I have a confession: 听I love the holidays. 听I鈥檓 one of those people who will try to incorporate some kind of festive craft or hands-on activity into every major holiday. 听Believe me, I have an entire closet devoted to materials for such occasions. 听So for those of you who are seeking fun, interactive, and affordable activities to jazz up your February 14th, here is a round-up of Valentine鈥檚 Day-themed games, crafts and experiments you can enjoy with your child:

With just a handful of household products, learn how crystals form by creating decorative crystal hearts!

These are great for engineers and tinkerers. 听Help your child learn about electricity and circuits by creating interactive valentines.

Challenge your child to build structures using only marshmallows and toothpicks.

In this puzzle, challenge your child to move, rotate and flip 20 pieces of paper triangles to create a heart.

Challenge your child to build a catapult and testing out how far those extra candy hearts will fly!

Learn about physics and Newton鈥檚 Third Law of Motion by setting up a balloon race!

What can be more fun than Valentine鈥檚 Day-themed slime? It鈥檚 ooey-gooey and your child will have fun learning about viscosity!

Still need ideas for Valentine鈥檚 Day? 听Join us for our Exotic Pets Workshop on February 14th, 2-3:30PM! 听Academy teacher, Grayson Kent, will teach you everything you need to know about exotic pet ownership: what to consider before purchasing, what animals are suitable pets, care tips, and more. Attendess will also get to meet some of Grayson’s favorite exotic pets! If you are interested in attending, please call听(626) 403-8900.

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I love when the holiday season starts to creep in. 听Leaves begin to change color, harvest wreaths adorn entryways, and suddenly all of your favorite treats are now apple- or pumpkin-spice flavored. 听For me, this is the time of year when I begin to see more of my immediate and extended family–a time when we get together to create new memories. 听In our growing family, we鈥檝e incorporated a number of new activities into our festivities over the years. 听Introducing different activities can be a wonderful way to engage with your loved ones (young and old) and change the pace of the day. 听Some of these activities have stuck and have become a part of our holiday tapestry like cookie baking and decorating, board game tournaments, and holiday-related arts and crafts. While others have not–like waiting in lines for Black Friday deals. 听If you鈥檙e looking for kid-friendly ideas that you can bring to your Thanksgiving table this year, here are a handful of suggestions:

Write holiday haikus

Challenge your kids and other family members to find their inner poet and write a haiku or two! 听Haikus are easy to compose with only three lines, following a 5-7-5 syllable count. 听They can be humorous and lighthearted, and are fun to share in a group. 听I鈥檓 no wordsmith, but here a few of my own haikus to inspire you:

We cherish the times
Loved ones around the table
Gathered for the feast.

Thanks to be given
For the food, the family,
And our full bellies.

Mashed spuds and stuffing
Cranberry sauce and spiced pie
Happiness…nap time.

Junior Chef

Encourage your kids to take ownership of a specific task or dish for the day. 听My favorite childhood memories revolve around food and being in the kitchen. 听Simple, but important tasks were given to me like stringing the green beans, adding a blanket of marshmallows to the sweet potatoes, combining the wet and dry ingredients to the cookie batter, and making homemade cranberry sauce. 听These assignments always provided opportunities for me to learn something new and became a source of pride for my contribution to the table.

Put your thinking caps on

If you and your kids have some down-time and enjoying solving logic problems, here are a couple of Thanksgiving-themed logic problems you can do together:

Go mad for holiday Mad Libs

If logic problems are not your forte, have fun coming up with creative nouns, verbs, and adjectives with instead. You can even challenge your kids to create their own Mad Libs!

What are you thankful for?

Finally, I鈥檓 sure many families incorporate this tradition in their holiday already, but I find it to be incredibly rewarding when everyone around the table shares what they are grateful for. 听It鈥檚 a time for reflection, hope, and gratitude. 听The Minds in Bloom website has to help guide families with younger children.

What kinds of activities do you do in your household? 听Feel free to share in the comments section below!

