Today your mission is…
Look at this mini-poster of 60 creative behaviors that support mathematics. Here is the same list in plain text. Recall an example of your child doing something from this list - either in mathematics, or in another context. In hindsight, what would have been a good way for you to support this creativity?
Ready, Set, Go
In Breakpoint and Beyond, George Land and Beth Jarman describe a longitudinal study they conducted on 1,600 kindergarten children ages three to five. They gave them eight tests on divergent thinking and an astonishing 98% of the children scored within the creative genius category. The researchers repeated the tests in five and ten years and separately tested adults. It gets worse and worse with time: only 2% of adults score at creative genius level. The good news is that grown-ups can collaborate with kids.
There are quite a few tasks children do better than adults, especially when adults support them. Other tasks adults do better than children, but even then adults can benefit from inspiration and prompts from children. In a harmonious learning environment, adults and children play complementary roles.
Adults
Children
Ideas
Write ideas down, sort and organize sets of examples, articulate knowledge
Generate diverse, creative, novel, unexpected ideas
Mathematics
Maintain consistency of patterns, extend patterns with new examples
Open up and maintain free play, break patterns to create new patterns
Process
Organize the process, manage time and tasks, maintain group well-being, nurture
Sense poor management practices, quickly show when well-being is in danger (“the canary”), invoke empathy and joy
Applications
Connect ideas to many life experiences and examples
Connect ideas to unexpected examples, look at familiar things from new angles
Aesthetics
Appreciate order and systems
Appreciate beauty and adventure
Frequently Asked Question
Can young children really understand advanced math concepts?
We believe that to be understood, a math concept (and pretty much anything else in life) has to be well-explained. The key is to search for age-appropriate explanations of advanced math concepts. For young children, the most appropriate explanation is through hands-on exploration and free play.
This means we need to find physical objects to represent mathematical concepts. But these should be objects that do not require prior knowledge to be played with. We call such objects and activities around them “grounded”. Grounded activities lower the risk of math anxiety. Plus, by selecting “no prerequisites required” activities, you avoid the “snowball effect” of sequential, prerequisite-filled learning.
The task
1. Find an example of a child’s creative behavior.
2. Do we have your example in our list of 60 behaviors, or should we add it?
3. How can grown-ups support the child in your example?
Answer by sherylmorris · Apr 09, 2014 at 05:30 PM
#61 Cue the music, "Clean up, clean up, everybody do their share!"
Now we can begin again with #1-#60. I like to begin from order, "Mind that you don't hurt yourself or those around you", and I prefer "Handle the materials respectfully." (It's the Montessorian in me.)
I love the list of 60 and this conversation! Best!
Answer by mngiggle · Apr 11, 2014 at 02:49 PM
Our eldest loves to build things out of stuff we would normally recycle; often humanoid robots. We support that by making sure he has the tools and materials around to build something when he has the urge to use something bigger than Legos.
Answer by Noursler · Apr 12, 2014 at 11:33 AM
My children are wildly creative: play acting, making up riddles, 3-d multimedia art, poetry & prose, piano, creating their own games, etc. Much of the list of 60 looks like a snapshot of our home! As the parent, I try to support them by rotating a variety of materials, books, games, etc., in their living space and giving them freedom to explore and play.
Answer by Isabella17 · Apr 12, 2014 at 11:33 AM
My daughter will take odds and ends in the house and make play toys out of them. Sometimes she will make an instrument. Another time she will make a new animal or character in which she can act out stories. It can be hard to keep all of her creations but we try. When have a recycle box in the main room and she often removes things we would normally recycle so she can use them for her 'creations'.
Answer by zzzeee2000 · Apr 12, 2014 at 07:03 PM
As a teen with learning disablitys I find that 8,10,11, and 15 all help me out a lot.
