Teaching littlies lateral thinking

A zany character called a Zinger Pinger is available to teach children how to think laterally, and can assist teachers to challenge even the brightest children in a class.

Rebecca Merle, director of Bubble Dome, has launched a range of writing and thinking Cards featuring the Zinger Pinger, a clever bird-like creature with unusual characteristics, to help teachers unlock children's creative potential by stimulating literacy and thinking skills.

Rebecca originally created the Zinger Pinger for her educational web-based fantasy website, Bubble Dome, and is now providing more teachers with access to the unique Bubble Dome world.

"Children are inspired to think laterally when they come across quirky characters, it provides a trigger to explore their imagination and view the world from a different perspective,'' says Rebecca.

The cards are for children aged between eight and 12 and include wacky tasks such as writing a news report about a tragedy on an ice-cream volcano, or writing a recipe for `Flying Feetballs'. Rebecca says the cards are a useful tool for directing the writing process and covering genres such as narrative, recount, debate, discussion and poetry.

Bubble Dome have produced the cards in collaboration with Dr Edward de Bono, who is regarded as the leading international authority on conceptual and creative thinking and is the originator of the term `lateral thinking', which is now entered in the Oxford Dictionary.

"Bubble Dome have developed a set of unique thinking tools that encourage children to have fun while thinking creatively and challenging their perceptions of the world,'' Dr de Bono says.

Rebecca, who is a trained primary school teacher and graphic designer, says she came up with the idea of the cards when she realised how many students were using the Bubble Dome website as a creative writing tool. The Bubble Dome website was set up in 2000 and now has over 10,000 club members and 500 school members, with 1000 children taking part in the monthly competitions.

The cards are being sold to schools throughout New Zealand, and Bubble Dome has begun exporting them into Australia with plans to sell into America and the UK later in the year.

These school holidays, Rebecca is running courses for children in Auckland where the Zinger Pinger comes alive and challenges children to ``give their brain an extreme workout''. Animations and unusual objects from the Zinger Pinger's world are used to stimulate children's thinking. Children will also experience creating 3D computer models and animations while learning how the special effects in movies are made. There are children travelling from all over the country for this course which provides a rare opportunity to develop thinking skills in very unusual ways while carrying out a range of invention and design activities.

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