Types of Thinking: Visual Spatial & Divergent

1st Graders have been learning about different types of thinking from our friends at Crystal Ponds Woods.  We finished up our Max the Magician type of thinking (visual-spatial thinking): by playing some fun games like Blokus, Katamino, and Quirkle.  

We also played Set, Kanoodle, and Osmo Tangrams, and tried our hand at creating origami.  When working with origami, you’ll practice some of these skills:

Diagram Interpretation

2-d and 3-d Rotation Visualization

Design Manipulation

Students also completed a group puzzle on the big rug and broke some "secret codes" on Seesaw.  

After practicing visual-spatial thinking, we learned about thinking like Max the Inventor and explored divergent thinking.  Divergent thinking involves creating multiple, unique ideas.  Think brainstorming or using your creativity!  

We read the books Not a Box and Not a Stick by Antoinette Portis to inspire this type of thinking!  

We also learned to play the game Scattergories.  Scattergories is a great way to practice divergent thinking! The objective of the game is to score points by uniquely naming objects within a set of categories.  Students are given an initial letter, and (within a time limit) they have to write words that begin with the letter and would fit that category.


To practice divergent thinking related to Black History Month, students also created their own inspirational quote.  
 

Divergent thinkers think of many different ideas.  They see objects in new and different ways.  The word diverge means to branch off into different directions.  We practiced this with variable view points.  

We were inspired by the short animated film, The Deep by the artist Pes, in which ordinary objects are turned into mysterious sea creatures.  We created our own videos using the same stop-motion animation technique.

It was fun getting our creative juices flowing in Idea Lab!  We are moving on to using our logic and deductive reasoning  (convergent thinking) after Spring Break.  Stay tuned!