gifted children tend to have a powerful curiosity and an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. Unfortunately, this often results in frustration when their questions remain unanswered. And when their interests lie in the areas of science, technology, engineering, and math, or STEM for short, it can be tricky for parents to provide answers that satisfy these young Einsteins.

Year-round, but particularly during the summer months, it becomes challenging to keep any child learning and engaged, but for gifted children, this can be especially difficult to accomplish. Without something to engage their minds, academically advanced students may become bored—and give in to less productive behaviors such as tormenting siblings.

Encouraging gifted and talented students to pursue their interest in STEM is one way to keep them happy and focused. With the right encouragement and resources, a gifted child’s natural love of learning often kicks in and keeps them on track to achieve their highest potential.

To help you with the all-important effort of channeling brainpower into productive learning, we’ve compiled a list of STEM resources you can use. As with any online resource, we recommend that for “safe surfing,” you review the site and supervise your child’s exploration.

• Find information and courses on a wide range of STEM subjects, plus a child-friendly introduction to coding, at Khan Academy.
• Discover ways to create STEM experiences at home in an insightful article, “Beyond School Walls,” from the National Association of Gifted Children.
• Tour the National Association of Gifted Children’s searchable Resource Directory to find gifted resources and programs near your home.
• Get your gifted child started in creating his or her first computer program or game at Scratch, a kid-friendly educational site.
• Encourage your older gifted and talented student to learn even more about computer coding at Code Academy.
• If your child has ever taken apart the toaster or computer to see what makes it go, check out How Stuff Works to help him or her find the answer without taking apart the house!
• If your daughter is a gifted and talented student, encourage her interest in the field of STEM by visiting CanTEEN, a site specifically developed to promote science exploration and careers to girls.
• Explore online tools, games, videos, and real-life experiments in many scientific disciplines at Learning Science.
• While not developed specifically for gifted students, Science Daily can be a helpful resource for answering many challenging science questions.

We hope you’ll use these resources to start exploring the many possibilities of STEM with your gifted elementary, middle, or high school student!