INVENT AND CREATE YOUR OWN SWEET SHOPPE

Welcome to the second week of Homeschooling! Hello Monday ( in case you have lost track!)

You can stretch this activity out for days! This activity promotes:

Originality, Elaboration, Imagination, and Risk Taking.  All important skills for the future! 

So, we all love a trip to the sweet shop but we can only IMAGINE that right now.  So let's pretend:

You have just won the lottery and want to do something exciting and creative.  Something you have always wished for is to own and manage your very own sweet shop! However, you think your store should be the best in the world- one that people from all over the world will want to visit. This will be a special place where you create all of the sweets and they will be unique.  

So let's start with inventing 5 new sweets that have never been eaten or made before!

Choose a theme for your sweet shop.  You can brainstorm all of the things that you like and find interesting. For example: SPACE? 

Now:

• What will the shop be called? This is your chance to get creative.  Try to include the theme in the title in a creative way.  

• Describe the new sweets you have created.

• What do they look like and how do they taste? Be very descriptive.  You want the reader to actually be able to imagine the taste just by reading your words!

• Make a sample menu and tell how much each of the sweets would cost the consumer.

• Plan and draw a design including a bird's eye view of the inside of the shop. Design the outside too!

• Create a logo for your brand.

• List some of the risks you would be taking to open your own shop.  How would taking these risks make you feel? 

• How will you market/sell your sweets? Decide on a target group and tell how you would implement your marketing programme ( ages 12+)

Extension:

Try and make the sweets you invented and created. Let your family come to your shop for a taste! 

Saturday Easy Activity for the family

This game is fun and easy for all.  You can shout it out while you are cleaning, cooking or all the other things we mums get to do while the kids are home- I feel like this is all I do at the moment with four at home all needing entertaining! Here is one for the entire family....

The goal is to make the smallest sentence that makes sense using all five words below:

movement, wind, human, light, harvest


Give everyone in the family a chance to bring their own sentence to the group and then vote who wins!

Please send your responses! I would love to see these!


Happy Weekend!
If everyone enjoys this one you can also make up your own.  Just put together five words that shouldn't normally go together.  You can play as long as the concentration lasts!

Further Reading: Published Works

If you enjoy the activities on this blog, you can find much more like these in my three books published by Brilliant Publications and available on Amazon

Brilliant Activities for Gifted and Talented Children (That Other Children Will Love Too)2003

Brilliant Activities for Stretching Gifted and Talented Children 2008
Open ended Mental Stimulation Activities

Crames 2013
 Creative Games to Help Children Learn to Think and Problem Solve ( in only 5 minutes a day)


Ashley McCabe Mowat

Boredom gone! Activity for the family that could last for days

So, you are stuck in the house and bored? And it's raining? And you can't go out anyway! So what do you do?

The only things you can find in the house are a pencil and paper, cardboard, tape, scissors and of course- your imagination!

You are going to create a game that you can play indoors with your family.  You decide that the best way to begin is to come up with a theme.  If you have done any of the brainstorming activities- this is a good chance to use that skill again here.  Make a long list of themes... for example, Harry Potter, chocolate, football, music, fashion, anything you like!

• Start with your THEME.  Create a game based on this theme you can play indoors with only the materials on hand

• Brainstorm ( again) things usually found in a board game... spinners, board, dice? 

• How does the game begin?

• How does the game end and how does a player "win"? 

• What is the OBJECTIVE of the game? 

• What are the rules? Make a clear list just like in board games so that everyone is clear how to play and understands.  

• Create OBSTACLES for your game.  ( These are the set backs and things that get in the way of winning or finishing! ) 

Hopefully your game will be so much fun, your family will also enjoy playing it with you and this will keep you entertained!
I promise making it will be fun and challenging. 

