101 Activities For Teaching Creativity And Problem Solving

Combinations 145

101 Activities for Teaching Creativity and Problem Solving.Copyright © 2005 by John Wiley &

Sons, Inc. Reproduced by permission of Pfeiffer, an Imprint of Wiley. http://www.pfeiffer.com

Noun Hounds Handout

Suppose your objective is to improve a flashlight. For your modifier and noun you think

of the combination “rising elephants.” Next you free-associate: leaping trunks, swiveling

suitcases, twisting airplanes, flapping wings. You then use these combinations to suggest

the following ideas:

• A telescopic flashlight capable of holding a variable number of batteries (from “rising
  elephants”)


• A storage compartment for small objects such as a spare bulb (from “leaping trunks”)


• A hovercraft flashlight that floats above the ground or water (from “twisting air-
  planes”)


• A flashlight with shutters for signaling (from “flapping wings”)

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