The book Basic Creativity is a book with creativity exercises for children between seven and twelve. Although the book focuses on the primary school it is possible to use it in other environments like scouting or at home. The essence of the book is explained by the mind map below.
Children on the primary school learn and during that process they can use creative methods for thinking. Important basic skills are the creation of idea boxes, mind mapping and brain storming. Besides these three the book describes other techniques and excersises, The fact that creativity is fun makes it it very well suited to be learned by children at a young age.
During the writing of this book I changed the text, structure and excercises several times to make it a whole with which children can learn the basis of a number of creative think methods. This doesn't mean that the book cannot be improved. On contrary, I like to hear all your critics, additions, variations on excercises to augment the book. Please send them to the author by email to feedback@basiscreativiteit.nl of by regular post to:
Basic Creativity
Please state clearly which part of the book is affected by your remark so I can process them faster. Every e-mail will be read and if time permits I will reply even if it can take a while. Other ideas and remarks regarding creativity in the education market are welcome too. If you send remarks by regular post and you want an answer, please include an email address as it would be too costly to reply by regular mail, However it could happen.
Thanks in advance,
The book Basic Creativity is not available in English at the moment. Due to
personal circumstances it is delayed quite a lot. It will be avalable somewhere
in 2008.
Almost half the book has been translated to English but a lot of work has still to
be done. As soon it is available we will let you know.
For now only the Dutch version is available.
Dutch paperback version:
ISBN: 978-1-4116-9849-9
Price: 22 Euro*
Dutch hardcover version:
ISBN: 978-1-4116-9673-0
Price: 40 Euro*
Prices depend on dollar exchange rate, and exclude shipping costs.
Place your order for the Dutch paperback
or the Dutch hardcover
version directly at lulu.com.
As soon as the book is available in English, it will also be available as a shareware PDF. You can download it so you can print and read it before you buy it. This way it is easy to make a version to use in a binder. Then you can easily add your own notes between the pages.
If you decide to use the shareware PDF version of the book, please donate 15 Euro per copy to bankaccount 1198.40.707 name: Rob van den Tillaart, Gemert, the Netherlands. Please mention the word Basic Creativity and your name or the name of your school and the number of copies.
If you decide not to use the downloaded PDF version of the book please remove it from your computer. That is the philosophy of a shareware book, you can try it and if you like it you buy it.
Because I do not earn a living with writing books I use a part of the money to pay for expenses, e.g. the website, used materials and printing costs for the book. The rest of the money I will use for charity. This way not only our children will profit from the book but also children who have substantially less. I will publish more about this on the website.
See dutch blogpages for an overview of gifts.
A number of forms to use in the class. (not available yet)
If you cannot read PDF files on your computer you can download the Adobe PDF Reader (~30 MB) here.
My name is Rob van den Tillaart from Gemert, the Netherlands, maried and father of two children age eight and eleven.
During my work at the R&D department of Oce Technologies in Venlo I am always busy with some form of creativity in project context. We have to solve on a daily base bigger and smaller problems and make bigger and smaller discoveries. Creative think methods help us to solve these problems more efficient and effective. Most inventions are not super exciting but sometimes there is an golden egg that solves a problem perfectly. Than you are talking innovation.
The writing of this book is for me a way to do something different with my know how about creative processes. The goal of the book is to improve the innovation climate of primary schools.
If I can find the time to write more I have a number of plans for
other books. One idea is to create a workbook for children that
can be used together with the book Basic Creativity.
Another book I started is a book Basic Creativity for secondary
school, think of ages 12 till 18.
For a part this book will be similar to Basic Creativity but there
will be other and more difficult excercises, and group excercises
to be done as a project.
Besides working on the book Basic Creativity I have some few other things published. These should be put here but as you know websites are never up to date ...
Best regards,
Rob van den Tillaart