Monday, March 2, 2009

Flexible Thinking

The development of Flexible Thinking skills are always a goal of our groups. Being able to consider multiple meanings, intentions, perspectives, etc, is a key trait for human connection and communication. It's also something that can be quite challenging at times, for many of our group members. For those of you who want to find out more, Michelle Garcia Winner and Dr. Steven Gutstein, among others, write about this topic at length.

One of our group members brought in a book to share with the group (that's exciting in and of itself!) called, You've Gotta Be Kidding! The Crazy Book of Would You Rather Questions. This book has a variety of "would you rather questions ranging from serious to disgusting to silly"(use your imagination)-in other words, very interesting to second and third graders! Initially, these sort of questions caused a bit of anxiety for other group members. They weren't quite sure how to interpret them. "Was the question serious?" "Would I really be asked to eat that?" "Why would someone ask that?", "What does it mean?", or even "That question is so strange-maybe the other person is teasing me?" Over the course of a few weeks, it's become a great child centered tool to explore all the different perspectives and flexibility involved in this task.

This past week, the group decided at snack, that they'd like to come up with their own "Would You Rather" questions-and post them on our blog. At one point, a child came up with a rather disgusting question (from an adult's perspective) at least. Rather than saying the question was inappropriate, the leaders wondered aloud WITH him, about what people reading our blog would think of us if they read that question. On his own-he thought about it and adjusted his answer-he wants readers to think good things about us! Ahh-the efforts to develop social thinking skills are working.

Hope you enjoy our current questions (albeit food centered-but all their own ideas):

Child 1: "Would you rather have pizza with vegetables AND bubble gum on it? Or Carrot flavored ice cream?"

Child 2: "Would you rather have broccoli cake or asparagus juice?"

Child 3: "Would you rather have ice cream on top of ice cream on top of ice cream? or Ice Cream?" (You'd be ice creamed!) *laughter*

Child 4: Would you rather race a nascar around Mt. Everest or climb to the top of the Empire State Building-on the outside.

Leader: Would you rather go to school in the summer time or go to camp during school vacations?

Maybe something like this can become an interactive, flexible thinking dinner time activity at your house.