The storytelling in the show offers examples of thought-provoking ideas.Unlocking the Genius Within
When I create a new show, I’m always trying to put the right amount of each “ingredient” into the smoothie, and when doing so, my team and I research the script drafts in real preschool classrooms. Some say that research is one of the key ingredients to creating shows that are so loved by preschoolers. At the beginning, before I had a team, I’d personally come into the classroom, sit down on the floor with the group of preschoolers, and launch a conversation to get to know them. A conversation, incidentally, that would invariably end up focusing on snacks—either they’d just had a snack, or they were going to have a snack, or there was some conversation on what the snack was going to be tomorrow. We would talk for almost ten minutes about snacks—sliced grapes and cheese was always a favorite, with graham crackers and milk a close second. Carrots and hummus was much debated.
When I went to research our first ever episode of Blue’s Clues, I brought in the games to test. I showed them a “picture book” that Traci Paige Johnson, co-creator, had illustrated based on the games I had written. Traci had even made cutouts of the characters and manipulatives so we could move them around and play the games like we would on TV. So, for example, our “chick” in the “chick” game could be moved around and “talk” directly to the preschoolers we were playing with, giving them instant access to join the story and play. The kids loved it. And teachers in those classrooms would often ask us to leave Traci’s cutouts behind so they could use them in their lessons.
The research went well enough that we knew we’d figured out the games for our premier episode, but we still didn’t have a handle on the overall theme of the story that would have preschoolers emotionally invested, interested, and engaged for twenty-two minutes. I wanted them to be learning how to think, not what to think, so the overall story and “uber” clue game was critical to our success. We were stumped.
On our way back to the office, Traci and I talked about what we wanted for a snack. Apparently, all this talk of snacks had made us hungry. And then it hit me. SNACKS! The theme of our first episode . . . the overall narrative arc . . . should be about snacks.
And that’s why the first episode of Blue’s Clues was based on the question, “What does Blue want for snack?” Now, you may not think this is a big question or something our preschoolers even need to learn about. And you’d be right. Because what Blue wants to have for a snack isn’t actually what’s important here. What is important is how we solve that problem, and we do that through what are called higher-order thinking skills, a type of learning that includes critical, logical, reflective, metacognitive, and creative thinking. It requires heightened brain functioning and cognitive processing. In creating a story and games where preschoolers are challenged to figure out what Blue wants for her snack, we could specifically focus on teaching those higher-order thinking skills through accessing their motivation, interests, and emotions and using the storyline to build in conflict, empowerment, and play in a powerful way.
So why are higher-order thinking skills so important to nurture in preschoolers? Because they’re the skills used to understand information, make decisions based on that information, and create new ideas that are founded in the knowledge. Luckily, preschoolers come prepackaged with fledgling thinking skills, and as natural players and explorers, they use these skills any time they try to make sense of new experiences, take things apart, build with blocks, create crafts, solve problems, make decisions, and ask questions.
For example, in preschool when we ask students to share or repeat facts and figures they may know, we’re building their skills related to the first level of thinking: remembering and recalling information. When we want preschoolers to apply those concepts, we are moving up the ladder of thinking skills to a higher level: absorbing the information and fully understanding it. Even higher still, we want our preschoolers to understand and think about new ideas and create new solutions and new ways to think about solving problems. At this highest level, we want them to use the new information. Scaffolding higher and higher levels of thinking is at the foundation of teaching our preschoolers how to be higher-order thinkers.
Michael Michalko, a creativity expert and author of Thinkertoys, recognized that it was not “smarts” or a high IQ that separates geniuses from others—it’s their ability to think out of the box.1 Theorists studied notebooks, conversations, and ideas in the arts, science, and industry, and found that it was looking at problems in creative ways that made the difference. More specifically, it was making thoughts visible, creating ideas out of interesting relationships, and putting different things together. Sounds a lot like what a preschooler does naturally in play, doesn’t it? When we let our preschoolers play, we’re not only fostering their higher-order thinking skills as they create, ask questions, and exhibit their relentless curiosity—we’re unlocking the genius within.
Higher-order thinkers see possibilities as opposed to obstacles. They develop unique ideas to solve problems, they brainstorm, they work cooperatively, they research, and they see more than one way to achieve a goal. On top of that, higher-order thinkers are more positive in general because they see multiple ways to look at the world and get out of a situation when stuck. Ultimately, higher-order thinkers are smarter, happier, and do better in life in the long run. Plainly put, higher-order thinkers are our future.
