Partner drawing and other fun creativity activities

So as I'm getting further into this whole blogging experience, I'm realizing I need a" test kitchen!"    After sharing yesterday's resources I actually did one of the activities with my kids and it got me thinking about so much more to share...including our own drawings!

Last night we got stir crazy around dinner, so I pulled out a white paper and did Jon Juravich's partner drawing activity with both of my kids, separately.  I used a purple pen and drew three random free form/organic shapes on the paper, not touching.  Then I passed that paper to Eli and asked him to make each shape into something, with a blue pen. He created a person with a zipped coat, a house, and a lizard-like animal.  Then I put in a background to tie them all together with snow, a pond and some grass.  Before I knew it, he was making his lizard into a fire breathing dragon and off he went adding details...

The more Eli added to his drawing, the more he started creating a story around it.  This morning I pulled out his graphic organizers from school (which we haven't touched all week!) and he is making his drawing into the subject of his fiction piece for his school work!!  I tell my students all the time that many of their projects are inspirations for writing -- a "how to" paragraph, a descriptive paragraph, a story.  We're going to see how that plays out for Eli this week!!

Aidan got a similar paper from me, but he filled in all the empty space on his own, so I tried a different partner drawing game with him afterward.  I gave him a paper with a line down the middle and he had to draw HALF a picture.  I then tried to copy it on the left side.  This is a little harder, but we did it with second grade a few weeks ago and they LOVED it.  You could even make it a creativity activity if each partner was only allowed to add one detail at a time on their side.  Then the final drawing would be a true collaboration between both artists, with the subject matter changing little by little as each detail is added and mirrored!

But going back to the first activity, adding details to unfinished lines or shapes is a HUGE creativity booster -- the "incomplete figure" is a staple of actual scientific creative testing like the Torrence Test for Creativity.  Pinterest can help you find sheets such as the one pictured below (source linked to the sheet), or you could easily create your own:
Via Paging Supermom - site linked to image


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