Serving advanced learners (and their teachers) since 2012.
Printable List
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?
Create and print mazes for your students – with bonus side quests!
Pick a few numbers, draw some corresponding lines on grid paper, and you’ll end up with some interesting, looping math-y art!
Here’s how you can draw The Penrose Triangle, an example of an impossible shape.
Vulcan Point Island is an island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island
So, what CAN a CAN be used for other than storing liquids?
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.”
Let’s make valentines with an educational twist!
Let’s encode and decode secret messages like Julius Caesar!
It’s a car made out of Lego with a working engine.
Imagine Tic-Tac-Toe, but both players can both play as both X and O throughout the whole game!
Everyone starts with the same squiggle. No two drawings end up the same. What do you see?
Chomp away at your opponent in this grid-based strategy game.
One artist, two paintings. Notice details, compare, synthesize, then find a parallel in another creator’s work.
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!?
Turn your students into a bunch of Monets with q-tips and some tempera paint.
What if each square on a Tic-Tac-Toe board had another Tic-Tac-Toe board inside of it?
Worksheets for Earth Day! Featuring reading, writing, and math… with a pinch of Depth and Complexity.
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?
Tired of boring ol’ chess? Then you need to try FOUR PLAYER chess!
Create a piece of repeating art in the style of MC Escher!
What if a students’ self-portrait was made of words that describe the student!?
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!?
Let’s try a cipher that doesn’t substitute new letters or shapes. We just mix things up.
Watch this block of Lego cast three completely different shadows of three distinctly different objects! How’d he do it?
What would the consequences be if no one had to sleep anymore?
We’ll take two seemingly unrelated pieces of content (say volcanoes and the human body) and then build analogies to connect the two ideas. In the end, students can create a skit, comic, or story relating the two concepts.
How quickly can you break the numeric code?
Ready to learn a 2,500-year-old Chinese board game? Let’s… Go!
Let’s encode some secret messages with a cipher that was actually used during the American Civil War!
Let’s give our students an art history lesson while teaching them how to enhance their drawings using one-point perspective.
Sure, anyone can win at checkers… but can you lose!?
Start with facts about Christmas trees. Group them. Label them. Can you boil it all down to one big idea?
Let’s get students’ art really popping with two-point perspective!
Romeo and Juliet in just about five minutes.
Nothing could possibly go wrong with a love potion on the loose!
What’s going on in this room? There are shoes everywhere! Are those… oranges? Let’s make some inferences!
