Encouraging Your Child's Science Talent: The Involved Parents' Guide

Does your child love to experiment with unusual objects? Does she revel in asking and discovering answers to her questions about the world around her? Can he take apart and put back together any complicated machine, without reading the instructions? Parents of children with precocious science ability will find the suggestions in Encouraging Your Child's Science Talent engaging, encouraging, and practical.

The author provides parents with advice for:

• recognizing early science ability in children,
• helping that ability flourish at home and in the classroom,
• setting up science-related projects, and
• enriching a child's science ability.

The book also includes a special section on science fairs that takes parents through the process of helping their children create award-winning, educational science fair projects.

Educational Resource

Michael S. Matthews, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Special Education and Child Development at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He previously served as an assistant professor at the University of South Florida in Tampa and as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Duke University Talent Identification Program. Matthews earned his doctoral degree in educational psychology, with a concentration in gifted and creative education, from the University of Georgia. He is a regular presenter at state, national, and international meetings on gifted education. He was the 2006 Program Chair for the special interest group, Research on Giftedness and Talent, of the American Educational Research Association. He serves as a reviewer for several journals, including Gifted Child Quarterly and Journal for the Education of the Gifted. Matthews' research interests include underachievement, science education, and varied issues related to cultural and linguistic diversity in gifted education.