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

"A study examined grade 2 students' performance in creating inventions associated with animal adaptations for simple products under two conditions that alternated each week for a six-week period. In an analogy condition, the participants used form and function analogy object boxes to learn about animal adaptations, applying these concepts with the SCAMPER technique to create a new product with a given item, while in the traditional condition, they learned about animal adaptations through text or Internet searches and staged a puppet play to organize, strengthen, and share these ideas. Findings revealed that the experimental condition yielded higher weekly inventiveness content scores and creativity scores than the traditional condition with large effect sizes" (Abstract).