Alice Inspired Critical Thinking

As I was cooking eggs this morning, I was thinking about how to help my children learn and about how to make what we're learning fun. When I have my parent-teacher conferences, (to myself I think I sound like Rain Man and Milton Waddams smushed together, but thankfully my kids see me as Pooh going "Think, think, think"), it's when I come up with some interesting ideas.

Well, my brain blast this morning was how to help my kids with their critical and imaginative thinking. So much of today is just told to us, and not a lot of it expects you to think for yourself or even respond to what was said, so when my brain hatched this thought, I knew it would help or at least be an interesting experiment!

Inspired by Alice in Wonderland, when her and her father think of at least 3 impossible things before breakfast, I asked my children what 3 impossible and silly things could they think of. My example to explain was a hamster jumping on a trampoline chewing on bubblegum. That ensued a fit of giggles between the two, and I knew I had them hooked.

So here is their first attempts at thinking of 3 Impossible and Silly Things (Before Breakfast).

Thing 1 (6 year old boy)
A pig farting while breaking pictures in the mud.
Alive books dancing with pictures on the ceiling.
(realizing he's just looking around for his inspiration, I then told him to close his eyes and think of the last one)
Pigs jumping over the moon while wearing underwear and Gangam style shoes.

Thing 2 (4 year old girl)
A cow jumping on the moon while eating cereal.
A cow with circle feet getting eaten by pigs in the mud. (Uhhh...What!?)
(Get off of the cow hunny, think of something else)
A spider playing with spider babies in the desert.

Well, as you can see my children are completely nuts. :o)

I will be doing this again, at least try to do it every day, and write down what they said for my own journaling  I found that it really sparked some imagination and got them thinking, because they went off to play and it was some of the best role playing and pretend games I've hear them do yet!

So if you try this, comment below what they've said! I'd love to know that Thing 1 and Thing 2 are in good company.

With Love,
Emily