Author: kathleen

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Inventions, Creative Thinking, and Problem Solving

by Kathleen Julicher
Of the many ways that distinguish people from animals, creativity and the ability to invent is most obvious.  God, when He breathed life into Adam, also gave him intelligence and the desire to create.  While creativity is given in some measure to all people, some like artists, inventors, or authors may have a special gift.  In our homeschools, all of our children will show a spark of creativity.  Nurture that spark in your children by using some of the ideas and resources mentioned in this article.
Creativity is the ability to create something new, or to change something to improve it.  We usually think of creativity as having to do mainly with art, but there is a technical kind of creativity which produces inventions and allows the scientist to solve problems and to design experiments.  Technical creativity and artistic creativity use a similar style of thinking, creativity, but in different ways.  In this way, inventions, artistry, and compositions are all products of creativity.  In science, creativity is expressed by invention, problem solving skills, design of experiments, and thinking of explanations of events.  Since an artist and a scientist use creative thinking in different ways, a good problem solver may not be able to paint, just as an artist may not be able to design experiments.  An excellent mathematical problem solver may not be able to arrange a room or design a bridge.  Technical problem solving and creativity are both part of inventing.
Inventors
There have been many famous inventors in the past whom you can study in your homeschool.  Among them are Edison, Marconi, Da Vinci, Curie, Kettering, Whitney, Carver, Tesla, Land, Babbage, Bell, and the Wright brothers.  What can we study about these inventors?  What similar characteristics did they have?  Curiosity must have been one.  Other similar traits might be: the desire to try something new, the persistence to overcome obstacles; an idea or concept, or maybe a dream; a willingness to take the time to work on a project.  Most inventors have an ability to think “outside the box”.  “The box” refers to common knowledge, or the usual way of doing something.  Discuss the things inventors have in common with your children.  Does your student have any of those characteristics?  Have you told him so?  How would you encourage those characteristics?  Below is a list of activities you can do at home to encourage or to train your young inventors.
Practicing Inventing

  • Let the child use tools (saw, drill, sewing machine, soldering iron, etc.) (safely, of course)
  • Let them have scraps to work on.
  • Compliment them on their projects.
  • Be surprised and pleased when they change something. Even if it is not the way you would have done it.
  • Let them make something without the instructions.
  • Let them make mistakes.
  • Teach them to learn from mistakes without being critical.
  • Let them change the instructions.

