Exploring Your Creative Genius: Episode 140
In this episode of the show I talked with you about the importance of our hands in our creative lives; it’s significant. The more we use our hands—gesturing or holding something—the more effective we are at tapping into our creative minds.
I mentioned that children are too often interacting with the world on a computer, and that the touch of a key or the swipe of a screen provides none of the benefit using a pen or pencil delivers. So I introduced the Torrance Drawing tests as a fun way for kids to pick up a pencil or crayon and enjoy the creative cognitive development benefits.
The Torrance Test has been around since the 1960’s. It includes a number of creativity exercises besides the drawing component and is considered the leading test measuring the Creative IQ of children. While IQ scores have consistently increased over the past decades the Torrance Test, with a cohort of over 250,000 participants since it began, shows a decrease in children’s Creative IQ.
This decrease began before digital devices dominated our lives, and our children’s lives. The change that occurred in our culture that preceded the decline was the significant reduction in children’s open-ended play and the marked increase in filling up children’s lives with after school lessons, classes and programs.
The drawing portion of the Torrance Test is a whole lot of creative fun; I offer the test to my workshops with adults and they bring creative delight to the exercise. I enthusiastically recommend you use this link to visit the site where you will find lots of examples of the test and introduce them to your children, regardless of their ages. The stimulation of their visual imaginations, and the activity of holding a pencil or crayon to make a mark on the paper, to complete the drawing, benefits them tremendously.
You will find 9 samples drawings here, plus information about the other parts of the Test.
Join them?
“Exploring Your Creative Genius” takes an expansive view on what it means to be creative and entrepreneurial in an ongoing conversation led by Carl Nordgren — entrepreneur, novelist, and lifelong student with decades of experience growing his own creative capacity and assisting others to do the same in exciting new ways!
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