Higher-order thinking skills, such as critical thinking skills, are at the forefront of education because, in this age of technology and innovation, we need them now more than ever. Yet unfortunately, the way much of today’s high school and college curricula are structured is resulting in many graduates entering the workforce with a deficit of skills such as grit, curiosity, attention to detail, and those very same critical thinking skills. While we don’t know if the facts and information we’re teaching our preschoolers will be relevant in the future, we do know that understanding how to gather information and apply it, will be. If parents and educators could do just one thing to set preschoolers up for success, it would be teach them how to think.
Though many of today’s students aren’t necessarily developing these higher-order thinking skills as a result of a school culture focused on testing and drill and skill, this isn’t a new concept. In fact, in 1956 educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom and his colleagues published a framework for categorizing educational goals for success. Dubbed Bloom’s Taxonomy, it outlines the levels of learning from lowest order to higher order. They are, in hierarchal order: Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, and Create. The chart below shows how to offer preschoolers ways to play and practice these important skills.
1st Level: Remember→ |
Preschoolers can repeat facts from memory (memorizing a few Spanish words, counting from 1 to 10, labeling colors, shapes). |
2nd Level: Understand→ |
Preschoolers can explain what they know in detail (after watching a show or reading a book, they can tell you what happened in the story). |
3rd Level: Apply→ |
Preschoolers start to master ideas and use them in their lives (notice shapes, numbers, letters all around them). |
4th Level: (Higher-Order) Analyze or Analytical Thinking→ |
Preschoolers think about information in a new way (seeing a picture of a dog, noticing it’s the same type of dog that they have, understanding other people have similar dogs). |
5th Level: (Higher-Order) Evaluate or Critical Thinking→ |
Preschoolers start to be critical thinkers by looking at information and solving problems (making associations between distinct pieces of information to come to a conclusion, deductive reasoning, express opinion, defend, criticize). |
6th Level: (Higher-Order) Create or Creative Thinking→ |
Preschoolers create something new based on what they know (creating a new story, a new way to play, using art to work through a problem). |
While teaching preschoolers how to think isn’t measurable in the way school smarts might be, it’s important to recognize that what kids are tested on—remembering and recalling information—is at the lowest order of skills. But when we focus on helping our children learn how to think, we’re giving them a head start on learning how to form a creative, analytical opinion, and therefore understand the information on a deeper level. Simply put: lecturing and “telling kids what they need to do” is out, and active learning is in.
When Science magazine published an article entitled “Lectures Are Not Just Boring, They’re Ineffective, Too,” the headline couldn’t have been more spot on. The piece references a study of undergraduates that found students in traditional lecture classes were one and a half times more likely to fail than students in classes “that use more stimulating, so-called active methods.” What’s devastating is that in recent years, most preschools and kindergarten classrooms across America have taken a step backward due to the Common Core state standards, to a point where much of the day’s school work focuses on sitting and being taught in a straightforward lecture style.2 The best preschool classrooms have a focus on active learning by using play as the center of their approach, and we as parents can re-create the same fun, conducive-to-learning environment at home by simply asking questions of our preschoolers, giving them hands-on “interactive” activities to further learning, guiding them, and PAUSING to hear what they are thinking.
BLUE’S CLUES 101: A CASE STUDY OF LEARNING HOW TO THINK
As a pre-verbal preschooler, our lovable animated character Blue represents just how smart preschoolers are even before they can talk. Because what we know is that preschoolers have a lot to say and they often know so much more than they can verbalize. Since our preschoolers at home are bonded with Blue, they want to nurture her, care for her, and, as is in alignment with a preschooler’s nature, help her.
Now we add some simple conflict. It may not seem like a true conflict, or a conflict with big stakes, but when Steve, our playful adult, doesn’t know what Blue wants, it’s frustrating and upsetting. Think about it. What happens any time an adult doesn’t know what a preschooler wants? Conflict. Meltdown. All hell breaks loose. So, when Steve doesn’t know what Blue, our animated puppy of a preschooler, wants, we have a problem.
Add a bit of empowerment. Now, Steve, the adult, looks to the preschoolers at home and asks for their help. An adult asking a preschooler for help is a pretty big deal. Suddenly preschoolers stand up taller and are full of pride, taking what is being asked of them quite seriously.
And how do they help? In the best way they know how—through play. Our preschool viewers are asked to play a game—Blue’s Clues—to figure out what Blue wants. And that is something our audience can totally do. After all, they are experts at play.
