Curiosity & Right Brain Blooming

P.R.O.D.U.C.E.* CREATIVITY
(*Parents Reject the Organization and Development
for an Unexpressive Child’s Education)

program developed by AL BECK, c 2004


In a NY Times Op-ed column on Monday, January 24, 2005, William Safire remarked: “And what about what the cognition crowd calls “executive transfer” in learning? Does an early grasp of the arts – music, dance, drama, drawing – affect a child’s ability to apply that cognitive process to facility in math, architecture, history? New imaging techniques and much-needed longitudinal studies may provide answers rather than anecdotes and affect arts budgets in schools.”

IMAGI-PLAY: (I-GC)
(copyright, book 11: Beyond The Scars & Gripes)

(Inter-generational Collaborative Learning Experiences)

CREATIVE CONNECTION: Grandparent/Grandchild

The process by which inspired thinking germinates fresh energy for enriched long living in the elderly while, at the same time, encouraging development of original ideas in young people.
Stories and experiences of collaboration in learning go way back in my life. I could go as far back as the English Language Classes I volunteered to teach in Taegu, Korea during my off-duty hours with the U.S. Army back in the mid ‘50s.
But let’s bring it closer to my present quasi-senile “swinging” days. When my grandson, Christopher, was about 3 or 4 years old, I would visit him and bring a bucket of crayons and large sheets of white paper. We would sit on the floor and I would make a squiggle on the page with my “favorite” color. Then I would ask him to take his favorite color and make another mark as a part of our “collaborate” picture.
He would begin to make his own marks and imagery connecting them sometimes to mine – sometimes not.
I would then turn the paper and observe it from a different
direction. I would do some more (not too much) additions to the “picture”. Then it would be Christopher’s turn. This would go on for several turns until Christopher studied the color/shape markings as it began to grow in his mind and declare, “Hey, Gramps, it’s beginning to look like a boat!”
“Where?” I asked. And he pointed out an area of our color which suggested that form to him. “OK,” I said, “a boat it is. So let’s keep going with our picture … but now we have an idea of what we might be making, right?”
“Right,” he firmly remarked.
And we continued to alternate turns (me for shorter – less specific participation) until Christopher began to smile as the whole sea, boat and maybe a bird or two and even a fish and….and… And it’s called adult/child collaboration in the art world.
Children can be encouraged to do this with other children. But the object is never to criticize what the other person is doing. And give the children the opportunity to express their most creative urges.
It might be worthwhile to mention the danger and mental poison which coloring books present to young children. Once this visual “bible” is placed before a young child to color-images-within-their-printed-in-the-book-lines with great care – the house, the horse, the dog, the tree, the whatever becomes a sacred preconception of what it should always look like in the child’s mind. Drawing it differently (imaginatively) from the preconception is unconsciously not a good thing to do in a child’s subsequent art experiences. The child has been “programmed” to know what the object should look like and will generally not attempt to make his or her own version of it.

COLLABORATIVE VISUAL VARIOUS with MUSIC
Inter-sensate Inspiration has natural creative opportunity when the music is without words and has passages with both high/low, fast/slow portions to it. Many classical selections would apply. The adult speak out and says, “I hear a color in the music…hmmm, let me look through our crayons and pick out the color I hear…”
(If the child doesn’t imitate the adult’s actions with her/her own color choice, than the adult might urge the child to pick what color he/she hears).
Soon after, as the music changes its character (slower or faster, higher or lower), the adult will then express a need to change his “color” and do so. “Oh, the music is changing, I hear a different color…etc.”

WRITING CREATIVE STORIES COLLABORATIVELY
I can do this now with Christopher because he is a bit older and in the second grade where he begins his traditional writing skills (spelling notwithstanding). We now write stories in the same collaborative fashion we did with visual art experiences. I take a clean sheet of paper and might begin our story with “Once upon a time…” and then I stop, hand him the paper and he continues the writing with “There was a little person..” And I am given back the sheet: “This person was very strange because…” I stop writing at this point to act as a stimulus for his ideas, and hand him back the sheet:
“he had yellow eyes and a green face.”
He then hands me back the sheet and I continue: “One day he met a very unusual animal who…” And now Christopher takes the paper…”was like a monster with a cheeta tail and a elephent body and a bull head.”
I should point out that he didn’t spell either cheetah or elephant correctly and his “a elephant” was not correct grammatically.

Now, I will stop the story here. I am certain you get the game we are playing. Note, please, I do not correct his spelling or his grammar. We just keep rolling with the story. His mom loves this “play” with gramps. Now that Christopher is in third grade, we continue to do both the collaborative art work as well as written stories. And it’s just the beginning (and NO, I won’t tell you how our story came out…sorry).