There are thousands of other inventors about whom little has written.  For example, we do not know who invented the stirrup, the metal plow, the needle, the iron, weaving, or the written word, so we cannot study the inventors, only the inventions.  In cases such as these, your student can draw the invention, decide how it would affect the way work was done and try to imagine how life must have been without the invention.  For example, stirrups were a terribly important invention and literally transformed Asia and parts of Europe.  In the fifth century, the hordes of Mongolia had stirrups while the peoples they conquered did not.  How must it have been to ride without them for your feet?  How did a soldier swing a saber or throw a javelin accurately and with power while on his horse without stirrups?  By studying the befores and afters of inventions, students can learn about changing and adapting things.
Conflict with traditional thinking
The problem with creative thinking is that it involves a change in the way we do things, or look at things.  A conservative person will have a certain set of recipes to be used on certain days and will resist learning any new recipe and a new or different technique.  This person will ask “When the way we cook dinner is perfectly fine, why change it?”  And so it is with schooling,  If the way we school is working, then why change that?  The natural instinct of most people is to leave well enough alone.  Homeschoolers, by nature are in conflict with traditional schooling, but we can still exhibit conservative, non-creative thinking.  This is exemplified by those who refuse to leave the textbook to do some project or field trip.  Those who wish to teach inventing or creativity, though, must leave the text behind and move at least part of the time into divergent thinking  There are three steps to the teaching of creativity: 
  1. allowing time to think up ideas
  2. allowing the children’s ideas to be different
  3. allowing them to put the ideas into action.   
By doing these things to practice creativity, you encourage it.  You must also model creativity if you expect your children to be inventive.
Practicing creative thinking and invention is easy.  First, set aside some time, perhaps two hours per week, for an activity.  Next, check out some of the activities suggested or some of the books from the resource list for ideas.  If you are doing a craft or an art problem then collect the materials to use.  In this way, your young inventors will have the necessary materials (plus a few unnecessary ones) to do their projects.
The most important thing is that the atmosphere must be conducive to creative thinking.  Do not interrupt brainstorming as this will stop the flow of thinking.  While brainstorming, do not be judgmental or point out the obvious flaws in their ideas.  To do so will inhibit the free flow of thought.  You may expect a product to be made; that is, a physical invention or creation.  It is reasonable to provide a deadline for the work, too, as this will help the children stay focused on the problem at hand.  You should control your own desire to help solve the problem as that is an inhibitor of the children’s creativity.  This may be difficult to do if the problem is especially interesting.  Your own work on the problem must be as collaborator not as an actor.  You should give your student an opportunity to explain the workings of the product.  Smiling is very important for parents, too.
Measuring Creativity
Paul Torrance developed a test which attempts to measure four components of creative ability: fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration, all related to the ability to think creatively.  Fluency is the ability to think of many ideas on one topic, whereas flexibility is the ability to use given figures in original ways while elaboration is tested by asking the student to put many details on a picture.  There are other tests which try to measure creativity and each approaches the goal differently.  At home, you can encourage fluency, flexibility, and elaboration by practicing the same skills.  For example, give your child a drawing of a box.  Ask him or her to draw something with lots of details using the box.  He might turn the box into a house, an office, a railroad car, an airplane, a dinosaur, or a hologram of a planet.  The many details of the drawing show elaboration.  Give your student a set of pages with boxes and within each box draw an “x”.  Ask him to draw something different in each box, using the “x” in the drawing.  The idea is to have him draw many different pictures.  Another time you might want him to think of unusual things to draw, uncommon things, out of the lines.  This would be an exercise in originality.  List making is another way to practice creative skills.  Ask your child to make a list of all of the blue things in the room.  He will probably start out with a list of blue colored things, but later, he may start adding things like a sad face, or blues music tapes, the number “3” which seems to be colored blue in his mind’s eye.  The longer the list the better.
In science, we normally think of inventions and problem solving when we think of creativity.  That is another great way to practice creative thinking.  An example of problem solving would be to attempt to answer the question: how could you make a structure made of popsicle sticks stable, so it would not move when pushed? Can you design a car which is drivable by a person without using legs?  Or, what could you use to provide light for reading if your electricity went out?  Invention really is very much like problem solving and you can use problem solving activities to train your children to think inventively.
Creative problem solving ideas:

  • Use these materials: five paper clips, tape, scissors, and a fifteen inch piece of string, and one or two of the following: paper plate, socks, shoelaces, pencils, feathers, hot glue gun and a nail.  
  • Give your students a list of possible projects, like the following:
    • Design a toy for a cat
    • Make a chair for a doll
    • Make a noise maker
    • Design a game
    • Make a tool which will keep a person cool
  • Give your students a time limit and watch what happens!

