WEEK 8. Playing brainstorming to develop our mind.

Lamarck: "Function creates the organ."

Brainstorming is a group creativity technique designed to generate a large number of ideas for the solution of a problem. There are four basic rules in brainstorming.

1. - Focus on quantity: The assumption is that the greater the number of ideas generated, the greater the chance of producing a radical and effective solution.

2. - Withhold criticism: In brainstorming, criticism of ideas generated should be put 'on hold'.

3.-Welcome unusual ideas: To get a good and long list of ideas, unusual ideas are welcomed. They can be generated by looking from new perspectives and suspending assumptions.

4. - Combine and improve ideas: Good ideas may be combined to form a single better good idea, as suggested by the slogan "1+1=3". It is believed to stimulate the building of ideas by a process of association.

Our week activity is to play our particular adaptation of a brainstorming. This game can be played at spares times as the way to school, in the waiting rooms ... It consists on saying "solutions" to a question.

I have created a pack of cards with three thematic groups:

1. - Green Cards: Naming real entities (objects, things, actions, sounds ...) (Download)
Ex: "Let's say carnivores."
2. - Yellow Cards: Name invented "entities". (Download) Ex: "Let's invent the sound each animal makes when laughing."
3. - Red Cards: Provide solutions to issues or outcomes of changed stories. (Download) Ex: "What would happen if the third little pig had not built a brick house?"

Process:

Once printed the cards in the corresponding color cardboard, cut to make the card pack. Then take a card and try to think on possibly solutions alternately, to one of the points. To encourage our particular game we can make funny comments on the other´s solutions (though in a theoretical brainstorming, criticism is not allowed.) Our goal is to make our child think.

I'm going to write, as an example, what Dani and I did today in the car on the way to school.

M (Mom): Dani, Do you want to play inventing things brainstorming?
D (Dani): Yes, yes ... Let's invent ... Let's invent ... Caves!
M: Caves...? "Caves...? Can you invent caves?
D: Sure mom, begin.
M: Well I will. I make up a cave ... a cave ... in a cloud.
D: But you're going to get wet.
M: No, because I have a rain coat.
D: Okay. Now I, I make up a cave of gelatin.
M: And what color is it?
D: It's green.
M: But if you eat it, the cave will fall down.
D: No because it is very large and you would have a stomachache before.
M: Okay I make up a cave in the bottom of the pool.
D: But you cannot reach it.
M: Yes, because I dive and there is an air cavity where I stop to breathe.
D: But you better go in a submarine ... Well I invented a cave made of acorns.
M: But squirrels could eat it.
D: No because I put them in a cage.
M: Okay, so I invent a crystal cave.
D: But then you will not get out.
M: Yes it has a door.
D: But you can cut yourself.
M: No, because they are harmless sheets of glass. But I could be discovered.
D: I think that is not a good idea mom. I make up a cave in a tree for birds.
M: How cool! And it can be communicated through a passage with another cave in another tree ...

(We continued with a dozen caves of different materials, sites, smells ...)