The Silly Goose Club Creative Thinking Adventures
Books for Creative MindsThe Silly Goose Club Creative Thinking Adventures is a series
of children's books designed to stimulate creativity & imagination.
The books encourage a child to think freely and to have fun with his or her thinking process.
The Silly Goose Club Creative Thinking Adventures is also a platform by which an adult (parent, grandparent, teacher, or family friend) can spend quality time playing and talking with a child. It is a pretend adventure that you experience together, enjoying each other's thoughts.
It is also a creative thinking adventure that a child can experience alone, or with other children, for no adult interaction is required.
There are numerous books about children and creative thinking.
A few excellent choices:
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Growing Up Creative - Nurturing a Lifetime of Creativity
by Teresa M. Amabile, Ph.D. - 1989
If you only have time to read one - read this book.
Dr. Amabile presents thirteen years of creativity research, including research on how a young person's childhood environment nurtures creativity.
She writes about the importance of observing children to discover areas where their skills and interests overlap - the importance of intrinsic motivation to creativity -
and how both parents and teachers directly influence a child's creativity.
She also makes the point that, in playing with children, it is important to avoid over controlling.
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Children Solve Problems
by Edward De Bono - 1972
Edward De Bono has written so many books on the subject of creativity and the problem solving process, at many libraries, you can find more books by him on the subject than any other author.
This book presents a study of the creative thinking ability of children - more specifically, understanding children's abilities to solve problems, and realizing that thinking can be a learnable skill.
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Seeing Past Z - Nurturing the Imagination in a Fast-Forward World
by Beth Kephart - 2004
This book is about the positive effects of nurturing a child's imagination.
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The Growth of Logical Thinking - From Childhood
to Adolescence
by Barbel Inhelder and Jean Piaget - 1958
This guide to understanding adolescent reasoning was written by two pioneers in cognitive capacities. The book documents their studies of the development of intelligence in children.
The first book of the series is titled,
"The Silly Goose Club Creative Thinking Adventures
- Coloring Book One"
Coloring Book One will be available in a couple months.
Please check back soon for more details.
A little bit about the creator of
The Silly Goose Club Creative Thinking Adventures:
Until my experiences as a design student in college, my schooling was based on memorization. Although I had good grades, I never felt creative or inspired. Year after year, I took test after test on how well I could memorize material in books.
I started college as an interior design major and during the first two years of the program was given projects in numerous fields of design. With each of these projects students learned and applied the problem solving process of defining a problem or objective, researching, generating ideas (brainstorming), selecting and refining ideas, followed by implementing and evaluating solutions.
I still have my first books on the subject of creative thinking and the problem solving process: Design Yourself! by Kurt Hanks, Larry Belliston, and Dave Edwards; The All New Universal Traveler - A soft-systems guide to creativity, problem-solving, and the process of reaching goals, by Don Koberg and Jim Bagnall; and Lateral Thinking - Creativity Step by Step, by Edward de Bono. From them, and many others, I learned how to brainstorm, to think visually, and to communicate ideas.
My first product design assignment was in my second year of college. That project was the beginning of my mind discovering its true creative self. Our professor announced that we were going to design a widget (something that you use to perform a function, like combing your hair, brushing your teeth, or shinning your shoes.) The class generated a laundry list of widgets, writing each on a separate piece of paper. Then each student drew two pieces of paper from a pile - and whatever the two functions were, we were to design a widget that performed both functions. I drew, "something to wear on your arm" and "something used to feed a small animal".
The new surge of mental energy I experienced from this project was so exciting that I decided to change my major and become a product designer. I completed my Bachelor's degree in art, to later earned my Master's degree in industrial (product) design.
During my graduate studies I fine-tuned my problem solving process (along with learning ergonomics, manufacturing parameters, color theory, design principles, and much more.) By repeatedly applying the problem solving process I had learned in my first year of college, my creative ability became stronger, as did my passion for design and the design process.
The objective of this book (and The Silly Goose Club Creative Thinking Adventures series of books to follow) is to encourage children to discover and have fun with their creative ability - thinking freely, exploring possibilities, enjoying a creative thought process - and at the same time, learning basic problem solving skills that they can apply throughout their lives.
Bottom line, this book is designed to stimulate creativity -
a thinking process that allows the mind to explore.
Jewelanne, 'J-' Jay