You never know when creativity and problem solving may be needed.  Years ago, when homeschooling at the beach, we heard yells for help.  A man was being electrocuted and could not release the pipe because his muscles were in spasm.  After explaining to the children that we needed something which did not carry electricity in order to break the circuit in which the man was trapped, everyone fanned out, looking, and quickly returned with items they had found.  One brought a rope, another a board, another a plastic jug, and so on.  The rope did the trick and the electrical connection was broken.  Later, after the ambulance took the man to the hospital, we went over what had happened, reinforcing the ideas of problem solving, creativity, calmness, and electrical safety.
Creative thinking is important to our lives, it comes from God, and should be encouraged in our homeschools.  We can do this by giving them time to create things, by encouraging them, and by being non-judgemental about their ideas.  Plan a weekly time for problem solving and creativity play and your children will grow in their ability to be creative and flexible.
Resources:  
The Art of Problem Solving: Volumes 1 and 2 by Sandor Lehoczky and Richard Rusczky  These two books are a systematic study of problem solving techniques in arithmetic and higher maths.  The authors go beyond mere techniques and teach mathematical reasoning and because of this, the student who works in these books will gain a much deeper feel for mathematics.  They are especially useful in contesting.  Solution sets, too.
Creative Thinking and Problem Solving for Young Learners by Karen S. Meador.  This book is for the youngest of school children, K-4, and the author says that the activities can be used for even younger children.  Starting out with a definition of creativity, the author lays a foundation for the teacher who wants to learn to think creatively, too, and not just use activity sheets according to directions.  The lessons detail different aspects of creative thinking and list ideas designed to teach them.  Literature resources are even used although this is primarily a thinking book.  An excellent resource for homeschool.
Inventions, Inventors and You by Dianne Draze.  A very practical book for busy parents who want to do inventions and inventors in homeschool, but just can’t bring it all together (or don’t have the time).  There are pages to copy and use which provide short lessons in creative thinking and invention.  The book includes fourteen lessons with directions for the teacher, ideas for warming up that creative thinking, reproducible worksheets, many individual projects, and patent activities, plus the answers.  Use this book to build a year of invention.  Grades 3-7. 
The Inventive Mind in Science: Creative Thinking Activities by Christine Ebert and Edward S. Ebert II.  After discussing creativity and creative thought, the authors go straight into activities you can use at home to encourage creative thinking.  The problem of the conceptual block is important for anyone working on developing his creativity, and the authors systematically cover methods to avoid blocks.  The book offers three types of inventing to be used in the classroom: discovery, Rube Goldberg, and practical.  Taking inventions across the disciplines, an invention festival, and patent studies are included in this useful book.  One important part of the book is the Invent! card game used for desktop inventing.
Minds On Science by Hilarie Davis and Anne Dudley.  The appropriate subtitle for this series of books is: Lessons to Link Science and Thinking Skills.  Scientific problem solving and techniques to do it are the subjects of this book.  A plan for solving problems is included, as are lists of possible topics for investigation.  Activities are included in which the students are asked to observe, record, measure, and even make line charts!  The books reviewed are for grades 1-3.  Use this set of books for a great way to integrate thinking and science.  Recommended  A volume each for grades 1-3.
Problems in Search of Creative Solutions by H. Allen Murphey  A wonderful book for your technically creative kids!  This is the book to get for ideas for building projects to be used in contests, team work, or just plain individual fun.  Problems like: “design and construct a device that will shoot projectiles of newspaper into a bushel basket.  This device will hurl, toss, or otherwise propel a projectile from behind a boundary line toward the target.”  The problems are similar to those used for Odessey of the Mind and are great for scout meetings. Other, shorter problems are listed if you only have an afternoon.  Have fun with this one!
Imagination Celebration Creativity Exercises by Judy Leimback and Joan Vydra.  Having trouble getting started teaching creative thinking?  Use this book to get going.  Easy to use reproducible pages with lessons on basic creativity exercises.  Listing things which are soft and white and all the “ships” you can think of (like friendship).  The authors ask questions like “what does gentle look like?” and “what does green sound like?”  Students are asked to rewrite definitions from the dictionary into their own words.  Other specific tasks are set for students which teach four skills: fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration.

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Tips for Planning Your Year in Science

  1. Choose two or three topics you would like to investigate.  You can use broad topics or activities you have always wanted to try.  You can let your child choose the topics.  You can let the test book choose for you.  Two or three is enough as you will want the freedom to let your child go further into a topic if it interests him or her.   If you have more than one child, it is easier if you study the same topic together, only on different levels.
  2. Choose the text or reference material you would like to use.  You may decide on a textbook.   Two points to remember about a textbook are:  early science texts are more readers than science references and later texts can get very boring if you use them as the sole guide for the class.  Choose a book for its information, its readability (by you not your student), and its pictures.  The younger children will learn a lot of science if it is read to them and if they can see the pictures as you explain them.
  3. Look through your science experiment books for ideas for hands-on fun.  Sometimes the book you have choosen for a reference has experiments in it.  Sometimes it is fun to use those cute little experiment books for ideas.  Choose experiments to go with  your topics.   Don’t worry about doing every experiment in the book, or every one on a topic.  Just plan for about one a week.  You don’t have to do them on that schedule though and you can add more as your children think them up.  Playing with science is important.
  4. Decide what you want for a product.  Do you want to grade something?  A test?  A paper?  A notebook?  Something aloud?  Or no grade at all?  Please try to keep a notebook.  In the notebook you can have sections for new terms, notes, maps, photos, experiment write-ups, reports, news clippings, speech notes, tests, and activity pages.  This way your child will have something concrete to remember all about his year in science.
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Removing the Barriers for Your Child: Homeschooling your Highly Gifted Children

