The puzzle of today comes from a book. It is a puzzle you can do with someone else. Can you resist not to read the answer?
If for whatever reason, Puzzle sunday doesn't appear, it might be a good idea to look for a puzzle book, for not missing your weekly mental workout. An alternative would be to browse through older posts for a puzzle.
Difficult puzzles need a strategy to be able to solve them. Smart children just try solving them, trusting their solving skills rather than a strategy. This works until they face a puzzle that seems not to work in that way. Then they have to try something called multilayered strategy. This is exactly the aim of scaffolding, getting insight in structure of solution, rather than being able to just solve the puzzle without having to worry how they did it.
In the midst of this comes emotions that are new to smart children: failure, frustration, stress... These emotions are often successfully avoided because smart children often can solve problems easily. When the puzzle is difficult enough, they get the chance to experience these emotions. A good teacher knows that emotions are a part of education. It is good to reflect on the emotions. What happened? How did you feel?
Then the child has to finish the task anyway. This means perseverance. The more perseverance, the better the child will feel when it does succeed to solve the problem in the end.
When they succeeded to solve the difficult puzzle, accompanied with the necessary frustration, the next step is to teach the child to automatize the puzzle.
Is there a publisher that can help a woman, mother and 90% nerd (nerd test, I know, it does not count) to publish a book on a subject that might benefit mothers of potentially smart children? It's been 42 years of doubt whether I should consider myself a language person or a science person, and I'm still multilingual... Help!
Multilingual friends are: deaf friends, minorities, highest educated, lowest educated, authors of the books in my cupboard, technicians (speak the language of technic, mathemathics), mathematicians (speaking in equations), you, my reader. (being cited last is actually an honor)
