Susan Marcus, Susie Monday, and Cynthia Herbert, PhD are the founders of the "New World Kids Program" as well as the Foundry in Austin, TX. They are not strangers to the world of children and their development, as their well-written book proves. They are big advocates for developing creative thinking in kids and the roles their parents play, hence The Missing Alphabet.
Have you ever heard that children are either gifted in creativity or they are not? Are they just born with those creative juices flowing, while other kids just don't have what it takes to think creatively? According to Marcus, Monday, and Herbert, all children have the potential for great creativity - plain and simple. In The Missing Alphabet, they expound upon the discovery that each child has a rich potential for creative thinking.
Since children are born with such a large capacity for creativity, it is important that parents build upon that first block of potential by supplying the Sensory Alphabet - the building blocks for creative thinking. Sadly, those building blocks are mostly missing from the schools today.
The Missing Alphabet is very easy to read and interesting to boot. Lots of family fun ideas and activities are suggested, such as visiting the zoo and taking pictures, studying the ways the zoom can suggest movement. Perhaps the family would want to take videos of the animals and then edit them later. Discuss the movements of the animals. Would you have thought that something so simple and fun would build creativity in your child?
I just took things like that for granted. As long-time homeschoolers, our family has done many of the activities and learning ideas contained within this book, but we had no idea we were building such wonderful structures within our children. We just knew we were having fun and the kids were learning lots. As each of them grew into his or her own creative interests, we thought maybe we simply had "gifted" children. HA!
I thoroughly enjoyed flipping through The Missing Alphabet and reading it in depth. I have two children remaining in our homeschool and I'm thrilled to see suggestions that I hadn't thought of yet for building those blocks of creativity .
**I received a copy of The Missing Alphabet: A Parents' Guide to Developing Creative Thinking in Kids in exchange for my honest opinion.**
1 comment:
Thanks for reviewing our book. We are hoping to reach many parents and educators through the thoughtful work of bloggers like you!
We now have a great website with blogs that add lots more to the book's ideas, and, of course, those are free! See us at http://www.themissingalphabet.com
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