A learning experience designed to expand primary students' knowledge of what is and is not magic is described. Included are activities involving language arts, math, art, class discussion, and motor skills. (MT)

Includes a dandelion poem that is designed to stimulate elementary students' creativity and abstract-thinking skills. Offers several exercises to go with the poem: creating mental pictures, drawing first images, and performing for better understanding. A reproducible for creating a dandelion-shaped poem is included. (SM)

Presents a collection of ideas for teachers' professional growth, noting that teachers can brainstorm lists of ideas on their own by considering what they want to learn and how they learn best. Suggestions include being inspired by other teachers in the literature or the movies; studying student work; facing challenges; redesigning units;…

Drama in the school can be used to help the child become a more fully integrated being by developing his physical, mental, emotional, psychological, and spiritual faculties, and it can serve as an instrument for teaching skills and facts. (Author)

With persistence and an enthusiastic approach, teachers can lead their students to discover writing as a creative outlet and a communication tool, a way of transmitting the scenes inside their heads to the world at large. Written language, with all its conventions and complexities, of course takes years to master. But it must have a beginning.…

Offers an awareness strategies checklist that can be used to help free children from previous preconceptions and guide them to notice new elements in the environment. (RB)

Twelve games are described which serve to reduce students' mathematics anxiety. Children solve problems by observing, visualizing, manipulating, finding patterns, and using logical sequence. Some games do not involve numbers, but all games require original thinking and encourage intuition. (JMK)

Short, creative thinking sessions can help fill the time between classes while encouraging students to develop all of their thinking processes. Activities are offered that require organizing, imagining, observing, patterning, and questioning skills. (DF)

Presents a critical thinking exercise program, modeled on a physical exercise workout, for elementary teachers to use in the classroom. It includes warm-up exercises, a more strenuous workout, and a cool-down period for the brain. (SM)

Artists and writers from Maine were asked to develop creative activities for a sixth-grade class. Students were encouraged to observe nature, investigate their ancestors, design logos, and think about the impossible. Several of the activities that could be adopted to relate to other states are presented. (DF)

Believes that improvisational ability can be performed vocally as easily as instrumentally and suggests methods for initiating improvisation, for transfering creative insights to pitched activities and how to organize chordal accompaniments for melodic improvisation. (RB)

How to use current records to encourage children to listen to and become involved with music. Methods for using instruments and voice to create new rhythms and styles. (RB)

Presents exercises in the history of names, the origins of certain words, context clues, and creative descriptions--all designed to expand students' vocabularies. (SJL)

Presents literature-based elementary mathematics activities for the primary and intermediate grades. The activites are adapted from "Math and Literature, K-3," by the author of this article. (SM)

Describes an entertaining approach to use in stimulating creative thinking in elementary science. (JMB)