Why play?

Which do you think is more important, math or play? This is actually a trick question, because whereas math is a subject, playfulness is a state of mind that can be used in any situation. And increasingly, researchers are finding that ‘play’ is a critical element part of the way children learn. Their creativity is unlocked when they feel comfortable experimenting with problems and ideas. This works whether the problem involves finding a new way to bake a cake or a different approach to solving an equation.

But, what does that mean at a practical level? How can you, as teachers and parents, bring more playfulness into your children’s educational lives? Well, here are a few suggestions.

For Parents:
•No matter what the age, make time to tinker, play, use humor and be spontaneous with kids.
•Learn about and play with your kids’ games. This will not only provide quality time between you, but it will also show your kids that you are playful. Don't be afraid to take out the rules and make up your own!
•Talk about the games you played as a kid, and search for the game on ebay. We recently purchased an old game called “Pie in the face” and played it with the family! (See photo above!)
•Don’t be afraid to get dirty with your kids. Whether it be paint, mud, or snow - find the time to create anything with your kids!
•Dinner talk: What is your favorite joke? What other foods could you create from the food at the table? Don’t be afraid to come up with something unusual!

For Teachers:
• Bring in cartoons without captions. Have students generate captions!
•Have a play and tell day!
•Find objects in the room that don’t match and play with the ideas of what they could do together.
•Ask students to bring in a toy that their parents used to play with.
•Give students a challenge and use the language, “let’s play around with this!”
•Ask kids to bring in recycled “junk” and give them inventions to create. For example, ask them to create something a pet owner might use, a bee trap or something you might need for the school bus.
•Bring in animal balloons (these can be bought at your local store along with a balloon pump!). Give each child three balloons and ask them to create a new type of animal to share with the class. Set up a balloon pet shop! Play with what they could feed their new “pets”.

One last thing. The role of play doesn’t end with the school career. In fact, many organizations are now realizing that they have to establish a playful environment in order to help their employees develop great ideas. If you would like to learn more about this, please have a look at Tim Brown’s wonderful TED presentation.

*Developed by Cyndi Burnett and Mary Murdock in part for AGATE conference, 2008.

Any dream will do

When you were a kid, what did you dream about?

At the age of five or six, I remember sitting in the back of my mom’s mini van with my four older brothers and sisters. In the car, we had a family rule that we would take turns listening to each other’s favorite radio station. As the music played, and my siblings poked at and harassed one another, I would take the time to stare out the window and dream about dancing on stage to whatever song I heard. From Michael Jackson to Queen, I could dance to anything in my head! I began to take dance lessons in a VFW hall, and there were times when I would close my eyes while dancing and imagine myself on stage with thousands of people watching me. I worked hard at developing my dancing skills through my childhood, adolescence, and college years. My dream became a reality when I was 23 and landed a National Tour, traveling through 89 cities performing for thousands of people.

It is essential to create an environment where kids may have the space to dream. Dreaming is defined as “to imagine as possible, your dreams and hopes” (Puccio, Murdock and Mance, 2006).

Here are some ways you could foster dreaming with kids:

• Bring in old magazines and spend some time creating visual collages. Ask kids to share some of their dreams with each other.
• After a busy day, play quiet music and ask kids to close their eyes for one minute and imagine big fluffy clouds, or sitting in their most comfortable chairs or anything else they can dream up!
• Ask kids to write a story that begins with “It would be great if…”
• Practice Visualization using SCAMPER. SCAMPER stands for substitute, combine, adapt, modify, put to other uses, eliminate or rearrange. Ask kids to close their eyes and imagine an elephant. What could they substitute about the elephant? What could they combine with another animal? After you have asked the questions, have the kids open their eyes and draw what the final elephant looked like. (for more information see Eberle).
• Have kids search for people who have reached their dreams. Have them find out how they reached their accomplishments.
• Have kids write “I have a dream” speeches.
  

By the way, as an adult, when I hear music, I still close my eyes and imagine myself dancing to the music on stage. And in my dream, I can still kick to the sky and do triple pirouettes like I used to!

How do you foster dreaming in your home or classroom?

*Developed by Cyndi Burnett and Mary Murdock for AGATE conference 2008

Curiouser and Curiouser

Next weekend, I will be presenting a workshop titled, “Curiouser and Curiouser: The Affective Skills in the Creative Problem Solving process” at the Advocacy for Gifted and Talented Education Conference in Buffalo New York. Over the next week, I will be sharing pieces of my presentation with my readers.

The affective skills come from the book, Creative Leadership: Skills That Drive Change This book outlined the cognitive and affective skills which are used throughout the Creative Problem Solving process.

Today, I will focus on the core affective skill, curiosity! How do you encourage curiosity in your home or classroom? Here are a number of ways you may use nurture curiosity in kids. Feel free to add your ideas in the comment section!

-Begin by using the language and framing curiosity in your home and/or classroom. Use phrases like, “What are you curious about?”, “That is interesting… I am curious to know why…” , and “what are you curious about?”

-Initiate a curiosity month, a curiosity week or a curiosity hour in your home/classroom, where you deliberately give curiosity attention.

