Serving advanced learners (and their teachers) since 2012.
Asking students to “think creatively” won’t get you far. They won’t know how to start, they’ll get stuck with simple ideas, or they’ll just go completely wild. SCAMPER is a tool for scaffolding the process of creativity.
Who can get to 100 first in this simple, but delightful, math game?
A favorite of mine! This task is delightfully complex and ambiguous, forcing students to make choices without enough information and with no right answer. How will they survive on the moon for three days?
So what are some new ways to use a paperclip?
Everyone starts with the same squiggle. No two drawings end up the same. What do you see?
Imagine Tic-Tac-Toe, but both players can both play as both X and O throughout the whole game!
A worksheet pack featuring writing prompts, a summer essay project, a science-based escape room activity, and image analysis prompts.
Let’s encode and decode secret messages like Julius Caesar!
Let’s make valentines with an educational twist!
A music video filmed on 64 phones and then displayed on 64 phones. What?
So, what can a pencil be used for other than writing and drawing?
Nothing like a paradox to get your kids brains exploding 🤯! This one starts with five simple words: “This statement is a lie.”
So, what CAN a CAN be used for other than storing liquids?
Here’s how you can draw The Penrose Triangle, an example of an impossible shape.
These two tables are the same size. But how!?
Pick a few numbers, draw some corresponding lines on grid paper, and you’ll end up with some interesting, looping math-y art!
Anyone, yes anyone, can create a (somewhat) realistic self-portrait using these steps. Anyone!
Let’s try a cipher that doesn’t substitute new letters or shapes. We just mix things up.
Why does this dinosaur keep looking at me…
Now let’s try the Path Cipher – a cipher that mixes things up even more than Zig Zag did.
Who will win the tournament of Van Gogh self-portraits!?
Tired of boring ol’ chess? Then you need to try FOUR PLAYER chess!
Put these countries into groups. Then do it again. Then… do it one more time. How does re-re-grouping the same places reveal new patterns and give new insights?
What if each square on a Tic-Tac-Toe board had another Tic-Tac-Toe board inside of it?
This optical illusion looks like a 3D staircase, but it’s all drawn on a plain piece of paper.
Can your students come up with a one-syllable word to sum up their time away from school? And then rewrite The Beatles’ song Help!?
Teach your students about basic cryptography and code making.
One artist, two paintings. Notice details, compare, synthesize, then find a parallel in another creator’s work.
Chomp away at your opponent in this grid-based strategy game.
Create mathematical art with curves that, well, aren’t curvy.
An animated summary of Shakespeare’s utterly ridiculous “Twelfth Night.”
Ghost is a word-building game for two players. The first person to create an actual word loses.
What’s going on in this room? There are shoes everywhere! Are those… oranges? Let’s make some inferences!
Nothing could possibly go wrong with a love potion on the loose!
Romeo and Juliet in just about five minutes.
Shaolin kung fu students as seen from a satellite.
Sure, anyone can win at checkers… but can you lose!?
Let’s get students’ art really popping with two-point perspective!
Start with facts about Christmas trees. Group them. Label them. Can you boil it all down to one big idea?
Let’s encode some secret messages with a cipher that was actually used during the American Civil War!
Ready to learn a 2,500-year-old Chinese board game? Let’s… Go!
How quickly can you break the numeric code?
