This is an interesting question that people have asked us. How does a creative thinking activity look like? What innovative content will it have? How new will it be?

While, we can design and we do design and deliver 'new' creative activities. The 'creativity' in these activities does not emerge from the 'newness' of the activity itself, neither does it emerge from the 'complicated' nature of anything that we put forth. It emerges from the child being able to look at something 'existing' with a 'new' pair of eyes, him/her being able to observe a phenomena they were previously oblivious to. In fact, them being able to overcome the pressures placed by the society to forget their child-like curiosity and help them be 'curious' all over again!

if an activity is able to achieve this or even partly this, it is a 'creative activity' in itself!

I love it when we teach a child a tool and they apply it in new places and different contexts than originally intended and benefit from it. We had one such case in our sessions last week. The child came all bubbling to the class and I asked what happened. She informed me that she had not only used visualization on the fruit (which was the object I had recommended they use it on) but she had gone ahead and used it to learn Sanskrit for her test. She also went on to say that it made a huge difference in her learning with and without visualization. She could remember everything when she did it with visualization and not much when she didn't.

The true success for any tool lies in its application. The child demonstrated what more of us should do with our lives. Cross apply learnings from one sphere of our lives to another. Next time, you attend a seminar or workshop and like a concept don't just let it rot in your head, do something about it, with it....!!!

The summer camps are just around the corner and seats are filling up across our locations pretty fast. Before I say anything else, I'd like to take a moment to thank all the parents and our location partners for the faith they have shown in us. You have made our conviction to "create confident thinkers" amongst children in India, a very strong resolve.

As we huddled up to talk about our approach towards the summer camp, some things stood out. For one, we are not approaching this as a place for children to while away time. It will be fun, it will have a lot of games and activities but at the same time it will be a shared learning experience for the children and the facilitator.

Secondly, as we move them through the process of building the skill of thinking creatively, we are intently focussed on changing how they view the world around them. Especially, it is an attempt to move it from a view of limited possibilities to unlimited possibilities. This helps build a "never give up" attitude in the child and will help them stand in good stead through the ups and downs of life.

Thirdly, we want to work with them to be able to work towards a natural style of creative expression and help them be more imaginative and structured in their thoughts.

With these thoughts in mind, we are gearing towards a "sunny" and "creative" summer this year!