Genius 10 Minutes

I love Genius Hour, but I was thinking about how to introduce it to younger children, not necessarily the Foundation Key Stage as school life for them is like Genius Curriculum. For Year 1, where the children have just moved from the EYFS and are very young, there may still need to be a little guidance or structure and teachers may also need a little taster before going for all out creativity. There is always the Cardboard Challenge
http://imagination.is/storybook/a-new-movement-unleashes-the-genius-in-every-kid/
Made famous by 

This is great but I wanted something for teachers that were a little wary of Genius Hour and needed something to gently ease them and their children into the creative process. Inspired by this video 'Creativity Requires Time' I thought about how I could bring this into the classroom. 

I loved this concept and how creative the children were, so using this idea I created a worksheet to trial with my Year 3 class:

Using the shapes above the children were given 10 minutes to create a vehicle and then present it to the rest of the class. The results were brilliant, it is amazing how creative children can be, here are some examples. We had a hotel vehicle with beds for people to sleep in, there was a pedal car with several people pedalling, a vehicle that had wheels but also elephant legs when the terrain was too rough, a Minion powered car, a jet powered bike and many other wonderful creations. Inspired by this I have created a bank of 14 creative exercises and will continue to do these with my children in a separate 10 minute slot from 'Genius Hour'. These will be offered to our Key Stage 1 teachers next week as I am doing a training session on 'Genius Hour' as we are pushing it to the rest of the school. I will keep you up to date on how the other teachers fare and if these and other resources were a success.