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We did it!听 After months of research, analysis, and reporting, we are pleased to share with you the fantastic news that 优蜜视频鈥檚 programs are officially accredited by the !听 The Commission now recognizes 优蜜视频 as a Supplementary Educational Program/Center, granting a six-year accreditation status through June 2022.听 This accomplishment is a huge source of pride for us.

First of all, WASC is one of only six regional accreditation agencies in the United States.听 These agencies are non-profit, non-governmental organizations that determine whether educational institutions fulfill the Commission鈥檚 well-defined set of standards regarding performance and operation. Accreditation is a voluntary process that ensures public trust in an educational institution and its ability to deliver high-quality services. Accredited schools and educational centers undergo a cyclical process of self-regulation and self-evaluation, which emphasizes that organizations like 优蜜视频 consistently fulfill its mission and goals through high-quality, student-centered programming; maintain a qualified and well-trained staff; and regularly evaluate whether it is meeting the needs and expectations of its students.

We are proud of this recognition, but the process of applying for accreditation was no easy feat. We crafted an in-depth self-study report, which involved thoroughly collecting and synthesizing data–lots of it.听 Some of it dating back to 1998!听 You know–those pre-, mid-, and post-program surveys we always ask you to complete?听 We actually review and analyze them in detail, and your evaluations were fundamental in our efforts to demonstrate the impact and effectiveness of our programs.

We also spent a great deal of time reflecting on the past, present, and future of 优蜜视频鈥檚 programs and the organization as a whole. Among the many aspects of WASC that 优蜜视频 values the most is the Commission鈥檚 philosophy behind its continuous cycle of improvement, which essentially requires us to evaluate our programs, develop strategic plans for improving them, and then modifying our programs to reflect these changes, thereby ensuring that we meet or exceed the standards of quality and expectations of our community.

In addition to a self-study evaluation, we completed a thorough site visit by WASC representatives, which involved an assessment of our offices and classrooms, examination of our programs including curricula and materials, as well as multiple formal and informal meetings with staff members, instructors, parents, and students.

It was a rigorous, but rewarding experience and we are grateful to everyone who helped us throughout the process. Thank you, brilliant instructors and mentors, for going above and beyond the call of duty and sharing your experiences of working with 优蜜视频. Thank you, parents and students, for your faithful support and for graciously volunteering your time and your feedback. We would also like to tip our hats to Louise Hindle, who spearheaded the entire accreditation process, pouring countless hours into compiling resources and crafting the final report.听 Lastly, we thank WASC for recognizing our work and the value of our efforts.听 We are deeply committed to upholding not only the high standards of the Commission, but those of our community as well.听 Cheers!

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With the end of the school year fast-approaching, you may find yourself looking for things to do with your child that are fun, engaging, and educational. 听As some of you know, I鈥檓 a huge fan of tinkering and believe it鈥檚 important to incorporate opportunities for tinkering in children鈥檚 daily routines. 听I鈥檝e culled the internet and found a number of fantastic activities, challenges, and experiments that may interest (you and) your child. They are all relatively affordable and can be conducted in the comfort of your own home. Please keep in mind that some of these activities require the help and/or supervision of an adult. So break out the cardboard, popsicle sticks, and tape and get ready for some fun!

1. 听

This website provides ideas for building several gadgets including pyramid catapults, propeller cars, slingshot rockets, and more!

This blog offers four different engineering challenges that require only popsicle sticks, plastic cups and wooden blocks. 听Test your child to build the tallest structure; build a structure on top of a single wooden block or cup; or balance a number of cups against several blocks. 听The possibilities are endless!

3. 听

Learn about ecosystems and aquaponics by creating a mini ecosystem using a soda bottle or mason jar!

4. 听

Using household items only, challenge your child to package a raw egg so that it would survive–unscathed and unbroken–when dropped from a great distance.

5. 听

Learn about inertia, mass, equilibrium and Newton鈥檚 First Law by building inertia towers with blocks, index cards, and string. 听Challenge your child to pull the index cards from the tower without toppling the structure!

