We hope you enjoyed last week’s experiences all about Social Transformation. Were you inspired to create or invent something? Please share your photos with us on social media using #WeAreInnovationNation. If you missed the anything from our series this past week, check out the recordings by clicking on the links below. We hope that you will join us this week to explore our theme of Agriculture & the Environment.
What We Covered This Week
Theme: Social Transformation: How can ideas – big and small – have an impact on our world?
STEAM Stories
For our reading this week we shared What Do You Do with an Idea? by Kobi Yamadav. (Thanks to Compendium Books for letting us share the book with our fans and followers.) You can try our hands-on activity ideas from our early childhood curriculum, Innovate for Tots, too. Watch the video here.
#InnovationNation Tuesdays
See our social transformation segments here.
Innovation Journeys Live!
In this week’s Innovation Journey Live we learned how Henry Ford’s Model T changed the way people live, work and vacation. Watch the video here.
#THFCuratorChat
This week Donna Braden, our Curator of Public Life, explored the diner and its impact on American culture. See highlights from her chat in this blog post.
Kid Inventor Profile
Meet Charlotte from Idaho, inventor of the Emotional Emojis board game. In this unusual time, kids are helping other kids get through. Charlotte’s invention helps kids (and adults) express their feelings with a fun game. Then explore some Invention Convention Curriculum activities to keep your child innovating. Watch the video here.
Resource Highlight: Innovate Curriculum
In our continued efforts to help parents, students and educators during these times of uncertainty, The Henry Ford is providing helpful tips that assist parents in adapting its educational tools for implementation at home. Last week we highlighted our Model i Primer+., a series of five lesson plans that give student opportunities to practice the Actions of Innovation and the Habits of an Innovator.
This week we are highlighting the Innovate Curriculum. Designed to accelerate core discipline performance, Innovate helps middle and high school students connect their subject matter to real-world applications through innovation understanding and skills development, unleashing every student’s potential to develop groundbreaking ideas. Students journey from learning the habits and actions of innovators to unleashing the innovator within.
Create your free account today to access four interactive courses featuring:
- Primary source digital artifacts from The Henry Ford’s Archive of American Innovation
- Dynamic lessons with real-life stories
- Learn-by-doing activities and interactive content that helps prepare students and their prototypes to participate in competitions.
- Exclusive interviews with past and present visionaries
- Celebrity-led tours of today’s most exciting start-ups
- Facilitator guides that help educators and parents guide their students through the courses. Keep in mind that these courses were designed to be completed in a classroom setting, so feel free to adapt the courses for home use. These courses can be done on their own or in any order, but the recommended sequence is as follows:
INNOVATE 101: Inspire Our Future as an Innovative Thinker
Students learn about the unique qualities that make an innovator, and how innovative thinking can not only solve problems but create world-changing social transformation.
INNOVATE 102: Solve Our Problems
Students learn how innovators uncover insights, define problems, design prototypes and optimize solutions.
INNOVATE 103: Unleash Your Ideas as You Learn to Think Like an Entrepreneur
Students discover how to move ideas forward by identifying customers, what to do to protect their ideas, how to communicate with an audience and how to pitch to investors.
INNOVATE 104: Activate Your Potential
Students get to apply what they’ve learned and turn an idea into action. They’ll uncover an issue, come up with a solution, identify the users and create a unique prototype that they develop, showcase and pitch to others.
If your child is inspired to create an innovation of their own, check out Innovate 104: Activate Your Potential. Use the Innovate 104 facilitator’s guide and the tips below to guide your experience.
- Begin by discussing what “innovation” means, especially when creating something new leads people to change how they act and behave.
- Spend some time talking about the Actions of Innovation and the Habits of an Innovator – which ones have you used before? Which ones are less familiar? See page 13.
- Encourage your child to start keeping a “design journal” – see page 8 of the facilitator guide for more details.
- There is no set timeline for creating an innovation or invention. The process can span a few days or several months.
- Learning from failure is an important part of innovation – no one gets it right the first time! Encourage your child to keep trying new ways of doing things.
- Have your child think about how they would pitch their ideas to someone else. They can present their ideas to their families and can even share their pitch on a video call with friends.
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