Brainstorming Practice- Thinking "Outside the Box"

How are we all feeling today? Getting real yet? Thank you for staying at home.  I hope this will make your day a little bit easier and give you and your kids a fun activity that will not only be fun but will help them learn a vital skill for the future!  Creative Thinking is something that the World Economic Forum predict every employer will be looking for in the future.  So when has there ever been a better time to get creative and spend time doing things you normally wouldn't have time to do? Would love any feedback on activities that you enjoy. 



Go back and look at the rules for Brainstorming for this one!

1. As many ideas as possible
2.  No Judgement
3. Silly Ideas are OK
4. Bouncing Ideas and Sharing Ideas OK

These activities are the core of creative thinking.  They encourage fluency, and how to break out of the box with your thoughts.  Today, I'll give you five to practice.  You can either do them together verbally or make a long list.

Make a long list of...

• Things you can catch
• things that crash
• ways to get from one place to another
• creative names for an ice-cream shoppe
• titles for a television show about your school

Activities to do with recycling( 45 minutes)

For this activity, get together a box or bag of your recycling:
egg containers, cardboard, cartons, loo roll and kitchen roll cardboard tubes, scraps of paper, etc...


Get your kids together of let them compete against each other.  better if you have two working together as this activity fosters cooperative learning!

Let each child, or group come to your recycling and choose one item ( before you tell them what they are doing !)

Give them one piece of paper, one roll of tape ( masking tape preferable) and one pencil or pen and a pair of scissors. 


Using a timer, reveal a list of items they will have 45 minutes to create! Countdown so they can see the timer ticking! It adds to the fun and suspense!

At the end, test and judge what they have done!

I have used this activity in creative thinking clubs during half terms and it never fails to amuse.  Kids LOVE this one! They get to be creative, active, a work together as a team.

Do not give them extra paper, recycling etc.  This is best when they have to problem solve too so limited resources is important.  Do not let them ask you questions once they have begun.  In order to stop them, I give out one chip per team or pupil.  They have to agree to use it for ONE question during the 45 minutes. Once it's gone, it is gone!  You can use anything for the chip ( it can be the corner of a piece of paper).  You will be surprised how much they want to hold onto the chip which is great because they have to learn to get on with the project themselves and not rely on asking the teacher ( or parent) questions and getting answers! This helps to foster a sense of self belief as most kids really can't accept failure so always look for constant approval.  They will have to rely on each other and themselves and then will feel a sense of achievement having completed the task without assistance!


The LIST

something useful for measuring
something used for communication
a trap for a pest
something useful for a teacher
something that holds water
a piece of jewellry
some kind of shelter
a toy for a child
something that can spin
something that can sail through the air for about 5 metres
something that represents you or your group
a musical insturment




GO!

What matters : not "What's the matter? " by Rachael Williams

At no other point in my lifetime so far have we been expected to sit with this level of daily uncertainty and most of us find that hard to do. 

Children in particular are at a loss without a routine and a sense of purpose to their day.

Today, see if you can ask yourself and your family  to think about "What matters?" as opposed to "what's the matter?".

Mark Twain once said that "The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why". Knowing what matters to us is really important because if we know what our values are, then we know where we are going and are far more likely to make room for the difficult thoughts and feelings that sometimes come along for the ride. What is lovely about values, as opposed to goals, is that life for young children is focussed on tasks and achievements- values are about encouraging some curiosity about what really floats your boat and what qualities you want to bring to your relationships. If I were to draw a blank family coat of arms, what values would be represented in it? What kind of parent, partner, person do you want to be? How does it feel when you move towards or away from one of your values?

A fantastic resource that can be downloaded and printed for free is a set of values cards that I use daily with the young people I work with. They are great for older primary school and secondary school children.See if you can print them out and ask each family member if they can pick their 3 favourite personal values. Choose one to be at the heart of you family for a week at a time and ask the children to notice what it feels like when one of you moves towards that value and how it feels when somebody moves away from that value. You could all put a photo of that value image on your phones and tablets:

https://thrivingadolescent.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/values-cards-Hayes-set-1-images.pdf

As somebody once said, "it feels good to be lost in the right direction" 🙂