What did Mensa CR do for children in 2015?

Spring and Autumn Meeting of Children’s Mensa

Up to 120 children and their parents participate twice a year in this popular bi-annual weekend event. The meeting is designed as a relaxed family weekend in a hotel with a pool, and includes lectures for parents, competitions, cipher quests, and in general, a varied programme both for children and whole families. During the entire event, dozens of board and card games are available, along with rooms where families can talk and share their experience related to life with gifted children. The meeting is open to both Mensa members and non-members, everyone is welcome. In 2016, we intend to organize an additional meeting during the winter holidays at the end of January.

Summer camps and commuter camps

These camps are particularly intended for children aged 8 years and older. This year, a hundred children enjoyed a varied programme, consisting of team games, competitions and, from a major part, from an elective programme. This year, the latter included more than 20 individual activities, ranging from playing board games, through experiments, fine art activities, photography, fishing, theatre, sports, creative writing, dance, and cipher solving, all the way through to a readers’ club and den building in the forest. As the older children don’t want to lose the opportunity to participate next year, we decided to organize two summer camps for the same period – one for children, and the other for youths. Both camps will mutually interact, which will certainly enrich the experience for all of the participants.

“Games den” for teenagers

This is a weekend event that is organized several times a year in Rousinov. Despite very simple sleeping arrangements, the opportunity to meet, discuss various topics, plan further events, play games, and maintain friendships, it always attracts a group of older members of Children’s Mensa and younger members of Mensa. Another regular attendant of these meetings is a good mood.

Co-operating schools, Gifted Children’s Clubs

We are continuously searching for schools and kindergartens that are interested in intensifying their work with gifted children, supporting them in their development, and meeting with colleagues at workshops and conferences.

In co-operation with the National Institute for Further Education, we are preparing the content for 10 certified courses for school co-ordinators of the care for gifted children. The intention is to create a comprehensive programme that will help the co-ordinators achieve better orientation in this field, and to set up a functional system of care for gifted children, even in schools that are just starting their programmes.

Besides the above mentioned activities, our members are active in organizing many other events, the news of which has been published in our magazine.

Children’s Mensa website deti.mensa.cz

The website helps us inform members and the general public about activities organized by Mensa, as well as other organizations focused on developing talent.

Lenka Snajdrova strives to update the website as frequently as possible, and keeps adding new information that could be of interest to parents and teachers of (not exclusively) gifted children and pupils. While writing this text, our website contains presentations of 58 Mensa-co-operating kindergartens, 45 Mensa-co-operating schools, 41 Gifted Children’s Clubs, and 11 Games Clubs (see the Summary). We are doing our best to gather information and tips about interesting competitions, games, projects, educational events, literature for parents, etc. Both parents and teachers can subscribe to receive our e-mail newsletter, which is issued irregularly, to make sure they will not miss any new information or announcements concerning new events, such as the Children’s Mensa Spring and Autumn meetings, lectures for parents and teachers, the Mensa Conference on Talent Development, and any other social or educational events.

Managers of Gifted Children’s Clubs and teachers of co-operating schools and kindergartens have the opportunity to supplement their presentations with photos, documents, and articles, as they see fit. Over the last year, we have continued improving the web in both contentual and functional respects. For example, a new discussion forum, accessible to all registered members, was created. Another new feature added to the website is the page “Ask us” (available in Czech language only: Zeptejte se nás), allowing parents and teachers to ask questions related to gifted children (particularly in situations where they do not know whom to address with such a question).

Our plan for 2016 is to create a new, improved, and more complex English version of the website. As the activities of Mensa CR for children and youth are unique on an international scale, and we would like to make them visible at an international level, in particular, within Mensa International.

Dana Havlová

Related topics

• Latest news
• Mensa activities for gifted children
• Children’s Mensa
• Mensa NTC Learning System
• Gifted Children’s Clubs
• Co-operating schools
• Logical Olympiad
• Meetings of members and friends of Children’s Mensa

10.12.2015

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