So, triggered by a question like “What does Blue want for snack?,” motivated by a love of snacks and their innate desire to help, emotionally invested due to their love of Blue the puppy, empowered by being needed by an adult character, and armed with the power of play to solve the problem, we have set the stage for our preschool audience. We are now ready to showcase, model, and practice critical thinking skills, a.k.a. the process of learning how to think, not what to think, through the game of Blue’s Clues. Which is really the whole point of the episode. (And you thought the question about what Blue wanted for a snack was simple!)
So how does solving the problem the Blue’s Clues way teach critical thinking skills? First, Blue stamps “paw prints” on objects that will allow Steve and the home viewer to think through what she wants. But since we’re looking to practice critical thinking, Blue doesn’t just paw print the answer to the question of what she wants for a snack. Instead, over the course of an episode, she paw prints three “clues” in a very specific order, one that’s been thoughtfully mapped out by our formative research team led by Dr. Alice Wilder, so the viewers can spend twenty-two minutes figuring out the answer for themselves.
The first clue Blue marks is open-ended, allowing for the widest possible range of answers for them to consider. For example, Blue’s first clue is a cow, and Steve asks the viewers, “What does Blue want for a snack?” while drawing a cow in his Handy Dandy Notebook. Steve models thinking, in a preschool-relatable way, about how this clue relates to the question, “Does Blue want a cow for snack?” He quickly rejects this idea and we move on.
Later in the episode, Blue marks her next clue—a straw. Steve thinks through this, modeling how these two clues could relate to each other. “A cow and a straw? What could Blue want with a cow and a straw?” Tricky.
Our third clue is the clincher: a cup. And now that we have all three clues, Steve is ready to sit in the Thinking Chair, a prop that helped to support the idea of critical thinking concretely and visually. Sitting in the red chair, Steve looks at the three visual clues and, with the magic of animation, we can see the drawings on display over his head as he begins putting the three clues together to answer Blue’s dilemma.
So, what does Blue want for snack with a cow, a straw, and a cup? As he models solving the problem, Steve plays with the clues in different ways until they make sense. By animating the clues above his head, we visually show his thinking process, while Steve uses “thinking” dialogue. The successful thought process that finally results in the answer to Blue’s Clues is: “A cow makes the sound moo, a cow makes milk, and milk could be poured in a cup with a straw! Milk! Blue wants milk with her snack of graham crackers!”
So, now you know every last detail of how we use the game of Blue’s Clues to model and foster critical thinking skills, because our clue game is the epitome of what learning how to think looks like. The preschoolers, at home, are asked to interactively solve a problem, step by step. At a higher-order level of thinking, preschoolers need to remember the question, then relate that question to what all three clues have in common, and then apply it to Blue’s question of the day. And of course, because they’re preschoolers, when we’ve successfully figured out Blue’s Clues, we sing!
Just as is true with active listening or interactive media, active learning is a two-way street. In fact, and this probably goes without saying, preschoolers themselves are the key ingredient in the learning. What we as parents and caregivers want to do is work directly with our child, incorporating their ideas and interests while considering what they’re capable of developmentally, to “teach” them in a way that is custom-made just for them. And then we can tweak the environment to make it as conducive to active learning as possible.
While there are undoubtedly so many things you’re already inherently doing at home to promote your preschooler’s development of higher-order thinking skills (and in many cases, you may not even realize that’s what you’re doing), here are a few ideas for taking your efforts to the next level:
Since we know that play is the work of the child and it’s something our preschoolers are actively engaged in throughout much of their day, the opportunities to tap into this play to promote active learning are truly endless.
