Be scared. Be very scared. Today is the last day of September and I am already planning for Halloween - one of my favorite times of year.
Some of you might remember the fun post I did last year when my son Matthew, my friend Amy, and I patrolled surrounding neighborhoods, in search of houses we could "Boo." Matthew dressed like a wizard and I drove the getaway car. It was magical. Click here to relive the magic.
"Boo-ing," your neighbor takes on new meaning in the month of October. It doesn't mean heckling the way I'll be heckling Colorado, when they play my Georgia Bulldogs in football, this weekend.
It means anonymously leaving a holiday treat on someone's doorstep, along with an invitation for them to pay it forward. Once "boo-ed," it is customary to post a picture of a ghost in your window, so eventually everyone in the neighborhood gets a chance at the fun. If what I am saying is new and confusing, then click here to read this poem. It will help explain.
With still two days left in National Keep Kids Creative Week, I quickly roped Matthew and Jack into helping prepare this year's treats.
Black bags with letters spelling B-O-O. Stickers by Jack.
Then more by Matthew.
Each bag filled with the fixin's for a Halloween party. Plates, napkins, sprinkles...
Festive straws, and...
Holiday cupcakes wrappers.
Throw in some tissue paper, a copy of the poem, and a ghost to post in their window, and our Boo Bags are ready for delivery. Twenty minutes is about the attention span of my boys and 20 minutes is about what it took to complete.
Friday night, after it has gotten plenty dark, we will pile in the family car to complete our covert mission of delivering Boo Bags. Maybe we'll stop for hot chocolate on the way home. One thing is for sure, it will be the perfect end to a fun-filled week of creativity.
Shining off until tomorrow....
Monday a lesson on punctuation and Tuesday a soap box speech about the demise of creativity among our young people. House of Shine readers are due for a blog post that is light and mindless.
Seek and you shall find.
Nonetheless, it is still National Keep Kids Creative Week and most of you know the importance I place on creativity. That means the ideal post for today would be light and mindless and would also foster creativity among kids.
Placemats.
The next time you eat together, present your child (or friend, or husband, or colleague) with a placemat bearing some kind of pre-drawn line. Using creativity, their challenge is to transform the line into a picture of something.
It's simple.
It's free.
And, it could help raise the Creativity Quotients of an entire generation.
Take a look at one of our masterpieces from dinner last night, based solely on the single line shown in the top picture.
Give it a try. Find the closest piece of blank paper. Draw the letter "s" in the middle of your page. Now turn your "s" into a picture of something.
Done?
Join us in the Community Forum labeled, "Today's Post" and tell us about your picture (or better yet, how about posting it?).
Shining off until tomorrow...
This week is National Keep Kids Creative Week; the perfect platform for me to rant a little about an article I recently read in Newsweek Magazine.
You could skim what I have to say or, worse yet, dismiss today's post all together. True. But, if you want a planet powered by shine, in the same way I do, then you will read today's post and maybe - just maybe - continue thinking about it like I have.
According to Bronson and Merryman, authors of the article, The Creativity Crisis:
In the last twenty years the creativity scores of children and adults in this country has consistently inched downward. "It is the scores of younger children in America - from kindergarten to sixth grade - for whom the decline is most serious."
So serious is this void in creativity among young people that a recent poll of 1,500 CEOs identified creativity as the No. 1 leadership competency of the future. College administrators, I hope you are taking note!
If you think by creativity that I am talking about drawing pictures and writing poetry then you are not thinking creatively enough. I am talking about generating creative solutions to global issues, breaking ground on new innovations, and contributing original ideas.
Still don't see the seriousness of the situation? Consider this. While American education has focused increasingly on a standardized curriculum, rote memorization, and nationalized testing, China - whose old model of education was similar - has undergone wide spread reform in order to infuse more creativity and problem-based learning into their curriculum.
In other words, just as we are moving toward more standardized curriculums, countries like China and India are moving away from them, in exchange for our less standardized - more creative - curriculums of old.
Help make a dent in this growing national problem.
Helping increase our nation's Creativity Quotient is not for the faint of heart. It means toughening up and doing a few things differently: turn off the t.v. and video games; engage kids in creative activities; encourage kids to ask questions, by not dismissing the ones they do pose; and - here is a biggy - hold your schools accountable for some sort of creativity development.
If you don't have a clue where to begin holding your school accountable, then how about this? How about simply asking your school administrators to list specific ways they foster creativity among children in their school. Don't let their sole answer be that students take an art or music class. If so, then see about our earlier point about problem solving, innovating, and original thought.
Now, how about getting your creativity going? Visit us in the Community Forum, labeled Today's Post and answer this question, posed in the Newsweek article I referenced above: "Just suppose... we could transport ourselves anywhere we want with just a twitch of the nose or blink of the eye. What would be some problems, benefits, etc. of this situation? Give yourself three minutes to answer.
Start now.
Shining off until tomorrow...