Sparking Children's Thinkibility
Mindboggling Questions, Creativity and Curiosity
On the Tenth Day of October, we saved Ten Adorable Penguins If you are very lucky, according to Irish folklore, you might find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But what is a pot of gold compared to some Gentoo penguins with flamboyant red-orange beaks, white-feather caps, and peach-colored feet. Or …
Imagine that you can be the sloth. What does it mean to find your inner sloth? Sloths are asleep a good portion of the twenty-four-hour day. The rest of the time the are slowly moving and feeding. What if you were licking an ice-cream in a way that a sloth munches slowly on leaves? What …
Continue reading "Inspired by Endangered Sloths – Sloth Meditation"
Dugongs spark our curiosity and tug our heart-strings. These sea cows are beautiful and fascinating creatures. The first day of January we saved One swimming dugong Inspired by the carol "The Twelve days fo Christmas", we made up a song where we each month saved an animal - The Twelve Months of Endangered Animals Song. …
Continue reading "Biomimicry for Young Children – Inspired by Endangered Dugongs"
All a snow flake detective need is snow, a magnifier glass and patience. As with all beauty, part of the allure is mystery. And snowflakes are beautiful. "The most beautiful things we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, …
Continue reading "Be a Snowflake Detective – Sparkling Crystal Fun & Facts"
"How long to try when faced with a difficult maths problems?" Turning "I can't do" that to "I can do that" is the ultimate goal of learning. Many maths and science students rarely persists more that 10 seconds if they find a problem puzzling. A habit of mind can be described as the self-discipline to …
Thoughts dance around in our head all the time, but capturing our thoughts is tricky. Just like jelly fish are mesmerizing and graceful drifters, many of us drift in our thoughts without any deeper insight into how we think. The visual tool, mind mapping, can be used by young people, even pre-school children, to visually …
It might be difficult to understand why biomimicry is important and what children can learn from this approach to look at nature to find inspiration for new ideas. Most school teach children about how animals and plants grow, where they can be found, and taxonomy but nature can be used as an inspiration to solve …
Mind mapping is a great way to get ideas. Here I have used it to get ideas for a Summer Bucket List. There are many ready-made list that you can print but making your own is a great creative way to spend some time together. You can use a big cardboard paper and make a …
Continue reading "How to Make a Summer Bucket List – Mind Mapping"
Today I feel silly! Today I feel happy! Today I feel sad! Feelings and emotions are a part of everyday life. It is how a child controls and regulates these feelings and emotions that determine a child's success in any given situation. Teaching children how to talk about their feelings and exploring healthy ways to …
Ahhh, you never really know where a you might end up when you blow dandelion seeds.Watching the little parachutes dance away in the chilly spring breeze may spark all sort of ideas. Observe, listen, touch, smell and in same cases even taste. To be creative, curious and to observe the world is an exciting way …
Continue reading "Biomimicry, Pasta and Mind Mapping – Dandelion Magic"
A fine and subtle spirit dwells In every little flower, Each one its own sweet feeling breathes With more or less of power. There is a silent eloquence In every wild bluebell That fills my softened heart with bliss That words could never tell. Anne Brontë Some things in life is simply confusing. Like finding …
Continue reading "White, Pink and Blue Bluebells! Mixing Art and Science"
Eyes! Geckos with zig-zagged pupils. Chameleons that can look at two directions at the same time. And frogs that can see above the surface while they are underwater! Eyes are a great topic to explore when you are talking about biomimcry. You can solve design challenges: "Use one of the words that rhyme with frog. …
Continue reading "Interesting Eyes – Biomimcry for Young Children"
Creativity - the skill to devise new solutions that has value - is considered as a teachable skill. Once regarded as the work of genius, the focus is now on understanding what conditions that encourage creativity. A tightly controlled classroom or home environment is the reality for many children. It is easier to structure a …
Stunning, creative and innovative! How does nature solve transportation challenges? Transportation is linked not only to movement of people and goods, but also to equality, access to food and wildlife impacts. Student teams from around the world took part in the Biomimicry Student Design Challenge. Nature-inspired transportation ideas where used to design solutions that addressed …
"How do you feel when you see an advert?" We loved making the advert -"OK. let's see what we can do about it". So how did we get the idea for making this ad? How can you use an ad to reflect upon how other people see and feel about an ad? And can you …
Continue reading "Mind Mapping – Making an Animal Protection Ad"
"OK, let's see what we can do about this". To create an advert you need a catchy snappy tagline. And you need to think about how other people will interpret the message. What else do you need to think about when you create an advert? Is the simpler the better? Should it rhyme? Or play …
Trees with colourful Roots and Trees that grow on Trees! Ideas for art projects can be gained by twisting and turning information around. The overall aim with this and the previous blog post is to show how children can use information to learn about trees and to get their own ideas. Thus, rather than copying ideas, …
Are trees boring? Do all trees look the same? Ever heard of the Rainbow tree? Or seen a tree where the fruits grow on the bark? And what if you could see the roots of the tree? Thinking about and searching for information about trees is a great way to not only learn about nature …
