The Pursuit of Tinkering

The Make Blog has an awesome post by Dan Woods on The value of a good hands on project. After observing that “Hobby, toy, and game stores” are listed as retail business currently experiencing growth (second after gas stations!), Dan attempts to explain by writing:

Perhaps it’s the constructive distraction of focusing ourselves on something other than the recession, something where we have a reasonable chance of controlling the outcome. Maybe it’s the satisfaction of picking up a new skill, dusting off an old one, or simply learning how something works (or doesn’t). Maybe it’s the memories that live long after the project is done.

And there’s definitely something intrinsically satisfying about passing along skills — even the simplest of skills — to a younger maker. What kid doesn’t enjoy a workbench, a few tools, and a good project on a rainy day?

Even though many of us are nixing the vacation we’d thought about, driving that funky clunker of a car for another year, or putting the bathroom remodel on hold, the basements, garages, and backyards of this planet are coming alive with experiments, tinkering, and the making spirit.

Apologies for the long quote, but what Dan says is just so great. Go read the full post here: The value of a good hands on project.

And after that, go pick up a kit or two for your kids at the Maker Shed Store. I’m going to pick up a Blinkybug Kit for my kids. And perhaps a Diet Coke and Mentos kit for myself…

Jen Zug at The Pile I’m Standing In has a great post recognizing the various play styles of kids. Related to her own control issues and the tensions they create around her house, she writes:

Embracing who they are and facilitating their imagination has turned everything around.

Helping kids be creative while also making life easier? Awesome. Read the full post: Works for Me: Toyless Christmas

The Psychology Today Beautiful Minds blog has a great interview with Joshua Waitzkin, the child chess wiz depicted in the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer. In the interview, Waitzkin offers some interesting advice to parents on raising resilient kids:

The moment we believe that success is determined by an ingrained level of ability as opposed to resilience and hard work, we will be brittle in the face of adversity. For that reason, it is incredibly important for parents to make their feedback process related as opposed to praising or criticizing talent. Think about it-if you tell a kid that she is a winner, which a lot of well-intentioned parents do, then she learns that her winning is because of something ingrained in her. But if we win because we are a winner, then when we lose it must make us a loser.

The interview goes on to cover Waitzkin’s thoughts on life-long learning. Definitely worth reading: Conversations on Creativity with Repeat Bloomer Joshua Waitzkin

Thanks to author Tim Ferris and his Twitter stream for pointing me to the interview.

I was just reading an article from Fast Company titled Innovating with Meaning: You Reap What You Sow. The article describes the author’s belief that business performance can be enhanced by improving core competencies in creative thinking, strategic thinking, and transformational thinking among employees in support of innovation. Interesting stuff and a worthwhile article.

While I was reading it, I was struck by the thought that we may not need this type of business advice if we just did a better job of sowing the seeds of creativity in our children to begin with. Is it possible that corporations are trying to make up for our shortcomings as parents?

The article describes nine seeds of creative thinking. I’ve taken the first two and replaced business/employee language with family/child references. It really resonates with me:

Seed #1: Believe in Creativity
It is not enough for a leader parent to simply encourage “creativity” and creative thinking. Everyone must believe in their own creative thinking abilities. They Parents must also be willing to unlearn some of their old habits in order to truly participate in the innovation agenda and become an integral part of the organization’s family’s innovation engine.

Seed #2: Be Curious
The foundation of creativity is the curious mind. Without a curious mind, many great opportunities will simply slip by unnoticed. Employees Children should be encouraged to broaden their perspectives and look for ideas beyond their particular department, organization, and industry home, school and neighborhood. Innovative organizations families encourage their employees children to ask questions and challenge “the way it’s done in our industry family.” It is important to note that employees children can be encouraged to ask questions while still respecting the essence and realities of organizational familial life.

If Gordon McKenzie is correct in his observation that kids lose their ability to be creative between kindergarten and sixth grade, it seems sad that corporations are trying to then re-develop those same skills later in life.

Honestly, I’m not sure what I’m getting at with this post. As the parent of child that just entered kindergarten, my gut tells me that we need to protect her creative instincts as adamantly as we protect her safety.

What do you think?

After reading the Obama Administration Plan for Innovation, Science & Technology, Bruce Nussbaum feels that Barack Obama has a grasp on technology, but fails to “get” innovation. So what does he think Obama should do?

…he actually needs to appoint a Chief Innovation Officer (CIO) because change is as much about sociology as technology, as much about creativity as science. And that translates into more money for art and design education in K-12 and college as well as more funding for science and math.

Personally, I think Obama gets innovation. The way he ran his campaign is evidence. But that doesn’t diminish the truth of what Nussbaum writes about the importance of creativity. Here is another snippet:

It’s important to give students “high order thinking skills including inference, logic, data analysis, interpretation, forming questions and commnication,” as the Plan says. It’s also important to give students the skills of empathy, imagining, intuiting, collaborating, iterating, learning from failing, visualizing, disrupting, engaging, even playing. These are the skills of creativity and we need creativity to build a new sustainable social model of economic growth.

