Going for a walk, I’m going to need a hat…

Getting back to my idea to come up with activities that would inspire creativity in my daughter whilst covering the visual, auditory and kinesthetic learning styles I decided to enlist the help of some of Dr. Edward De Bono’s ‘Six Thinking Hats’ which I have never previously used. I felt that thinking laterally about some of the activities I already do with my daughter may help me to look for opportunity to enhance her experiences.

The Six Thinking Hats (or modes)

The White Hat

The White Hat calls for information known or needed.

The Red Hat

The Red Hat signifies feelings, hunches and intuition.

The Black Hat

The Black Hat is judgement -- the devil's advocate or why something may not work.

The Yellow Hat

The Yellow Hat symbolises brightness and optimism.

The Green Hat

The Green Hat focuses on creativity: the possibilities, alternatives and new ideas.

The Blue Hat

The Blue Hat is used to manage the thinking process.

(De Bono Thinking Systems, 2008)

New to the area of the Blue Mountains I take my daughter for a walk in the pram daily. Generally it is a simple walk down to the café and park for a caffeine hit and a play. Sometimes I take alternative routes to explore the area. Whilst I know she enjoys looking out at everything, I really think about the walks as a way to get her to sleep, and for me to get a bit of exercise in.

I had already had the hunch (that occurred to me whilst swimming my laps) that I could spice up these daily walks.

Putting my black hat on, part of me thought that there was no issue about these walks, that they satisfied my need for exercise and her need for quiet time.

Enhancing these walks was something I could implement straight away, and an easy, pleasurable way to approach learning concepts with my daughter.

With a green hat firmly on my head I started to think…

“What about if each day I take one element to point out to her on our walk…i.e.

• Mondays- point out the different colours everywhere
  
• Tuesdays- count an object e.g. cars
• Wednesdays- point out different shapes
• Thursdays- listen out for different sounds
  
• Fridays- choose a letter of the alphabet and point out everything we pass that starts with that letter

I could take different routes each time to continue to expose her to new things. As she grows maybe she could start to be the one to point out our target elements.

This activity would build on some of the things we are already learning from her books, but would give her a kinesthetic experience, so she could interact with the objects whilst also getting visual and auditory inputs.

By going through the hats in a systematic way, blue hat thinking had been engaged along the whole process.