Imagination is a person’s ability to create images, perceptions, ideas and manipulate them in their mind, i.e. mentally!
Tasks for fantasy, mental representation, mental action, visualization.
“Movie.”
“Movie.”
There are images of objects – the characters. And there is a short story – the plot. The plot can have a finished look or as the beginning of a story. The goal is to “see” the story with the inner eye. As if to “see” the inner “movie”. The characters should move, interact, something should happen. The characters are exactly the ones in the pictures. Exactly like a moose or a duck, not just some moose and a duck!
At first it will be difficult to “see” the story, but with practice it will become easier. As the difficulty increases, there will be more characters and they will be doing something.
Some plots are like a “beginning” and can be continued. Try with your child to come up with a continuation.
This task trains imagination and the ability to visualize at the same time. At the end of the workbook there are pictures of items from the stories, not only that are depicted, but could have just been mentioned in it. It’s like a test – how vivid the “movie” was, whether you can find all the characters and objects from the story. The images may be different from those in the assignment.
“Weird World.”
The picture shows a situation that is not quite ordinary. You have to come up with either an explanation of “what is happening” or come up with a short story. Explanations can be either quite ordinary or fantastic. You can come up with captions for the picture, the funnier the better. Any associations that arise when looking at the picture will do.
“Snowflake”, “Jedi lightsaber”, “Template of the cube”, etc.
This type of task is for mental spatial representation. In “Snowflake” it is necessary to restore the places of slots according to the drawing and the scheme of folding. “Jedi lightsaber” – these are essentially cross section of different objects, it is necessary to imagine how this cross section will look like. “Template of the cube” – on the available types of cube to restore what stickers and where to place on the template. These tasks can be very difficult to complete. “Snowflake” and “Cubes” can be tried to cut out (or redraw) and try to fold. But first you should try to do the tasks “mentally”.
“Alien.”
It is necessary to come up with an inhabitant of a planet. A brief description of the conditions on this planet is given and this must be taken into account. I.e. how should look like a creature that is adapted to life on such a planet. For example: it is unlikely that a creature from a planet completely covered with liquid should have legs! Most likely it would have a streamlined body like our fish.
“Telepathy.”
Telepathy is the transmission of thoughts at a distance. If we wanted to send our thoughts to a kitten? It’s unlikely it would even understand our language! Let’s try to “transmit” to it a sequence of visual images of what should be done. Let it be necessary that it should come and drink milk from a bowl. Let’s imagine the kitten near the bowl and how it gets up, comes to the bowl and starts to drink. More complicated (from the telepathic point of view “correct”) will be the variant when you generate images from “his face”, but not from your point of view. I.e. images as the kitten sees the bowl, gets up, sees itself walking and starts drinking. Other senses may also be involved here (e.g., the smell of milk).
Unlike “Movie”, in this task the emphasis is not on objects, but on actions. And the scenario is already set in the task. It is difficult to control the performance of this task, as well as “Movie”. You can simply motivate the child to try to “see” visual images of the sequence of events.
“What it looks like.”
First we do it mentally. Then you can draw more. Often there are restrictions on the template answer. For example, you can’t draw a car.
Word association tasks.
In “From Frog to Princess” it is necessary to go from one object to another by a chain of associations. Associations are any, the main thing is to explain them. Reached the second object, start in the opposite direction. So you can repeat several times.
“The rule of first letters” – make a sentence from the first letters of the words of a given sentence, then from the second, third, etc. We do it one by one. Prepositions and words shorter than two letters are skipped. “Suggestion” – you have to take turns making a sentence with the given words. The funnier the sentences, the better. Don’t take the easy way out, give an example. For example: carrot, onion, pot – Putting on the head of the pot carrots and onions went out into the pouring rain.
Creativity is the ability to create new, unique entities (ideas, objects, processes) to solve emerging practical problems or situations. Creativity is based on imagination; you must first “do everything” mentally.
“Another life of ordinary things”
Given an image of an object, you need to think of non-standard applications of this object. First, it is necessary to understand and discuss what the main purpose of this object is. Then you can use leading questions, which are given in the first manual. The main thing here is not to get hung up! Some parts of the object can be used. For example: the object is a hammer with a wooden handle, one of the uses could be as combustible material or firewood, the handle is wooden. Check the boxes, the minimum number of unusual uses is only three to start with. Sometimes there are additional conditions (desert island, etc.).
“Transplantation.”
This assignment is based on the focal object method. You have an object that you want to change- the patient. And there is another object from which you take features (characteristics, properties, parameters, states) – the donor. Then you mentally transfer them to “the patient” and try to imagine what this new property can give you. Sometimes you will get very interesting things. The method is again based on imagination, you mentally transplant the properties and mentally imagine the possible result. On the other hand, these tasks also train imagination and visual thinking.