Continue reading "Non-Boring Trees – Using Info to Gain Inspiration"
What kind of body do you need to crawl through tight spaces? Looking at nature, really looking, is a way to admire and be awe-struck by the beauty and clever way that nature has solved and is still trying to solve problems. A way to uncover the poetry of nature. The irresistible beauty of butterfly …
Continue reading "Biomimicry Design Challenge Using Mind Mapping"
Imagine living hundreds of millions years ago during the age of dinosaurs. Many children go through a dinosaur phase and they become little dino-experts, twisting their tongues when they try to learn the often long and complicated names like Triceratops and Tyrannosaurs Rex. This diverse group of animals first appears during the Triassic period, over …
Exploring "What might be" is a fantastic opportunity to imagine how something might change. Learning to consider and explore consequences of actions and decisions is a crucial approach to thinking that all children should be taught. In a previous blog post "Why is the sky not Violet?" we looked at some scientific explanations to why …
"Robots are flexible, soft and they can smoothly move through the water!" Our image of robots are slowly changing, at least in laboratories around the world. A recent project at MIT tries to create a soft robotic fish that moves like a real fish. Jerky movements and a metallic frame are not the image of …
"Does a circle have corners? And what about an eclipse?" Learning to recognise basic 2-D and more complex 2-D and 3-D shapes such as pentagons, hexagons and cubes are important life skills. Learning shapes is key for future math learning and knowing 2-D shapes is important not only for geometry but also measurement of shapes. …
Would you dare. . . Travel to Space? But what if you got lost? Playing the game "Would you dare?" is a fun way to think not only about things that might be exciting to do but also to explore what we assume when we hear the suggestions. The way the question is posed, suggests …
I am the Earth And the Earth is me. Each blade of grass, Each honey tree, Each bit of mud, And stick and stone Is blood and muscle, Skin and bone. From Earth Day by Jane Yolen What does Earth mean you? What is the value of Earth? Imagining the future is a great thinking …
Understanding what the world looks like from an other perspective is a vital skill. Yet imagining what other person or animals sees, smells or hear is not easy. There are many classic examples that makes us laugh - for example a picture of two people looking at a number from opposite sides. One person sees …
What is the point of using mind mapping? Sometimes your child wants to have some fun and make a personal mind map. The goal is to enjoy making the mind map and there is no need to make sure that anyone else can understand it. Using colours and pictures is exciting. But mind mapping can …
A fractured fairy-tale is a story that uses fairy tales as inspiration for the story and then changes things around. In the book The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, the author, Jon Scieszka, has changed the perspective in the story and the wolf tells his side of the story, By changing essential elements …
Continue reading "Mind Map – Fractured Tales and Random Inspiration"
Cities of stars, galaxies, make a wonderful backdrop for a mind map. Galaxies are like islands spread out in space. They come in different shapes and forms. Our Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy, with several hundred billion glittering stars. Some galaxies only contain a couple of million. There are elliptical and ring galaxies. …
Using natural mind maps is a great way to explore a topic and to teach a child to structure their material, search for new ideas and solve problems. We created a mind map using pictures of snowflakes. Snowflakes often stick together and we thought that this would be a good way to think dive into …
Children love fairy tales and from a young age they begin to retell a story. Emergent literacy is a term that is used to refer to the idea that children learn about reading and writing before they receive formal instruction. Children imitate reading and writing activities - you can hear them muttering while they are …
The theme for this year's dyslexia awareness week, 14th to 20th October, is Beyond Words. The aim is to highlight that children suffering from dyslexia often have several strengths such as thinking in pictures and these need to be used to support them in the best possible way. They also experience problems apart from problems …
Nature is filled with Mind Maps! If you look around you will find lots of shapes and material in nature that can be used to create mind maps. Mind maps can be formed from lots of different shapes to help a child remember information, create stories, and get an overview of a topic. But mind …
Mind maps are not only a wonderful tool to help children to write stories, memories and structure information. The visual tool can also be used to engage children in imaginative thinking. A think dive into unknown territories. A real brain work out! Imagining utopia is a creative thinking technique that helps children to be innovative. …
Mind mapping is a great way to generate ideas for writing. What to write about is sometimes a challenge and maps of different shapes can be used to writing inspiration. Maps can be made in shapes that inspire the search for different ideas. A cat shaped map can be filled with ideas for writing …
Good memory may be a great thing but perfect memory can lead to all sorts of problems. Many scientists believe t the problem is not that we forget things but that we have problem with recalling things. We need to find a good memory technique to help us recall things. Teaching your child to …
Mind maps are a popular way to help children represent, think, organise, and plan. It is often used as an aid to remember information and solving problems.Mind maps are not usually linked to idea mapping, but the technique can be used and explored in new and different ways.Mind maps can help a child to remember …
