Welcome to Brain Benders for Beginners! I first developed the original Brain Benders: Think Sheets (Grimmett, 2000) when I started teaching primary classes in the early 1990s. I wanted to challenge the bright thinkers in my classroom and provide an alternative to the “more of the same” type of homework exercises I was required to set by school policy. While some learners do require lots of repetition and practice to really master a skill or concept, for bright learners completing pages of math problems or practicing spelling words they have already mastered is a complete motivation killer and waste of time. These children require stimulating activities that maintain their interest and challenge their growing cognitive development or they will simply switch off—at best completing satisfactory work with minimum effort, at worst resorting to disruptive behavior in order to gain attention or release frustration and boredom (Betts & Neihart, 2004). All children deserve to have their full potential recognized and encouraged. Closed activities with one right answer limit learners to the teacher’s estimation of their ability. Open-ended activities allow children to demonstrate their true capabilities in many fields of knowledge, often in areas not traditionally valued in the school curriculum.

Brain Benders for Beginners! was inspired by the experiences of my own daughter and the extraordinary level of effort her first teacher went to in order to challenge all the children in her class. In the first year of school each class will contain a huge range of ability levels given the various home, family and early educational environments each child has experienced. Some children may already be reading while others are not even familiar with all letters of the alphabet. Traditionally, much time is spent in the first months of school introducing the letter and number of the week and working on basic concepts such as colors, shapes, recognizing and writing names, etc. Valuable as this may be for many members of the class, for those who have mastered all these concepts two or three years ago (and that is half their lifetime at this age!) school can quickly become a big disappointment. These children obviously have a natural love of learning as they have managed to “pick up” most of the first year’s curriculum without the aid of formal educational training simply by interacting with the people and world around them. It is vital that teachers recognize and nurture this enthusiasm rather than stifle it. Imagine the frustration of being told to stop counting at 10 when you are bursting to show that you can count to 100 or beyond. Or imagine the frustration of being given a book containing a total of 10 different words when you have already worked your way through most of the Dr. Seuss books at the local library and are just itching to get something a bit trickier!

At these early levels of schooling open-ended activities are an important means for allowing children to work at their own level. Unfortunately many of the printed resources produced for this level contain extremely simple closed activities that the bright thinkers will race through before half the class have even found their pencils! It is ironic that these children are often then given even more worksheets to complete to keep them busy when they actually require the extra practice least! This is where Brain Benders for Beginners! is significantly different. Although all children in the class will benefit from practicing thinking skills, these activities will usually keep extremely able children occupied for longer than the average or slower learners because these children generally show more persistence in rising to the mental challenge, see more possibilities for extending their answers and become absorbed in completing the activity to the best of their real ability. Working on these types of activities is ideal for students who have finished, or have already mastered, the work set for the rest of the class.

Download the Table of Contents page here.

Grades K–3.