Why do I believe that observation is the the most important thinking tool? Because it is the lens through which all knowledge is acquired, and you cannot fully use or develop the other 13 thinking tools of creative people without honing your powers of observation.
Here are a few simple ideas to help you get started honing your child’s, and your own, observation skills. Inspire your children by doing them yourself, too:
1. Put something together using a manual.
A piece of furniture from IKEA, a LEGO car, a new appliance—let your children look at the illustrations and find the corresponding pieces. If the child is ready, allow her to try to follow the instructions and put the pieces together. Let her make mistakes and keep attempting. Resist the urge to correct immediately or give hints if they get it wrong the first time. Unless they really want a hint, of course, or have no interest in helping with the project; generally children are eager to help with adult work and want to try doing things themselves when given the chance.
2. Start a collection.
When you collect different kinds of things in the same family, you become very good at distinguishing their differentiating characteristics. Rocks tend to look very similar until you start collecting them and looking at them frequently. Don’t limit your collection possibilities to tangible objects. You can start a sound collection: city sounds, nature sounds, bird calls, music, classical music, jazz music. All classical music used to sound similar to me before I studied several composers and their music. Start a texture collection—fabric scraps, bark from different trees, moss, rough and smooth rocks, etc.
3. Slow down.
Allow time for yourself and your children to stop and smell the flowers. Follow a grasshopper, catch a toad, look at the patterns in the tree bark of different trees (or find pictures in it, or feel the different textures of different tree bark, smell it, put it in your mouth and get in touch with your inner baby), watch workers down in the storm drain, a construction project. Take one or two pictures every day of a construction project near your home from the same spot and watch it in time lapse when it’s finished. Children are good at this; we adults have a tendency to hurry them along.
4. Quiet moments & total silence.
Make sure to have plenty of quiet (literal and figurative) moments; our powers of observation weakened when there are distractions. OR have everyone close his or her eyes and remain totally silent. What do you hear? Try doing this in the same place every day for a week. Do you notice more new sounds each time? Try the same exercise focusing on feelings inside your own body–areas of tension and relaxation, cooler and warmer parts of the body, full or empty belly, heart beating, tingles, other sensations or sounds.
5. Savor your food.
Every so often, instead of having a normal conversation at mealtime, I ask the kids what they notice about what they’re eating. They describe the flavors, tastes and textures and how they compliment each other. Do you like crunchy and creamy together? Sweet and salty? Tart and savory? Sometimes I miss enjoying my food because I’m thinking about other things.
6. Blind taste test.
Bake a different brownie (or other) recipe or half recipe once a week for several weeks. Freeze several small squares of each and label so that you know which came from which recipe. Then thaw the brownies and taste and compare blindfolded. Have each person describe textures and tastes. Is one more bitter than the others? Sweeter? Chewier? Softer? Fluffier? Denser? Crumbly or fudgy? Rank them according to preference and guess which came from which recipe.
7. Learn to draw.
Take a class or develop your skills yourself using the Picasso approach: Draw the same simple object from the same perspective over and over again. Before you draw it each time, observe it and write down as many different characteristics as you can. Each time you will think you’ve exhausted your list; but new characteristics will pop out at you each time.
8. Learn photography.
Not quite as effective as learning how to draw, but still very eye-opening.
9. People watch.
Go to a public place and watch people. Watch their facial expressions and mannerisms and try to guess how they’re feeling, if they’re in a hurry, if they’re lost in thought, and anything else you might want to guess about them. Pay attention to the eyebrows, forehead, mouth, jaw, eyes, shoulders, hands.
10. Allow children to discover answers and mistakes.
Passivity is learned. Human beings are born with a drive to learn, grow, and progress. Young children are innately so observant because of this drive—observation is how they take it all in, how they begin to learn about everything so they can grow and progress. When we intervene in the natural process of learning by giving children the answers, or pointing out all their mistakes before they get a chance to do those things themselves, we are doing the observing for them and bypassing the steps they would go through on their own, straight to the end result—without the depth of understanding or excitement and fulfillment that accompanies the lengthier natural process.
Learning—or “learning”—seems to happen so quickly in conventional methods of education because this natural process is bypassed and you arrive straight at the solution so quickly, allowing you to move on to collecting more answers without pausing, in a sort of academic, mental binge. Don’t be fooled by the speed, rigor, and early ages at which they are learning. Though at first it may seem as though your child is “behind” (or learning too slowly or not enough) when they are going through the natural learning process—asking their own questions and discovering their own answers…observing for themselves instead of learning to rely on someone else to observe for them—there is a strength and depth of knowledge, wisdom, and character growing inside that cannot be measured by a standardized test.
They are mastering the art of how to learn and grow; and when they’ve mastered that, they will have the power to learn and do everything they need to in order to reach their fullest potential.