Answer by Caroline_Prochazka · Apr 13, 2014 at 12:03 PM
My youngest (5yo) LOVES to draw (#23 Draw a Picture). It is his go-to activity and he can spend long stretched of time at it. I support him by asking lots of questions and trying (sometimes it is very difficult to tear myself away from whatever I want to accomplish in these moments where he is peacefully occupied) to listen carefully to all the details he wants me to know about his illustration. We talk about foreground/background, colour/shade, scale/size - because he wants his pictures (of star wars spaceships, lately) to represent the 'real thing' as best as they can :)
My eldest (9yo) is keen on Lego (#43 Make realistic shapes out of...Lego blocks....), and lately he has been holding a project in his mind to create a hybrid house - a very modern design (all windows and glass) built on an old ruin. We finally got to this one together, yesterday. He needed a helper to work on sorting out certain sizes of blocks, another pair of hands to balance an incomplete structure, a critical eye to help correct asymmetry in order to get all the columns to arranged equally. Mostly, he really loved that I was playing with him
In general, we aspire to include a lot of #32 Do More of What Makes You Happy in our home - and this question was a good reminder of how we can all engage in helping each other achieve that goal.
Answer by AnnMarie · Apr 13, 2014 at 07:06 PM
This is a wonderful exercise for me. I feel like my kids do a lot of creative activities. I do not feel like I do a good job supporting or capitalizing on these activities. Sometimes...I'm pretty sure I'm hindering things. Some recent creative thinking that comes to mind from my 7,5, and 4 year olds. 1. Son looking at speedometer on the way home, "Mom, if we are going 65 mph, can we figure out the car's newtons?" 2. Making a simulation of the watercycle in Minecraft. 3. Creating a variety of pirate paraphernalia from leftover pvc parts from sprinkler project. 4. "Mom, I'll bet I could figure out the area of this space that my swinging is taking up now that I know about pi." I didn't really follow up with any of them. Often times I don't have the math or science knowledge at the top of my head. Then it seems like it is so far removed by the time I get around or start to get around to it. I think I can use some things on the list to extend things out and provide myself more motivation and accountability. Like," can you make me a model of the car, so we can use it to see if we can figure out how Newton's since we know the car's speed and mass?" Or get some sticks and string and ask the same about the swinging. It will clue me into which questions they are really interested in, and help motivate me to figure it out since they've put the extra effort. Hopefully after doing courses like this maybe I can better the frequency and quality of my responses to their interests.
Answer by michellepelot · Apr 14, 2014 at 01:15 AM
My daughter likes to imagine people living parallel lives. She writes short stories about this and illustrates them...number 55 on the list. A grown up can support her by giving her the materials she needs to get the job done, as well as plenty of uninterrupted time to complete her mission.
Answer by ChristyM · Apr 16, 2014 at 10:10 PM
One of my children really enjoys making sculptures from our clean trash. I support his habit by providing materials, space, and allowing enough free time in his schedule. I also affirm his projects.
Another child plays a lot of pretend. I could support this better by providing more little animals and some dedicated props. I could also spend time playing with her.
I am intrigued by the idea of adult child collaboration, and am looking forward to pursuing that idea further.
Answer by shaunteaches · Apr 17, 2014 at 01:09 PM
My son is three years old and loves to sort color, shapes and patterns. I found that puzzles really help him develop these skills. At first he spent his time learning what the puzzle was all about and what it means for a piece to "fit" with another. In one sitting he seemed to develop a real sense of these concepts and then just took off from there. Once he understood the rules of puzzle making and the ways in which the shapes fit together, he could make a puzzle.
I think the same will apply as he learns mathematics. I just need to give him time to get settled and understand the basic structure and pattern to any system he is analyzing.
Answer by Elena Cook · May 08, 2014 at 04:02 PM
My older kids like to build. My 7 years old son is a building maniac. He likes to build things in accordance with instruction booklets( Lego, K'Nex etc) but then tries to modify them looking for more sufficiently working designs. Several times he found mistakes in building diagrams of manuals, corrected them and was very satisfied with the perfectly working models. My oldest daughter likes to design and create. She uses Scratch program to design her futuristic Tiger Land.
We do more than a half of the listed activities. Kids love puzzles( my son has an ability to rotate puzzle pieces in his mind and just let you know which piece goes where), board games(Clue, Ticket to Ride etc), challenging problems and many more things which can tease their minds. As a supporting parent I try to provide them with activities utilizing TRIZ concepts and nurture their desire to become creative thinkers.
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