Inventing Ice Cream Flavors

Inventing Ice Cream Flavors

Recently, my second graders read a book entitled Who Invented Ice Cream? by Amelia Shanks.  To encourage innovation and creativity, each student created a new and different ice cream flavor.  Everyone began the inventive process with the vanilla flavor. Next, we brainstormed possible ingredients to add using the following divergent thinking tools:

·      Fluency – Thinking of as many possibilities and ideas as we could

·      Flexibility – Thinking of as many categories as possible e.g., fruit, candies, etc.

·      Originality – Thinking of unusual and new ideas

We thoughtfully chose the ingredients that would comprise our new flavor keeping in mind that the ingredients would need to be combined to make one very good ice cream flavor.   Thinking about how it would look, taste, etc. , we then gave our new the flavor a name.  This name would describe the ice cream in a “catchy” and appealing way.

Creating an attractive, informative, and attention-getting package was the next step.  We thought about what information should be included on the package.  Each boy drew and created his package, trying to include all information that a potential buyer would need to know before buying it. 

·      Elaboration – Adding interesting details to these ideas to make them better. (Thinking of everything)

Below is a sampling of the students as they described their “invented flavors”.