Monday, July 11, 2011

An Atmosphere for Creativity

According to psychologist Alan Bowd of Canada’s Lakehead University, children need to foster thinking skills such as these to encourage creativity:

 

  • Fluency -- produce many responses to an open-ended question or problem.
  • Flexibility -- generate unconventional ideas and view situations from different perspectives.
  • Originality -- produce unique, unusual, or novel responses.
  • Elaboration -- add rich detail to ideas.
  • Visualization -- imagine and mentally manipulate images and ideas.
  • Transformation -- change one thing or idea into another to see new meanings, applications, and implications.
  • Synthesis -- combine parts into a coherent whole.

 

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In a mentally playful environment, loose parts are the key for creative play. With them, children learn to construct, take turns, knock down, plan and start all over again.

 

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Bring out those safe, durable and functional loose parts, send a message that they are able to make choices and take risks.

Learning should be FUN!

 

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10 comments:

  1. Wow, really impressed with your blog, so glad to have found it via Facebook :)

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  2. So happy I found you! Kindred spirits! May I ask where you found the colorful cylinders?

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  3. Maria, I'm a huge proponent of loose parts too! I just built a make-shift light table, and I'm excited to see what we can do with it. Where did you find those lovely colorful translucent pieces?

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  4. I think you've created an atmosphere for magic as well... :)

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  5. Maria, did you mention before where you purchased the acrylic tile samples? I had it bookmarked but IT came and reformatted my computer and I lost a lot of good stuff.

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  6. Hello
    Do you mind sharing with me the name of Alan Bowd's book from where the reference was taken? I would like to read the book. I have research it but I couldn't find it. Thank you !

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