Bubble Wrap Popping Chairs

Invent a new type of seat that you have NEVER seen before...
This is the Crames Game that was on the board today. The same creative thinking class is also working on their sweet shop which I talked about in last week's entry.  I have uploaded  a few pictures of the fabulous ideas that I had from Year 3, 4 and 5 pupils.

Sometimes we are faced with a creative block that needs to be unlocked.  Today, one of my students said to me that she was finding it difficult to come up with an idea for a new type of seat.  Trying to find an idea with no direction can sometimes be daunting.  I explained a simple technique for unlocking creativity when faced with this situation.  First, brainstorm a list of topics. Any topics! Ideas from newspapers, jobs, hobbies and more. For example, our list today said:

• technology
• cooking
• schools
• vehicles
• sports
• medicine
• animals

This took less than two minutes to come up with.  Now faced with the same question:
Invent a new type of seat that you have NEVER seen before.... but try to relate it to one of the topics.  All of a sudden you have many ideas! A seat used in medicine, with cooking, in schools, in a new type of vehicle, with extraordinary technology or something to do with animals.  The block is gone and the ideas come flowing out. I explained to the pupils, that when faced with any creative block, this technique works wonders! Can you invent a new type of seat that has never been invented before? Let me know! Some of my favourite chairs invented today are listed below.

• A dinosaur chair that eats you when you don't sit still ( I asked for one of these for my little one!)
• A bubble wrap popping chair (could entertain you for hours!)
• An egg yolk seat
• The Bouncinator
• A jigsaw revolving chair
• Octopus Seat for 8
• The disabled super star tennis seat (a combination of sports and medicine?)
• The dict-a seat  (this one gives you the answer to all vocabulary that you don't know)

I hope that you can use this technique and that you might try this Crames Game at home or in the classroom. Have a Happy Thanksgiving. I am American after all!