A while back, the six-year old had to come up with and talk about an invention for a first-grade class project. Surely an interesting exercise, considering that she barely understood what an invention was.
As I helped her think about it, , I asked her to do the following:
- Think of 3 things that bother her in her daily life
- From that list, pick problems that she suspects other kids might have
- Check if the problems in Step 2 have already been solved
- Pick an unsolved problem in Step 3 and come up with a solution for it
For Step 1, she came up with the following problems that bother her:
Problem 1: Keeping her room clean and organized
Problem 2: Sleeping alone at night
Problem 3: Certain bodily functions that adults perform daily but she was having trouble keeping up with a routine.
In Step 2, she decided that all these problems probably applied to other kids. However, she eliminated Problem 3 because (a) it might be embarrassing to talk about it in class (b) it didn’t really bother her as much as her parents.
In Step 3, she was left with Problems 1 and 2. She decided that Problem 1 was easily solved by spending some time keeping her room tidy. So, she decided that Problem 2 was what she would pursue solving.
She came up with a design for a sleep machine. Her drawing showed a bed with a headset and a few other contraptions that I cannot possibly describe. You would apparently jump into bed, wear the headset and be lulled into sleep, or something to that effect.