Use a variety of “features” of the first object, such as describing it in action, some unusual condition (broken, dirty, etc.). Example: scissors are metal, sharp, have two ends and rings, cut something, dull, they are used with one hand, etc. Complicating the task is when there will be two or more objects to “transplant” properties.
“Difficult Situation”
Words and a picture describe the situation in which the Lezheboka or the Brave Little find themselves. The situations are simple, everyday situations. You can immediately think of many ways out of it and offer many variants of “what to do” to the heroes. This is the first part of the task. The second part is to try to find a “strong solution”. This is a solution that requires the minimum amount of available resources (materials, time, effort). For different initial conditions of the “difficult situation” it may turn out that “strong solutions” will be different.
In the theory of inventive problem solving there is such an auxiliary mental experiment, when you try to visualize an ideal end result (IER). That is, the problem is solved and you have not spent any resources at all. The goal is to guide your thinking in the right direction to find a “strong solution”. Usually, to represent such a result, you need to add the word “yourself” to some objects from the task. Example: Lezheboka dropped a metal key into a deep well with icy water. Lezheboka does not want to dive into the water. How to retrieve it? IER – the key itself flies out of the well, the well itself throws out the key, the water itself does not touch Lezheboka and he descends into the well. And then imagination works again! We try to mentally imagine such “ideal” situations and how they can be realized. In our example – Lezheboka pumps out the water or puts on a diving suit (the water “itself” does not touch Lezheboka), uses a rope with a magnet (the key “itself” flies out of the well). What other variants can there be?
“How To.”
There is a drawing of some part or object. And a drawing of blanks for making it. There is also an image with a set of tools. The task is to think through the process or technology of making a part from the blanks, using the given tools. The goal is a mental representation of the sequence of actions and the process. In fact, most of the questions in real life are “how to do?”, not “what to do?”. Often after you have thought of something, the question “how to do?” arises and it turns out that to realize many great ideas is not so easy! To think through the whole process of manufacturing or technology is absolutely necessary not only for new ideas, but usually for the realization of even simple projects you need to carefully think through all the stages of manufacturing (material, preparation, types of connections, etc.). And when the project is more or less complex the ability to visualize the whole picture in your head becomes critical. Planning is somewhere around the corner. After all, planning is about answering the question “what? And when? “, and process modeling is the answer to the question “how?”.
Critical thinking – a person’s ability to question incoming information, including his or her own beliefs, to avoid a pattern of thinking.
And that “inner critic” (in a good way) needs to be trained too!
“Good-Bad.”
Given a very simple everyday situation (getting your feet wet, going for a swim, etc.) you should discuss with your child what could be good or bad in this situation, regardless of the conventional context. Example: getting your feet wet – it seems like what could be “good”? For example: getting sick and finally lying in bed all day and eating jam and bread, maybe now my parents will buy me new fancy sneakers, it was so nice to walk in the warm summer rain on puddles, etc. The “bad” is easier to deal with – getting sick, ruining shoes, missing class (or is it a good one!), etc. This task trains not only critical thinking, but also develops the habit of looking at all life situations from different perspectives. It is useful for adults too! There is also a subject in the assignment. It is necessary to think and discuss what advantages or disadvantages this ordinary object may have. Example: a closet – advantages: a lot of space to put things, things do not get dusty, the closet can be beautiful. Disadvantages – it takes up a lot of space, it is heavy, often not beautiful at all, in order to move it you need to disassemble it.
“Math from Brave Little.”
These are not math problems, they are all number problems up to 20. The difference from regular math problems is in the conditions or answers. The conditions may be redundant or incomplete, and there may be many or no answers. Also, the tasks may be incorrectly or improperly worded. These tasks should be discussed with the child. Draw their attention to other answers or incorrect conditions.
“What’s extra?”
Different from classical problems:
– many items;
– often it is not clear at all what can be “extra”;
-there can be more than one extra item;
– and there may be many variants of explanations. Discussion with the child is required. It is good if many ideas for answers arise. The adult may have his/her own variant and it should be discussed too.
“Like/dislike.”
Two objects are given. Take turns discussing what the objects have
in common or what differences they have. The objects may be very different, or
they may be similar in meaning.
“Questions.”
A questioning task. A picture or an image is given. One by one we ask any questions somehow related to the picture. In the beginning it is easy, but gradually it will be hard not to repeat. The goal is to ask a hundred questions.
Lezheboka School 