By Kathleen Julicher

The morning was cool in the schoolroom as the children arrived after having completed their chores, piano practice, and breakfast. They started immediately in on their work knowing that today, if all were done, they would be going to the air museum after lunch. The two 9th graders were doing some dissections and then a Latin translation of Caesar. The seventh grader worked on Algebra II at the board while the 5th grader finished an internet research topic about whales. Later in the morning, they would gather for a reading of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. During breaks they talked about the upcoming trip. These are highly gifted children at work. They are homeschoolers.

Homeschooling is a trustworthy way to school gifted children because it meets their varied needs so well; be they academic, social, or emotional. Once merely an ancient method of education, today, in the United States as in other nations, the families of gifted children are rediscovering the merits of homeschooling. The highly or profoundly gifted child is so different from the norm that the individualized nature of homeschooling meets the challenge exceedingly well.1  Let’s look at some of the ways in which homeschooling can help meet the educational needs of an exceedingly gifted child.

Asynchrony causes barriers for a highly or profoundly gifted child. 2  Intellectual asynchronies usually revolve about three axes: when the learning rate is very much faster than the average, when the learning rates change with respect to time, and when the learning rates are different from subject to subject. For a profoundly gifted child, these asynchronies are magnified and the result of not adjusting to handle them very much worse. Each one of these asynchronies has its own solution, but each is also very much more easily remedied in homeschool. Acceleration is a good example of one possible remedy.

Homeschooling separates the issues attendant with subject matter acceleration from those with grade level acceleration. One of the key problems with acceleration is the fact that in a regular school, acceleration of any significant degree usually involves a complete grade level skip of one or more years. In this situation, grade level skips by their nature require consideration of the social ramifications of the skip. Because of this, many educators resist acceleration, especially accelerations of two or more years. They understand that the skip would not occur in a vacuum and that the broader, social aspect of school must be considered. So, for many very bright children acceleration is discarded as an option very early in the decision making process.

Homeschooling provides a new decision-making pathway for the child who needs to be accelerated because of his advanced intellectual development. While homeschooling, the decision is made based solely upon the child’s academic needs and interests because radical subject matter acceleration need not require a grade level skip. For example, meet Asynchronous Sally, seven, ready for beginning algebra, reads at post high school level, spells terribly, cannot write in cursive, and is definitely a seven year old in behavior. At home, she can be given a program which allows her to take Algebra, research the history of her family, learn the rules of spelling in English (difficult at best), learn cursive and Greek, and be in Brownie Girl Scouts with her seven year old friends.

However, the real problem is not the subject matter skipping, or even grade skipping, but is a much more difficult problem – faster learning rate combined with a deeper way of thinking. Because of these attributes, highly gifted and especially, profoundly gifted children, do not usually need only a grade skip. Their intelligence requires that they move through the material at a much faster rate. This can actually work at odds with a grade skip since once a grade skip has been the made the child merely is faced with slightly more advanced material being taught at the old rate. Understanding the large rate differential between a highly gifted child and a normal, or even moderately gifted child is one of the important keys to successful acceleration. This understanding is even more critical for a profoundly gifted student. Sally, who is already advanced in arithmetic, is capable of finishing a math text in about half the time as a regular student. Because homeschooling allows a disconnect between grade level and subject matter, she can drastically reduce her time spent on a topic with no detrimental effects on her social life (or on spelling). What this means in practical terms, is that she can skip most of the activities in a math text, merely reading the material and going on, with or without the formality of testing. Another way to allow for increased rates of learning is to switch away from spiral method style texts.

