Isabel, the Inventor, was a popular P.E.T.S. specialist in 1st grade as we delved deep into divergent thinking! Divergent thinking is so important for young developing brains. Put simply, it is the ability to interpret a question in many different ways and the ability to see many different answers to a question. Divergent thinking encourages spontaneity and imagination. For example... taking a cup and making it into something new and different like a hole in one game, a volcano, a new and improved cup with a handle, a mouse house, a telescope, a snake catcher, and a bracelet (in that order)!
Divergent thinkers see things from various viewpoints. We also call this... thinking outside of the box.
Speaking of box, some great books for divergent thinking that we read are Not a Box and Not a Stick by Antoniette Portis. If you had a box or a stick, what would you pretend it would be?
We learned that the game Scattegories is a great way to practice divergent thinking too! We rolled a letter (like the letter C) and came up with objects within a set of categories.
Another fun way we practiced divergent thinking was to create a collection of items and have our classmates guess the name of our collection.
S.C.A.M.P.E.R.ing objects pushed our divergent thinking in many directions. We learned that to S.C.A.M.P.E.R. you can substitute something, combine things, adapt or add things, make something bigger or smaller, put something to another use, eliminate something, or rearrange something. Here are our SCAMPERed donuts!
We will continue to encourage divergent thinking throughout our years in Idea Lab through play, curiosity, experimentation, and creativity!
No comments:
Post a Comment