New Uses for a Crown

One of my favorite creativity exercises comes from S.C.A.M.P.E.R. It's called New Uses for Everyday Things. I introduce this in the beginning of the year with a pencil. What do we use a pencil for? The students answer to draw, to write, to erase. Yes, but what else could we use the pencil for? To draw, to write, to erase. They can't get outside of that traditional use box. So I use it to put my hair in a bun, I show them how you could use it to open a can of soda. Then throughout the year maybe twice a month I give them an different object to think about a new use for. This time of year I can really see that most of them can now think outside of that box a little bit. We were doing a fairy tale unit so we wrote new uses for a crown.

Here's what they came up with (now I left in the ideas where they said crown-related ideas or the ones like a ball that really didn't make sense- because I want you to see that some students are still working on this skill):

to open my Cheerios

as a spork

Now quite often a colleague will say that they tried this activity with their kids and it didn't work-they just weren't creative at all. Don't give up! If you include this activity in your curriculum a couple times a month-they will get better at it. You just have to be persistent and patient.

New Versions of Cinderella

I shared different versions of Cinderella with my students:

(We are in Texas after all! :) 

Then I asked my students to create their own new version of Cinderella. Here's what they came up with:

Pretty Cinderella

Panda Cinderella

Rainbow Cinderella

Happy Cinderella

Fox Cinderella

Purple Cinderella

Cowboy Cinderella

City of America Cinderella

Astronaut Cinderella

Cow Cinderella

My favorite-School Cinderella. She could marry the "Prince"-a-pal (get it). 

Normal Cinderella

 

Rhyming Cinderella

Wedding Cinderella

(If it were later in the year and my students were better at sounding out their words, I would have had them flesh these out more-what did the character lose, how would the story change in their version. But many of my students are still mastering what I am calling "Brave Writing" where they can apply sounds to letters and sound out what they want to write.)

Ethics and The Giving Tree

One of my favorite books to use to teach ethics is The Giving Tree. There's a video of Shel Silverstein reading his story (I love hearing authors read their own stories because we are hearing it exactly how it was intended to be read):

So we discussed who was right in the story-the tree or the boy?

I asked this little girl if that reminded her of anyone and right away she said "my mom". 

Costumes for People We Know

So I usually like to ask the students to decide what costumes certain characters would wear for Halloween. I ask them to think about the traits of the character, the likes and dislikes of the character. This year we really haven't discovered any beloved characters yet but I do think it's a good exercise in creativity-so I asked them what costumes our principal and their teacher should wear and include their reasoning. So they couldn't just say "my teacher should be a ghost" because that's Halloween-y. I was actually impressed with some of the answers they came up with. And I LOVE that they know our principal well enough (he's very present on our campus) to create a costume for him as well.