6. 听

This activity is a DIY version of the classic wooden labyrinth game where the object is to use to move a single marble through the maze without it falling through the holes. 听Help your child construct their own labyrinth made of popsicle sticks and cardboard.

7. 听

In this fun experiment, your child will learn about DNA and how to extract it from the inside of their cheek with the help of just a few kitchen ingredients!

8. 听

Learn about buoyancy and put your engineering skills to the test by constructing a boat using solely cardboard and tape! 听Here鈥檚 the catch: make the boat large enough for you and your child to row across a pool. 听Don鈥檛 have a pool? 听Construct a mini version and see how many pennies, wooden blocks, or objects of your choice it takes to sink the boat.

Do you have any favorite activities in your household? 听Feel free to share ideas and resources below!

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Tiffany Kwong graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she received B.A.s in Sociology and Asian American Studies. She then pursued an M.A. in the Social and Cultural Analysis of Education at California State University, Long Beach. She enjoys working behind the scenes and playing a role in all of the programs and services 优蜜视频 has to offer and loves the incredibly warm and inclusive spaces 优蜜视频 has a way of creating. In her free time, she really enjoys cooking and sewing, especially in the company of family 鈥� the experience of spending time with her loved ones makes these activities particularly special to her.

After reading about the Maker movement and Maker Faires, I was reminded of the importance of hands-on learning, making, and tinkering for kids in and outside of the classroom. 听In elementary school, I remember my sixth grade teacher, Mr. Smith, presented our class with the Egg Drop Challenge. 听The rules were simple; using household items, package a raw egg in such a way that if dropped from the roof of a one-story building, it would survive unscathed and unbroken. 听My classmates used all kinds of materials including cardboard boxes, Styrofoam peanuts, bubble wrap, masking tape, drinking straws, pantyhose, and even uncooked rice! 听One by one, we watched from the ground floor as Mr. Smith carelessly flung each of our eggs off of the roof. 听What excitement!

It was such a simple experiment, and yet, so engaging, thrilling, and fun, which brings me back to the importance of learning-through-doing. 听Our current education system relies too heavily on standardized testing and content delivery, and arguably, not enough on project-based and experiential learning. 听However, with the rise of the Maker movement, we are beginning to see schools, libraries, children鈥檚 museums, and science museums respond by creating making environments or 鈥渕akerspaces鈥� and incorporating making and tinkering into their curricula and programs.

But, what is tinkering? 听Tinkering is an approach to making; it is curiosity-driven, it helps us understand how things in our everyday lives work, and inspires us to innovate and 鈥渢hink outside of the box.鈥� 听In their article, 听Resnik and Rosenbaum (2013) define tinkering as:

鈥淎 valid and valuable style of working, characterized by a playful, exploratory, iterative style of engaging with a problem or project. 听When people are tinkering, they are constantly trying out ideas, making adjustments and refinements, then experimenting with new possibilities over and over and over. […] Tinkering can be hard work, and sometimes it might not seem like play. 听But there is always a playful spirit underlying the tinkering process.鈥�

For children, the values of tinkering are seemingly endless. 听To start, it can create venues for children to:

1. Think creatively. 听Tinkering encourages children to reimagine everyday items and utilize them in new or uncommon ways. 听Suddenly, those corks from Saturday night are no longer bottle stoppers, but are now floatation devices for a mini boat!
2. Embrace setbacks. 听Tinkering also allows children to learn how to accept unforeseen challenges. 听In fact, those from the Maker movement encourage the celebration of setbacks in their designs and view them simply as drafts or iterations of the final design/product. 听Things do not always work out the way we intended and tinkering gives kids a chance to take risks and develop persistence toward achieving their goals in a safe environment.
3. Problem-solve. 听Along with unplanned challenges, tinkering provides children opportunities to work through their frustrations, think critically about the issue at hand, and confront the challenge. 听If a child鈥檚 balloon-powered vehicle does not travel as far as she hypothesized, encourage her to assess why it did not travel farther. 听What worked and what didn鈥檛 work? 听What are ways she can adapt or redesign the vehicle to increase its distance? 听Perhaps using materials that are lighter in weight, repositioning key components, or redesigning it completely from a four-wheeled vehicle to a three-wheeled one. 听The possibilities are endless!
4. Take ownership. 听Such opportunities for problem-solving and overcoming obstacles provide venues for children to take ownership of the entire process. 听There is a kind of freedom that comes with tinkering, which allows children to create things from their own imagination, explore their options, make educated decisions, and feel empowered while doing so.
5. Have fun. 听The value of tinkering relies less on the final product than the actual process. 听Learning by doing can be fun and exhilarating especially when it鈥檚 driven by designing, creating, refining, testing, and analyzing. 听It creates a connection between imagination and real-world application. 听What can be more rewarding than making your ideas become a reality?

