Mind Mapping and Creativity in Young Minds
About the writer:
Md. Nasir Khan is a Tony Buzan certified Mind Map Trainer
who is also working as an Academic Director in Manipur Creative School. He is
also an expert in Memory Skills and Creative Teaching & Learning Methodologies.
He is a patron member of Global Mental Literacy and a member of World Brain
Academy.
Let
us think of our Kindergarten days where our teacher taught ‘A’ stands for
apple. This limits our thinking capabilities to just apple and can’t think
beyond. In the case of Mind Mapping we encourages children to think of all the
associative words that begins with ‘A’ and we get so many of them. The child
did wonders in the classroom. Ant, Ape, Axe, Arm, Ark, Acid, Apple, Add…etc.
are all the associative words that begin with the letter ‘A’. With pictures and
with imaginations the children are encouraged to build up an independent,
limitless thinking where they learn to learn the picturisation of their
thoughts in their Mental Picture.
A thought is real,
virtual, and creative, pointed and has no directions. This way Mind Maps help
children to think out of the box. “Everyone is a potential Leonardo da Vinci
before a limit is placed on his/ her thinking abilities.”
Our thoughts are
developed naturally all the time. It is in everyone’s head, yet it is tricky to
capture. Just like jellyfish swim without any knowledge of how they swim, many
of us think without any deeper insight into how we think. Mind Mapping is a
tool that can be used by young people, even pre-school children,
to visually explore and develop their own thinking. It is also a Universal key
to unlock the Creative potential of the brain.
We
learn through five senses: Eyes, Ears, Skin, Nose and Tongue i.e. by observing,
listening, feeling, smelling and tasting and these helps children make
decisions as well. These aspects of learning can be easily visualised in Mind
Mapping. The branches of a Mind Map can be used to delve into a situation and
examine the different aspects of it.
We learn things by
asking questions, with curious thoughts and Mind Maps can be used to explore
imaginative, innovative, and even serious questions. I suggest playing the game
“would you dare?” with your children, as it is a way to explore the assumptions
that are made when asked questions such as “would you dare to travel to the
moon?” The way the question is posed suggests that this is going to be
something scary or problematic, and that a young person has to be brave in
order to embark on the task. A Mind Map can help children analyse the question,
and reach a decision.
A Mind Map can help a
child explore his feelings about ideas and views. We often ignore this aspect.
A young Mind’s thinking should be supported by awareness of emotions and
feelings. Such feelings from young Minds can be explored in Mind Maps to help
them identify their feelings and understand their decisions.
Delving assumptions/possibilities
is the beginning of a creative approach to thinking. Children should be
encouraged to use creative thinking tools, such as Mind Maps, to combine images
and keywords to aid recall. A random pictures or words helps in breaking patterns
and start thinking creatively as well as logically, this way a thought wave is
generated and starts thinking beyond. This, we call it ‘Thinking Out of the
Box’. These random pictures or words don’t always gives solution yet it helps
the young minds to be more investigative and helps them to be more creative.
Creative thinking has several different
stages, and getting the ideas is only the start. Ideas and solutions need to be
twisted and turned around. Few, if any, ideas are born perfect. The trick to
creative thinking is to select from the rich waves of thoughts swirling around
in our minds, and note them down for further exploration. A Mind Map can give
ideas a structure, and can be used as a starting point for discussing them.
I’m eager to tell a story of
Kindergarten students. The entrance of the room shows “Think and Learn” and
this makes me more curious to enter the room. Storytelling happens to be a subject in their
class. They were all excited and the class is filled with joy and happiness.
‘Today we all shall tell stories on Barbie’. Yes,….yes…. yyyessss….. was the
noise and I’m overexcited. The whiteboard was shown the Central Idea and Keywords
as ‘Barbie:
- Dance- Annual Day – Award – Exam – Picnic – Quiz’ followed by a Mind Map as shown below.
The rule of the storytelling was: Tell your own story based on these given key
words on Barbie. The response: I got 30 different stories from 30 different students.
This way Mind Maps easily helps a child to Imagine ideas further from a
starting point and makes the Connections and Associations.
Mind Mapping is a tool
that can be used to explore everything from crazy and impossible ideas to big
questions about “real” situations and problems. The keywords and pictures in a
Mind Map make it easy to combine different concepts and create new ideas. This
enriches young people’s understanding of not only the world, but also their own
capacity for creativity and capturing their insights and thoughts.
The
writer can be reached at:
4.
@smart_nasirkhan (Twitter)
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@nasirkhanlive (FB Page)
7.
Think Nasir (You Tube)
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@smart_nasirkhan (Instagram)
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+91-9612016722
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