Good stuff. Go read the full post, Does Obama Really “Get” Innovation? Not Really., on the BusinessWeek NussbaumOnDesign blog.

More great stuff on getting your kids outside at the Free Range Kids blog. How they describe themselves:

Do you ever let your kid ride a bike to the library? Walk alone to school? Take a bus, solo? Or are you thinking about it? If so, you are raising a Free Range Kid! At Free Range, we believe in safe kids. We believe in helmets, car seats and safety belts. We do NOT believe that every time school age children go outside, they need a security detail. Most of us grew up Free Range and lived to tell the tale. Our kids deserve no less. This site dedicated to sane parenting. Share your stories, tell your tips and maybe one day I will try to collect them in a book. Meantime, let’s try to help our kids embrace life! (And maybe even clear the table.)

Go check it out. And again, thanks to Tim O’Reilly’s Twitter feed for pointing me there.

Making a strong argument for spending more time outside, Scott Stevens of the Blunt Perspectives blog wrote:

Chill yourself out, but most importantly get out there for the kids. Let them throw rocks and hurt themselves. Let them go and explore and expend energy. Give their minds and bodies the chance to avoid the terrible effects of Urbanization and a conveniently lazy society.

We live in a city and we love it. And living in a city definitely does not correlate with laziness (I know more than a few lazy people in the small Wisconsin town where I grew up). With that said, I agree with the most of what Scott writes. I think my kids really would benefit form more time outside. I just wish it wasn’t so damn cold out (there I go being lazy again).

Read his full post here: Urban Jungles, Nature, and Society’s Peril. And thanks to Tim O’Reilly’s Twitter feed for pointing me to this post.

Just ran across this post from Judith E. Glaser. When her children were in elementary school she coordinated the publication of an annual book that contained stories and pictures from all 550 students in kindergarten through 5th grade. In regards to organizing the content she writes:

Something amazing seemed to drive the process at an almost invisible level. It was as though each year there was something in the air that each child was breathing - some aromatic that they could all sense. This unique essence showed up in the patterns and substance of the student’s expressive art work and writings. Each year it was different - each year a larger story emerged and - once we saw it - mystified those of us working on the project.

Looking back on the success of the project, Judith writes:

My feeling is that we all have bonding instincts. We have the need — a strong instinct — to connect with others and make music. When validated and fulfilled, our connections elevate us to higher levels of growth, wisdom, creativity and insight.

I LOVE Judith’s idea and her story. Read the full post: Children’s World - The Emergence of Self Expression

Yesterday I gave Crayola some hate for releasing simulated crayons. Today, I stumbled upon the Crayola Glow Station, which I love for two reasons:

1. It gives kids the ability to create art at a new time (night) and in a new place (the dark).
2. More important, the art is temporary, lasting only a few minutes before it fades.

For time and place, changing your environment is a great way to stimulate creativity. And why is temporary art a good thing? It’s too easy to get attached to our ideas, too easy to get stuck, failing to recognize that there is always another idea right around the corner. The Glow Station inherently solves that problem. It reminds me of a similar product that we bought for our kids a while back: Buddha Boards. They essentially do the same thing, except with water instead of light. I love their philosophy:

Buddha Board is based on the Zen concept of living in the moment. You simply paint on the surface with water and your creation will come to life in a bold design. Then, as the water slowly evaporates, your art will magically disappear leaving you with a clean slate and a clean mind - ready to create a whole new masterpiece.

Nice. That’s so, um, Zen.

And for you, Crayola, you have redeemed yourself. What other cool stuff do you have?

Parenting Experts Laura and Malcolm Gauld have a new post about the importance of qualities such as leadership, responsibility, initiative, creativity and flexibility to both parents and future employers of our children. They point out, however, that schools and parents typically fail when it comes to coordinating the education of our children around these critical skills. They go so far as to compare the parent/school relationship to that of divorced parents on bad terms:

Contact between schools and parents is often similar to divorced parents who share custody of children, but are not on particularly good terms. Each needs the other to take significant shared responsibility for raising the children, but it is an overwhelming matter to consider wading into communication about shared goals, common routines, and values.

Interesting stuff… And their “attitude over aptitude” approach to nurturing  these critical characteristics is equally as interesting.

However, their post caught my attention for another reason. They give several examples of how leadership, responsibility, initiative, and flexibility are cultivated in their classrooms. Creativity, besides prominent mention in the headline, was missing. Why?

Perhaps it is simply because a 400-word post cannot be comprehensive. Or, perhaps it is because creativity is a tricky beast. My guess is the latter. Unlike the Gaulds, I’m no expert. But it seems to me that structured educational systems impede creativity, rather than nurture it. Is that true? If yes, what can we do about it? If no, why might my perceptions be wrong?

Final thought on this: I could never argue against leadership, responsibility, initiative, and flexibility as critical skills for success. But there are days when I would argue that creativity is more important than all of them. Especially in the 21st Century.