Autumn meeting of members and supporters of Children’s Mensa – September 2015
As a manager of a Mensa-co-operating kindergarten utilizing the NTC Learning System, I, together with my eight-year-old daughter Julie, set out for a weekend organized by Mensa CR – a meeting of members and supporters of Children’s Mensa.
I always imagined Mensa members as extremely gifted and clever people, which made me curious about the way the weekend was going to be, what children and what parents we were to meet and spend time with in the highlands.
On Friday afternoon, we set off from Prague towards Brno. After less than two hours of a rainy journey, we arrived at the hotel, picked up the room key, chose from the three options on the menu for lunches and dinners, and went to our room.
After a great three course dinner, we all met in the clubroom, where a selection of board games was available – logic and knowledge-based, for younger children as well as for older ones. The weekend organizers were introduced, and we were divided into six teams, ten men (and women) strong. We were told about the details of the weekend programme for both children and adults, as well as the schedule of interesting lectures running throughout the entire weekend. The neighbouring classroom hosted a meeting of parents and Mensa CR leaders discussing the topic of gifted children later that night.
On Saturday, we all had breakfast and set out with our teams for a cipher game in the countryside. The first task was a sports activity. The children stood in a line on square carpets, and using necessary logic and deftness, they moved one piece after another until they got to the end. The fastest team to complete the journey was the winner and all of the children did their best to win. All of them were rewarded with gingerbread, with glazing bearing symbols of mathematical formulas. In the next tasks, they were to solve a few more challenges as a team. We were walking together through the woods while attempting to decode mathematical ciphers. Thanks to the observant children, we successfully solved (almost) all ten tasks and questions. The next stop was a ropes course, where everyone could show their prowess, flexibility, and precision – the task was to get through the spider web without touching the ropes. It was quite a difficult task, but we all had good fun. Those who liked “Nerfs” could try out their marksmanship. Hitting a plastic cover hung on a tree trunk, using Nerf foam ammunition was the last sports task. On our way back to the hotel, we had to solve another couple of riddles, sudokus, and brain-teasers.
On Saturday afternoon, we had an opportunity to attend Dr. Marček’s lecture, named “Perfectionism”. While parents listened to the lecture, the children played a game on the terrace
A task for the whole weekend was to remember a princess from any fairy tale presenting only positive characteristics. There were many suggestions, but in the end, most agreed on Sleeping Beauty from the fairy tale of the Three Brothers, who slept throughout almost the entire fairy tale, and therefore had no opportunity to present any negative characteristics. The truth is that we had to think real hard to find the right one. An interesting observation about it was that it was predominantly the adults who were suggesting princesses and were happy to have found the right one eventually.
In the evenings, we played board games – I really learned a lot of them with my Julie, and bought quite a few after we returned home.
After dinner, a lecture on the NTC Learning System serving for stimulation of children’s brains in pre-school age was held by Mr Tomáš Blumenstein, who introduced the method to the audience, and presented a lot of practical experience with this method.
On Sunday morning, the winners of the competitions were announced, and another round of board games followed.
We carried away medals, small presents, but most importantly – the euphoria from winning.
It was a really lovely weekend, which my daughter and I spent in the company of very nice people. The attitude of the entire Mensa CR leadership was very forthcoming, and made us look forward to the spring meeting, which I am definitely going to recommend to my colleagues and friends, who would enjoy such a weekend of playing and thinking as much as I did.
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27.9.2015
Autumn meeting of members and supporters of Children’s Mensa – September 2015 20.9.2015 |
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