The most widespread tool of modern educational systems (besides the age / grade connection, of course) is the spiral method. In this method, the student proceeds through a topic over the course of several years, usually six. The difficulty of the topic increases incrementally every year until after all six years are through, the student has learned the material. If you will imagine a Slinky™ suspended from the ceiling and mentally trace the coil up from the floor, you will see that the same location in the room is traversed over and over again, each time a little higher than the coil below. The spiral method of learning is like the Slinky™ rising toward the ceiling, covering the same topics year after year, in slowly increasing detail. This method is most obviously seen in reading, mathematics, grammar and composition. After all, it makes sense to do things systematically and progressively. Unfortunately for the highly gifted student, learning may not proceed best in this way. The asynchronous, highly gifted child grows intellectually at different rates at different times in her life. In this case, the best way to proceed with learning is not progressively, but prescriptively. As the learner is able to comprehend, she should be allowed to learn. This “at your own rate” of learning is the optimum way to become educated for the highly or profoundly gifted learner and is easy to use in homeschool. The way to implement prescriptive learning is to teach the student what she does not know, that is, use diagnostic testing to determine what is not already known, skipping what is known.

Prescriptive learning is easy to do as long as you have some way of separating what is known from what is not. Several tools are: pretests, chapter reviews (although this is not optimum as the reviews can be long and tedious), chapter tests, oral quizzing, and casual dialoguing on the topic with the student. Four non-spiral math programs are Mastering Mathematics, Arithmetic the Easy Way, Ray’s Arithmetics, and the individualized math programs used by some online courses.  At the higher levels of algebra and beyond, the student may find it best to use the chapter reviews as diagnostic pretests.

The use of diagnostic testing is only one method of compacting a course. Another excellent method is by means of leaving out redundancies. At the high school level, a good example is the first few chapters of the Algebra II text. As the regular student has not done any algebra for two years, having taken Plane Geometry in the interim, it is generally necessary to review the basic concepts of algebraic method. If a gifted student remembered the methods, as shown by pretesting, four or five chapters might be effectively eliminated. One of the most difficult things for a person to do is to skip parts of a text, and it is especially difficult for a perfectionist. The student and parent should remember that it is not necessary to do all the problems, all the chapters, and make perfect scores to have understanding of the concepts.

Another asynchrony observed in highly gifted students is that of changing optimum rates of learning. It is very common for the highly gifted to go through stages of rapid learning interspersed with stages of slower learning, just as he will go through growth spurts in his physical maturation. In a regular schooling situation, this is difficult to allow for, but in the homeschool, the course can be discontinued and started again a few months later when the student is more amenable to learning the topic. A brief slowdown in learning can be related to stress, illness, vision problems, a growth spurt, or simply a mental plateau. Four year old Mark was happily doing advanced arithmetic until he hit double digit multiplication at which point he refused to go any farther. Four months later, he suddenly understood not only double-digit multiplication but also division, decimals, and density, an understanding that allowed him to go ahead two years worth of arithmetic.

The young 6 year old sat patiently, sucking his thumb, waiting for the psychologist to finish describing giftedness. When the doctor was done, the little boy turned to his mother and said, “I guess that means I’m OK after all, mommy.” In a traditional classroom, this profoundly gifted child not only learned that was he different but assumed that there was something wrong with him. In a normal conversation with would be homeschoolers, the question of socialization will come up. I have always found this interesting since the type of socialization in question usually relates to conforming to group expectations, not individual social development. Socialization and conformity to group norms is not the same thing as social development. Social development relates to the maturation of an individual within himself and in relationships with other persons. Conformity is not the goal; maturity and secure self-identity is. One of the most important concepts of Western Civilization is the idea of the value of an individual, and this foundational idea is important to homeschoolers who very deliberately have chosen to not be a part of an age/peer group. Because the identity of the young person does not revolve around an age/peer group, he is allowed to mature uniquely and independently: social development. In the case of the profoundly gifted six year old above, he had not developed a good self concept and still struggled with conforming to the group of his age mates. Learning at home helped this young man. On a practical level, a homeschooled student mingles and works with persons of all ages and types, not only age peers. This results in a student who accepts diversity, is able to be independent of age/peer group choices, and is able to relate to persons of different ages. A substantial amount of research on this topic is developing. For the reader who is interested, see the notes at the end of this article.3

