Creative Encounter: Part One of Two

Creative Encounters with Creative People

As an educator, how many times have you been asked by a parent, "how can I develop my child's creative potential?"

Janice Gudeman suggests these things may help.

1. Accept your child with love and understanding. Your child has the need to hear reassuring words.

2. Work with your child on an older intellectual level. Expect him/her to understand as an older child would.

3. Challenge your child to try his or her own solutions, to learn to test their ideas.

4. Read to your child.

5. Provide a variety of learning materials.

Present activites such as the following:

a. Discover new uses for materials such as automobile tires or umbrellas. b. Make up a code and write messages. c. Estimate distances, and pace off the distance to check the answers.

6. Encourage friendships.

7. Visit libraries, museums, planetariums, zoos, nature trails, concerts and other places of this sort.

8. Discover opportunities in the community to use his or her talents.

9. Demonstrate respect for education.

10. Discover the joy of learning together.

Here are a few activities that are good to use with your child within a group to develop independent thinking.

Brainstorming:

Brainstorming is a technique for developing freedom of thought.

1. Someone records the ideas. 2. Encourage everyone to contribute ideas. 3. No criticism, discussion, or evaluation is allowed until the ideas have been generated. 4. Quantity of ideas is a goal. 5. Funny or imaginative ideas are acceptable. 6. Build on others' ideas and work with others in the combination of ideas. 7. After the brainstorming is completed, each idea is evaluated. Ideas are selected, combined, and organized into solutions.

Another fun idea for generating independent thinking offered in Janice's book, is entitled, Encounter Lessons.

Encounter lessons are in the section of Creative Encounters of Wolfgang Mozart, Henry Ford, and George Washington Carver. Encounter lessons are activities to stimulate creativity and positive feelings of worth. These enrichment lessons provide an "encounter" with ideas and others. The goals of the leader are to help the students feel valuable and to see learning as relevant to their individual needs. The learing atmosphere should reflect acceptance and understanding, for this provides each student an opportunity to bring his uniqueness to the task.

1. These active lessons in Janice's book, are usually in small groups of eight to ten people and last approximately twenty minutes. They work well with any age group.

2.The student is asked to become something else and respond as thoguh he is this new thing. The student might become a ski, a rose, an eagle, or a page ina book.

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