Rhiannon came up for a few days to my place and we've been planning and crafting and brainstorming!
I found an idea in "
100+ Ideas for Teaching Thinking Skills" by Stephen Bowkett that I thought would be fun to try.
Basically you make two lists of key ideas or themes, randomly combine two, and think about what the crossover would be. We did a list of items you could make and a list of themes. Then we rolled dice to get a random combination each and came up with a design idea.
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| Round One: A Household item in the theme of fairytales. Rhiannon designs a Sleeping Beauty castle trivet. |
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| Round One: A toy in the theme of the movie Inception. Tanith designs nesting dolls - an idea inside a sleeping man inside a sleeping man... |
It was fun and challenging. Like most things, the combinations that seemed the most challenging ended up being the most fun and producing more unusual ideas.
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| Round Two: A hat in the theme of sushi. Tanith designs a stack of empty sushi train plates. |
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| Round Two: cake in the theme of vikings. Rhiannon designs an adorable helmet and beard combination. |
I was hoping we could use this to come up with actual usable ideas, but some of our designs fell outside our areas of expertise. I think it was good for our brains regardless. It could certainly be adapted in other ways that would focus more on our crafts and interests.
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| Round Three: A Van Gogh greeting card. Tanith at first designs a disturbing ear card then a sunflower seed idea that is slightly more tasteful |
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| Round Three: A Jungle Animal bookmark. Rhiannon designs a twisted vine with various animals (after some decisions about what lives in jungles - not giraffes, for example) |