After all, as Make Magazine founder and Maker Faire creator, Dale Dougherty reminds us, 鈥淲e are all makers.鈥�

Here a couple of TEDTalks to help inspire the tinkerer in you:

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In this day and age of technology, more and more web-based resources are becoming available at our fingertips. Apple鈥檚 iTunes App Store, for example, has hundreds of applications specifically geared towards children鈥檚 learning and enrichment. Likewise, more e-learning websites are cropping up all over the Internet, offering a seemingly endless amount of educational lessons and tutorials in the form of short videos. Such educational resources are great for homeschoolers, teachers looking for ways to differentiate in their classrooms, and the life-long learner in all of us. While some parents may frown upon the use of web-based videos as a learning tool for their kids, I believe that these can be great resources for supplementing one鈥檚 education when used in moderation.

Some of the benefits of e-learning include:

• The freedom to discover and explore. With all of the information available online, your child has the opportunity to discover new subjects and delve deeper into topics that interest him or her.
• The freedom to learn at his or her own pace. Your child also has the freedom to decide on the pace of learning based on his or her ability in any one subject. In regards to videos specifically, your child has the freedom to control (literally) the speed of the lesson by pausing, rewinding, and fast-forwarding through content if he or she desires to review or skip specific segments of a lesson.
• The freedom to learn practically anywhere at any time. Since these are web-based resources, your child can learn anywhere you have access to the Internet and a computer or mobile device and at times that are most convenient to your family鈥檚 schedule.

With all of these benefits of e-learning in mind, I did a little research of my own to pinpoint which websites out there are the most gifted kid-friendly. Each of these websites is devoted to providing accessible, user-friendly educational tools; and best of all, these resources are free to the public! So here are my picks. Enjoy!

3.

NeoK12 is a website that offers educational videos and lessons, including games and quizzes, specifically geared to Kindergarten through 12th grade students. According to its mission, NeoK12 promotes learning through educational videos because they 鈥渂elieve that kids learn best when they 鈥榮ee鈥� how things work, when, where and why they happen.鈥� Through its comprehensive collection of videos, kids can learn about areas of study such as geography, social studies, physical science, English, math, and the human body. The site even hosts segments of the Discovery Channel show How It鈥檚 Made.

My picks:

• 鈥� Learn about the properties of the four fundamental states of matter: solid, gas, liquid, and plasma!
• 鈥� Check out this lesson on how our organs, vessels, and muscles work together in our bodies鈥� circulatory systems.
• And for fun,

2.

Khan Academy seeks to 鈥渉elp you learn what you want, when you want, at your own pace鈥� via video tutorials and lessons. It currently hosts a library of over 4,200 videos on topics ranging from chemistry, physics, trigonometry, and even humanities.

Students can create their own profiles to track their activities and earn achievement patches and badges, while parents can track their child鈥檚 progress over time. There is also a community aspect to this website, where students can ask questions about a concept they didn鈥檛 understand and have them answered by other Khan Academy students.

My picks:

• 鈥� Get an introduction to one of the coolest numbers in math! It also informed the .
• 鈥� Learn about the nuts and bolts of our DNA in this video about cells, chromosomes, and genes.

To learn more about the origins of Khan Academy, view creator, Salman Khan鈥檚 TEDTalk, .