-Establish a “curiosity corner” in your home/classroom, where kids can come and ask questions (which that might leave on post-its), look up information, and create something new.

-Have a curiosity hat, curiosity coat or something similar, so that when kids put on the item of clothing, they are deliberately becoming curious.

-Create a divergent list with your kids on all the characters in literature that are curious. Select one character and have kids create their own story about that character.

-Keep an encyclopedia and/or dictionary in a convenient community location (maybe the curiosity corner!). When your child asks a question or doesn’t know a word, encourage him/her to look it up and share back!

-Create “friends” (with names) with the key information questions such as, Holly-who, Willy-What, Wendy-Why, Wendall-Where and Harold-How. Invite them to your space(they could be little cardboard cut-outs or dolls) or have your kids dress up as these characters.

-Bring in photographs and challenge your kids to come up with as many questions as they can about the photograph.

-Engage your kids in magic tricks, and ask other kids to ask questions to unravel the magic.

-Explore the question, “what is the trickiest question you could ask?”

-Celebrate curiosity whenever you hear it.

-Model curiosity and the thinking disposition of being curious.

-At the end of the day ask, …is there anything you are still curious about? Reflect or talk…

-Find ways to integrate curiosity into the things you are doing.

*Developed by Cyndi Burnett and Mary Murdock for AGATE conference 2008

Make it swing, make it ring!

When I was grade school, I remember spending countless hours trying to memorize written information, only to forget it the next day. However, when it came to music and movement, I could effortlessly remember the lyrics for any song, and every movement in my dance classes. In the book, Making the Creative Leap Beyond, Torrance and Safter (1999) described the creativity skill, "Make it swing! Make it Ring!" This skill is about the experience of something kinesthetic or auditory. "If the thinker can experience something kinesthetically and auditorially, it gives them a firmer grasp of the information, and this increases the chance of a larger number of useful, valid alternatives" (p. 178) Here is a simple game that you can do with your students, or at home with your child.

Activity:
1. Select a short academic topic to work on- this could be anything from remembering math problems, to the dates of the various wars.
2. Give each student a different phrase to remember. For example- one student might have "The Civil War began in 1861" and another student might have "The Civil War is the war between the states!".
3. Have all students stand in a circle.
4. Ask your students to say their phrases (all the same time)- first in a happy voice, then in a scared voice, sad voice, excited voice and angry voice. Ask them to say it really loud, and really soft. Ask them to say the phrase as if they had just won a toy store. And if they just lost a baseball game.
5. Next, explain to the children that they will need to create a movement for their phrases.
6. Have each student step into the circle and say her phrase while doing her creative movement.
7. Then, the rest of the group steps in and repeats the phrase and movement.
8. Once each student has done this, go back around the circle and only use the movement that the student had picked. Ask the students if they can remember what the phrase was after each.
9. At a later time, practice the moves with the phrases!

*Note for Parents: The activity above could be done with only one child. Have the child select a short phrase or topic he is finding challenging, and create a family movement for it. Then, when the child says the phrase, the whole family has to get up and do the movement!

Look at it another way

Pizza is undoubtedly my favorite food. I could eat it for breakfast, lunch AND dinner. However, I would never have thought of it as a dessert. Never, that is, until I read this recipe: Blueberry Pizza You may not agree, but when I think about blueberry pizza as a strudel with pecans, butter and sugar, my mouth begins to salivate!

Thinking about pizza as a dessert is a prime example of the creativity skill “Look at it another way” that E. Paul Torrance, otherwise known as the “Father of Creativity”, described in his book Making the Creative Leap Beyond. “The creative person is able to return repeatedly to a commonplace object or situation and look at it in different and exciting ways” (p. 197).

This week I would like to challenge you and your kids to take something ordinary and look at it another way. To help you get started with this skill, here are a few suggestions:

1. Take a peek at this website that uses hands as art. How might you use your hands to create other pictures? Feel free to dress up your hands with accessories, paint them or even dress them up with food!

2. Select an object in your house and take photos of it (or draw it!) from as many different angles as possible. Stand on the table, crawl on the floor, do an extreme close-up! What do you notice?

3. Find an object in your house you consider “junk”. Think about using it in another way. Perhaps it could be your dogs new favorite chew toy, or a doorstopper.

4. In your home or classroom, switch chairs or move your chairs so that they are facing in different directions. What do you notice when sitting in a different spot?

5. Imagine your flip flops could talk. Write a short story on the day in the life of your flip flops.

Feel free to share how you and your kids “look at it from another way” this week! Just add your thoughts to the comments!

Would you like a slice of Blueberry Pizza?

Did you wince at the sight of this title? Many people do! The surprising thing is, they have probably never tried blueberry pizza.

Typically, I find our educational systems and business organizations run around saying they want to be more “creative” and “innovative”, but the ironic part is, they are usually not genuinely open to novelty. Creativity and innovation come in to play when novelty and usefulness are bridged together.

So who would eat blueberry pizza? Meet five-year-old Ronan. Ronan likes to put his clothes on backwards and requests blueberries on his homemade pizza. He inspired me to begin this blog to help people of all ages open their minds to novel ideas and become more creative thinkers. So thanks for joining me as we begin the discussion around blueberry pizzas.