ABSTRACT
All children are potentially creative: creativity arises from the natural human curiosity that we all possess. While creative thinking relies upon recall to some degree, it also taps into the vast amount of subconscious information that all of people possess. People can visualise the principles underlying creative thinking by imagining the 'pyramid of creativity'. Help children to develop the skill of using the stones to anchor the state of relaxed alertness. Even in the simple version of the detective game children are making creative links between pieces of information, speculating, inferring and reasoning, and noticing possible contradictions. Choose a theme such as bravery, honour, ambition and help the children to decide what could represent the ideas, and why. Criss-cross is a particular version of the basic brainstorming activity. A more sophisticated use of the grid is as a problem solver in a more general sense, by thinking of the images metaphorically as well as literally.