1.

An offshoot of TEDTalks, TED-Ed delivers 鈥淟essons worth sharing鈥� through brief videos on topics ranging from the arts and literature to mathematics and psychology. Each lesson also includes multiple choice and open-ended questions for your child to engage with the content, as well as a 鈥淒ig Deeper鈥� section, which provides additional information and resources for your child to further explore the topic.

My picks:

• 鈥� Learn about how the invention of the train shaped the invention of standardized time zones.
• 鈥� Check out this fascinating video on bacteria and its chemical language!

(Please note that 优蜜视频 is not in any way affiliated with Apple, Inc., NeoK12, Khan Academy, or TED. We just wanted to share some of the great resources we鈥檝e found with you!)

What鈥檚 your child鈥檚 favorite online resource? Please share in the comment section below.

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I love . Whenever I need a break from my day-to-day routine, I watch a TEDTalk and lose myself in the brilliance of people and their ideas.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with TEDTalks, let me give you a brief overview of TED. TED is a private, nonprofit organization that was founded in 1984, with the objective of hosting an annual conference on Technology, Entertainment, and Design鈥攈ence the acronym, TED.

Since then, TED has grown; it now hosts global conferences and events throughout the year and has expanded its scope to include leaders from various fields and disciplines, such as medicine, education, economics, anthropology, and music. At these conferences, notable speakers like Jane Goodall, Bill Gates, and Nobel Prize winners confront audiences with issues, ideas, and phenomena that seek to inspire passion and curiosity.

TED鈥檚 goal is simple: To spread ideas. According to its mission statement, 鈥淲e believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives, and ultimately, the world. So we’re building here a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world’s most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other.鈥� Thus, TED decided to release and post its 鈥渢alks鈥� online, making them free and accessible to our global community of learners. Since launching its website in 2007, TED has posted 1,356 videos online, which have been viewed almost 1 billion times worldwide.

With so many talks readily available, my efforts of selecting only five videos proved to be more difficult than I had anticipated. But for your viewing pleasure, here are my top five most powerful, informative, and stimulating TEDTalks for parents of gifted children. Enjoy!

5.
In her discussion, writer Susan Cain speaks about introversion and questions why it is undervalued in our society. She calls for a celebration of introverted-ness and offers three suggestions for changing the ways we view introversion.

Favorite quote: 鈥淭here’s zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas.鈥�

4.
Professor of education Sugata Mitra describes his global 鈥淗ole in the Wall鈥� experiments, where children are given access to computers and the Internet. Through these experiments, Mitra illustrates how, when given the resources, groups of children learn from each other and become 鈥渟elf-organizing systems.鈥�

Favorite quote: 鈥淐hildren will learn to do what they want to learn to do.鈥�

3.
In this inspirational video, then twelve-year-old child prodigy Adora Svitak asks her adult audience to reexamine the ways they view children as 鈥渋rrational鈥� and 鈥渋rresponsible鈥� beings. Rather, children should be acknowledged and valued for their abilities to imagine the possibilities of tomorrow.

Favorite quote: 鈥淟earning between grown-ups and kids should be reciprocal. The reality, unfortunately, is a little different, and it has a lot to do with trust, or a lack of it.鈥�

2.
In this 20-minute talk, Temple Grandin demonstrates how autistic minds process information and urges us to nurture these varied ways of thinking as resources in our twice-exceptional youth.

Favorite quote: 鈥淣ow the thing is, the world is going to need all of the different kinds of minds to work together. We鈥檝e got to work on developing all these different kinds of minds.鈥�

1.

In this comical but informative discussion, Ken Robinson examines our education system in relation to creativity. Like Adora Svitak, he stresses that children have amazing capabilities and 鈥渃apacities for innovation.鈥� However, Robinson argues that creativity is being squandered in our classrooms, where academic abilities are placed at a higher premium than other types of intelligences.

Favorite quote: 鈥淢y contention is that creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.鈥�

Do you have a favorite TEDTalk? Share your favorite in the comment section below!

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