Encouraging Creativity

I love doing divergent art with the kiddos! If you are not familiar-you can give them a shape-a line, a squiggle, a circle and the goal is for them to use their imagination and draw it as part of an object. We do this activity from the beginning of the year and in September if I give them a squiggle I usually get about 23 snakes! A triangle shape is a mountain. Once we used the leaves from outside and they all turned their leaf into a ....leaf.

But I show them the ones that were creative, I encourage them to come up with an idea different from their neighbors. Now, I can see the results of that. We do the same type of activity (different shapes) and I get all kinds of creative answers.

This one was half of a square--here's what they came up with:

shoe

\

refrigerator

a little hat in a big hat

a tank