Type of Play |
How to Do It |
Activity Idea |
Provide building materials (blocks, Legos, cups, props) so your preschooler can explore and experience at his own level. |
Build a “set” from building materials for special friends such as dolls, stuffed animals, or Lego figures to have adventures in. |
|
Dress Up! |
Offer pretend play material and the chance to try out different identities (dress-up clothes, simple props to play restaurant, school, architect, etc.) to help spark them. |
Join in with the dress-up and suggest a silly or dramatic scene for you and your child to act out. Could be a scene from a book, a favorite movie or one that you make up! Put on a performance for the rest of the family! |
Create! |
Set out art materials (clay, paint, glue, paper, crayons), and/or nature materials (rocks, leaves, pinecones, craft items) to spur interesting inventions, collaborations, and new ideas. |
Encourage kids to explore, and collect interesting objects in nature or set out objects that are different and interesting (old socks and buttons) and encourage preschoolers to play with them together. What kind of story can they create with the socks and buttons? What kind of action figure can they make from clay? |
Go on Journeys! |
Take your preschooler on a ton of various outings, from the usual grocery store runs and the fascinating hands-on children’s museum to a road trip or an outing to a nearby aquarium. |
Designate a low-key, close to home weekly “field trip” for you and your child to have an adventure together, explore something new, or just experience a regular routine in a new way (i.e., instead of the grocery store, head to the local farmers’ market). |
Read! |
Have different and interesting books with rich photographs accessible for your child to flip through and be read to from. |
The next time you go the library to stock up on books, select at least one book that’s just about exposing your child to new, interesting concepts (nature, the ocean, art, birds, space exploration, and so on). |
Answering preschoolers’ questions is one of the best ways to promote higher-order learning skills. Of course, it’s how you answer the questions that makes all the difference. For example, say your child is nervous and scared about starting a new preschool. Rather than downplaying her emotions or trying to talk up what you know is going to be great about the school, you could use it as an opportunity to support her development of critical thinking skills and higher-order learning by:
• Providing an encouraging (not dismissive) response: “I’m sorry you’re feeling scared. Why do you think that is?”
• Encouraging brainstorming, open to any and all ideas (not judgmental): “Maybe it’s because you’ve never been to preschool before? I wonder if it’s because it’s something new.”
• Encouraging diving deeper into the questions: “What do you think preschool will be like? Do you want to draw a picture? Would you like to talk to your sister about what preschool was like for her?”
• Evaluating the deeper look of ideas and answers: “Okay, tomorrow, let’s dig deeper and figure out the answer to this. Maybe we can go visit the preschool and meet your teacher? Then we can talk more about how you feel.”
How you ask questions of your preschooler is just as important as how you answer them, and it can also affect the level of thinking they need to do in order to give you an answer. Generally speaking, probing and asking deeper, more thoughtful questions will always promote higher-order thinking. An easy way to do this, and in situations you surely find yourself in every day, is to get curious with your preschooler when doing things such as reading a story, watching a show, baking, doing a craft, or even just looking at photographs or out the bedroom window. For instance, say you’re watching the world go by on the street outside your house:
• Ask a labeling question: “What do you see?” A yellow car!
• Ask a comprehension question: “How are these two different?” One’s yellow and one’s blue!
• Ask a contextual question: “Have you ever been in a yellow car?”
• Ask a probing question: “How do you think a yellow car is different from the other cars?”
• Ask an opinion question: “What kind of car do you like best? Why?”
• Ask an out-of-the-box question: “If you could make any kind of fantastical car, what would it look like? Can you draw it?”
Before you know it, in the span of just a few minutes of loving bonding time while taking in the view from a bedroom window, you’ve nurtured your child’s fledgling skills surrounding remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. How awesome is that?
In addition to asking and answering questions of your preschoolers, I encourage you to simply commit to regularly starting up new conversations with your preschooler, about any topic, and be sure to leave time for Pauses as they reflect on their thoughts and feelings. Conversations about what they’re learning at school, what they’re interested in, and what could be upsetting them are the perfect entree for encouraging higher-order thinking.
Of course, today’s preschools don’t have a debate team, but that doesn’t mean we can’t help our little ones learn debate skills as a way to encourage their formulation of reason and logical and critical thinking skills. So, when having a discussion (or possibly an argument) about something, ask preschoolers to start debating. For example, if they want to go apple picking, ask them to give you a few reasons why they should go (critical thinking), what they could do with all the apples (analytical thinking), or to think of a fantastical contraption they could make that would help them get the apples all the way at the top of the tree (creative thinking—one preschooler answered this last prompt with “How about a ladder-saurous . . . a really tall big dinosaur ladder!”). Or if they don’t want to go to bed, ask them to give you three reasons why (critical thinking) they believe they should be able to stay up and then ask them, if they could create something fantastical to help them to stay up later, what would it be? (Ella, age four: “What if I was an Owl Me? Half owl, half me”!)
Another approach for nurturing debate and advocating your point of view is the game Apples to Apples Junior. Not only does this game focus on preschool play with expressive vocabulary, but part of the game is debating and getting the “judge” to pick your answer as the best. The debates my kids have had over this game are the best part—debating why mud pies are scrumptious? Hysterical.
Put out some craft materials or paper and crayons and have your preschooler create. To elevate, put different materials together and/or challenge your preschooler to make different things with the same object. Here are some suggestions for marrying crafts with fostering higher-order thinking skills:
• Grab an apple and encourage your preschooler to come up with as many different things as possible to do or make with it (apple pie, apples and peanut butter, painting using apple prints, apple toss).