Resolving the issue of the purpose of giftedness is important to a family with a gifted child. For many, the primary aspects of the gifted that seem to be of concern are the future possibilities and worth of the child to the nation. Thus, the children are helped because of what they might invent or create later on. While such a show of public spirit is commendable, it also misses an important point. Whatever the future value to the state the highly gifted child has, it pales beside the value of the child in himself (remember the foundation of Western Civilization?). He has a right to adjustments in his education simply because he exists and no other reason is necessary. We do not give the gifted an appropriate education because of their future usefulness, but because they need it. In fact, there are many highly and profoundly gifted children who are leaving regular schools because their fundamental needs as individuals are not being met (a very difficult job in a regular classroom, by the way).

Some families choose to homeschool after leaving an untenable situation.  Others feel that they can provide some missing element of school which the schools can not. One reason for a bad situation is the much lower likelihood of a highly gifted child fitting into the classroom. Many parents of highly gifted children have found that not only do their children not fit well into a classroom, but that they might actually be in jeopardy in that situation. Leaving a bad situation can mean several things but the foremost is that the student may desperately need some downtime. We call this the detox period of homeschooling. During the detox period, the student must adapt to the lower level of conflict, pressure, and need to conform. A student in detox should be expected to do chores, help with family projects, and keep reading, researching, or simply investigating interesting topics. She may lose her temper occasionally, or be frustratingly indecisive with respect to choosing topics to study. On the other hand, she may jump at the opportunity to do her own projects. The child react to beginning homeschooling in very individualized ways, but they all usually need a detox period of some length.

Parent’s issues concerning homeschooling can be a problem for new homeschoolers. One important question is: Who is responsible? There is much debate on this topic, but a balanced view is that as the children get more mature they should accept more of the responsibility for their own education. This includes decision-making.

Some parents feel that their role as a parent will be confused with the role as teacher. This does not usually have too much significance if the children are learning to be fairly independent in their schooling and if the teaching parent is also a learner in attitude.  Many parents are perfectionists. This can be a problem when it is time for a skip or a session of compacting. Perfectionist parents tend to resist skipping materials, activities, or grades. They also tend to be conservative in schooling technique. This is not bad, merely a uniqueness typical of gifted people (even parents). A problem with perfectionism is that it can keep the student at an artificially low rate of learning. In fact, this can happen when the student is a perfectionist, too. Some children simply refuse to move on without filling in every blank in the workbook or doing every problem in the text. Perfectionism should be allowed to mature and not be a handicap to learning. A last question which parents commonly ask is: How much and how far? The answer is: as fast and as far as he/she wants and can go, uninhibited by rules, perfectionisms, age groups, and preconceptions of learning.

“Tech kids” are another population of highly or profoundly gifted. These are the children who must take things apart, who must know how something works, and who must create his/her own environment. They are different from other gifted children and very little research has been done on their issues. These future engineers or technical people have, in the past, been relegated to the lower levels of academia until they hit college. At homeschool, you can meet the unique needs of these children by providing hands on activities in a relatively unstructured environment. They should be allowed to ask questions, receive answers, investigate solutions to problems, construct crazy machines, take apart things, design problem solving devices, and talk to experts in their own areas of interest, from mechanics to college professors. These children will need time to do these ‘non-academic’ things, time to dream.

Homeschooling can solve a number of problems connected with educating young highly and profoundly gifted children. These problems center on the asynchronies of the children, both emotional and intellectual, their sensitivities, and their interests. Take the advantage of homeschooling and begin your own journey into totally individualized learning.

Resources & References:
1. Hogan, Julicher, and Baker, Gifted Children at Home: A Practical Guide for Homeschooling Families, The Gifted Group. www.castleheightspress.com
2. Webb, et al. Guiding the Gifted Child, Gifted Psychology Press, 1982.
4. Ray, Brian, Many articles available at National Home Education Research Center: www.nheri.org

Gifted Grown-ups:
Excellence in Educating Gifted & Talented Learners
Teaching Gifted Kids in the Regular Classroom
The Well-Trained Mind
Christian Home Educators Curriculum Manual by Cathy Duffy
Critical Thinking Press
Gifted Homeschoolers