Doodling can help save the world!

 A great TED talk to get you rethinking about the value of doodling.

http://www.ted.com/talks/sunni_brown.html

It's true that doodling engages all the 4 learning modes - auditory, visual, kinesthetic and emotional. And it's for this reason that doodling ROCKS as a form of thinking, contemplating, chewing over ideas and life.

The author Sunni Brown who makes a fine living convincing adults and corporations to doodle suggests we do more doodling as it helps us with problem solving and deep thinking.

She also offers advice for parents keen inspire their kids - encourage their children to doodle as a means of enhancing creativity. Wonderful!  Simple!  And in a kids world - completely do-able!  Takes very little effort.

So next time you look at a doodle as a complete waste of space - reconsider the humble doodle - it's the one activity that could possibly inspire a way to save our planet.

And I'd guess it could just be a child's doodle that will inspire the idea behind the genius. 

Check out the beautiful doodles here in this Doodle Art Gallery

http://www.doodle-art-alley.com/doodling1.html

Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity | Video on TED.com

Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity | Video on TED.com

All kids are born creative.

It's how their creativity is nurtured day by day that determines how their creativity develops further.

Nurturing creativity and multi intelligences - beyond the industrial age maths and literacy model is the golden egg for the much needed and long overdue education revolution.

Public education - where children were made to sit still hour after hour, day after day in neat rows, to learn maths and literacy was the invention of the industrial age.

At that time it served a particular purpose - to make people learn how to fit into the system, to follow orders, to fulfill a job description, not make mistakes and not ask questions - and not to think too much.

And we all know that now in our post industrial age new challenges are at the forefront that cannot be solved in the same way as we did previously. We -and our kids will need bold creative ideas and new ways of looking at complex problems. 

Ken Robinson - ex professor and devoted education revolutionist reminds us that the children born today will be retiring in 2076. He asks us adults to consider what we are preparing the children to do that could have any value in their lives well after we've left the planet. Because one thing is for certain -  the one thing that will be needed in 2050 to address the big issues we can't even begin to imagine is bucket loads of creativity beyond our industrialised vision.

And that he says is what transformational creative education is all about - finding out how to allow the child's creativity to flow and florish fearlessly.

Navel Gazing Questions:
1) To what degree am I shutting down or nurturing creativity in the children in my life?

2) And a follow up question - what can I do today to nurture creativity in a child?

3) What do I wish my teachers could have known about me while I was in my school years?


By Zelda Sheldon
Director Ukulele Baby Music
Music and Movement programs for creative kids newborn to kindy
www.ukulelebabymusic.com