I could blog about creativity every day at CHOICE. The heroes’ imaginations have the opportunity to run wild and the time and space to carry out their ingenuity!
In the Spark Studio… Because we don’t give them traditional play structures, they create their own. Balance beams were a thing this week. We watched them create their structures and then perform risk analysis. One hero walking on a homemade balance beam said out loud to himself “Is this safe?” He was soon joined in his exploration by his fellow travelers as we heard them saying “This part is secure, but this part is wobbly.”
This week there was also houses with dance floors, drive-up restaurants, secret portals, and of course, new flavors of homemade soup!
During art the heroes are creating vision boards. It is so fun to see all the different pictures they are finding and creating to represent their different interests, passions and goals for the future.
Even the visit with the police personnel used creativity as the heroes brainstormed and asked their burning questions. We were visited by a few seasoned officers, a new officer, and a 911 dispatcher. The officers shared with the heroes what happens when you call 911, the many tools police officers use, and how police officers help us on a daily basis. But what the heroes really wanted to hear about was what the food tastes like in jail!
New shape works appeared in the studio. Heroes used their creativity to find new ways to sort and graph shapes.
Our continent this session is Africa. Heroes used their creativity with a new work which involves creating an African elephant while focusing on the details. Some heroes drew their elephant with pencil, drawing all the lines and wrinkles in the elephant’s skin. Other heroes used tissue paper to represent the many wrinkles in an elephant’s skin.
Heroes were challenged to deep dive into their creativity with words as we began exploring poetry. Some poetry is really silly, some thoughtful, some short, some long. Poetry carefully selects words to produce a specific feeling and emotion. We didn’t have a picture of the emotion of poetry, but look at the emotion of friendship in the picture below 🙂
In the Fire Studio… Heroes used their creativity creating skits about first aid and skits showing what to do if a potentially dangerous animal approaches. (I wish I had taken pictures of the actual skit performances 🙂 )
Heroes used their creativity when they discovered we didn’t have a measuring tape and needed to measure length while orienteering… they simply used their body length as measurement tools!
They got creative (and gritty) trying to start a fire with flint and steel. All sorts of different material were used as the kindling. It was inspirational to watch them work at it for over an hour. What joy when that fire blazed!
Distilling water took a creative turn as heroes found a bush, figured out that it was edible and turned their regular water into “rose hip” tea.
During civilization the heroes explored the scientific reformation. They looked at various long-standing ideas (such as: the earth stands still and is at the center of the universe) and performed experiments that showed how those ideas changed (such as: the earth is actually rotating around the sun). I don’t know which was more fun: Watching their creativity as they performed the experiments or listening to them intellectually argue during lunch as to whether Newton or Galileo was the father of science?
Our job is not to create creativity in young people. It is innately there. Our role is to provide a space for their creativity to flourish and find expression and then sit back and watch in awe at what unfolds! Oh how we love these heroes!
