UPDATE 1/26/2021 – Here is my up-to-date Wakelet collection of Valentine’s Day resources.
And another bonus post for today! (Some things just can’t wait to be posted!) Joelle Trayers gave me this idea on her blog, and if you don’t already read her blog you should! Her depth and complexity ideas for primary aged children are awesome!!!!!
Anyway, I showed my 1st grade GT students a die-cut heart, and asked them to turn it around and look at it different ways to see what else it could be. I showed them some of the examples from Ms. Trayers’ class, and told them they could NOT use any of those ideas, even though they were fabulous. To be creative, their drawings would need to be different , not copies. Then, I let them brainstorm as many ideas as they could – even though many of them said they already knew what they wanted to draw. And here is where I think I might have improved on the last time I tried this activity – I told them to go around the room to look at everyone’s ideas.
“What does it mean if someone else had the same idea as you?” I asked.
“It isn’t unique!” one girl answered.
“So, is that the idea you want to use today?” I asked.
They all agreed that no, it was not, since we were focusing on creativity. They finally got to start their designs, and I was really impressed that most of them were so different. Here is what they drew:
Wow! I’m so impressed! Your students are super-creative and look at all the details! I just did this activity with my group this year, I love using things like this to assess how far we’ve come creativity-wise. Thank you for sharing!