• Find or make cutout shapes (circles, ovals, triangles, rectangles, squares, etc.) and see how many different things your preschooler can create using just those shapes.
• Draw a favorite book, movie, or TV show character in a silly environment (Blue under the sea? Blue going grocery shopping?).
• Make something new out of recycled objects.
• Bake or cook a new recipe together!
When we focus on activities and conversations to support sparking our preschooler and igniting their love of learning, we are also promoting a “growth mindset.” Researcher Carol Dweck’s work shows that it is “process” and not “ability” that is the key to success.
But when we focus on a growth mindset, or mastery through activity, we’re not only fostering how to think—we are postulating that intelligence is malleable. In other words, we’re reinforcing in our kids the idea that working hard will pay off. Mindset especially comes into play as concepts and tasks become more difficult. For example, if preschoolers have always been told that they’re “smart,” they may internalize a belief that intelligence is fixed and, unfortunately, come to the conclusion that they are “not smart enough” when they butt up against work or tasks that challenge them, especially as they move on to elementary school. When a child has a “fixed mindset” or believes their intelligence is fixed, they see themselves as incapable of becoming smarter or learning new skills. Since we know from the research that hard work, resilience, practice, and grit are what make the difference in a child’s long-term intellectual development, it’s critical that we commend, or for lack of a better word, praise effort rather than ability.
And as children get older, mindset becomes an increasingly bigger factor in the way they approach what they’re learning at school. As Carol Dweck wrote in Scientific American in 2015 about a study featuring junior high students and math, “. . . as the work became more difficult, the students with a growth mindset showed greater persistence. As a result, their math grades overtook those of the other students by the end of the first semester—and the gap between the two groups continued to widen during the two years we followed them. The focus on learning strategies, effort, and persistence paid off.” When a child is able to embrace and truly own a growth mindset before they begin elementary school, they will enjoy many long-term benefits as they go through their academic (and life) path.3
Teaching our preschoolers how to think versus what to think carries with them long after their preschool years and all the way through to adulthood. As with all of our clues, these ideas form a philosophy of learning that has its foundation in preschool, but lasts a lifetime.
In this age of innovation and technological invention, it’s important that we encourage our preschoolers’ capacity to think analytically, creatively, and critically as they thoughtfully move through their world. Teaching children how to think is an integral part of my core mission, both as a media creator and as a mom.
We all want our children to be kind, healthy, and smart, but the goal of academic achievement is often measured by metrics like standardized test scores and grades. If we start to evaluate achievement based on higher-order thinking skills, we would put more emphasis on building knowledge through experiences, boosting comprehension, applying information to the real world, analyzing that information, evaluating and critically thinking about the information, and then using our knowledge and information to create. What’s really important is that our children develop the ability to know how to approach and solve their own problems, big and small.
I strive for my kids to learn how make their own good choices, not just memorize facts or be robotic in their answers. To me, the smartest kids are the ones who can survey a situation, have a point of view, express that point of view, and attempt to take steps to improve the situation. And, we hope, one day to change the world. My research assistant for this book, Maddie, remembers having to memorize to prepare for her “map quizzes” in elementary school. Her parents knew that memorizing the information did not translate to retaining or mastering the information, so they took that content and upped the ante. Together they chose a country from that section of the world, and Maddie would research the culture, traditional dress, history, and they would even cook a dinner based on that country during the week! Maddie says that it not only made the content more interesting and comprehensible, but that it sparked and inspired her life path as she went on to concentrate in international studies in college, study abroad, and is now living in the Netherlands. What an amazing way to take studying maps to the next level—holy higher-order thinking skills!
• Be Involved to answer and explore all your preschooler’s questions in a meaningful, thoughtful way.
• Ask Questions and encourage your preschooler to support their points of view with reasons and logic.
• See the Spark by exposing them to new information and cognitive stimuli.
YOUR MEDIA “YES” LIST
The storytelling in the show offers examples of thought-provoking ideas.
The lessons from the show can be applied in real-life situations.
My child uses examples from the show as a launching point to think more deeply about things.
Clue Takeaways
• Higher-order thinking skills are used to understand information, make decisions based on that information, and create new ideas that are founded in the knowledge.
• Preschool play fosters higher-order thinking skills as kids create, ask questions, and exhibit their relentless curiosity. (And it also unlocks the genius within.)
• Praising efforts and process rather than results will promote a child’s development of a growth mindset.