Trick-or-Treat Candy-Getters and Hornet Scare Devices: Second Graders Make Creative Inventions Related to Animal Adaptations.

This repeated measures study examined second graders’ (n = 21) performance in creating inventions related to animal adaptations for simple products under two conditions that alternated each week for a six-week period. In the analogy condition, students used form and function analogy object boxes to learn about animal adaptations, applying these concepts with the SCAMPER technique to generate a new product with a given item. In the traditional condition, students learned about animal adaptations through text/Internet searches and created a puppet play to organize, reinforce, and share these ideas. Students discussed ideas, and then brainstormed product inventions for given items. In both conditions, students drew advertisements for their inventions that were scored for inventiveness content and creativity. Weekly inventiveness content scores and creativity scores were higher for the experimental condition than for the traditional condition with large effect sizes.