TRIZ Textbooks:  CID Course for Children, 2-1G5
Topic 5.  Methods of Making Images  Lesson 1.  To Increase - To Shrink Lesson 2.  To Assemble - To Disassemble Lesson 3.  Upside Down Lesson 4.  To Speed Up - To Slow Down Lesson 5.  Transit in Time Lesson 6.  Binomial of Fantasy
Fantasy City: Course of Creative Imagination Development (CID),  2nd Grade, 1st Semester, Methodical Guide-Book
Natalia V. Rubina, 1999 [published in Russian] English translation by Irina Dolina, April 2, 2001 Technical Editing by Toru Nakagawa, July 15, 2001
Posted in this "TRIZ Home Page in Japan" in English on Jul. 17, 2001 under the permission of the Author. (C) N.V. Rubina, I. Dolina, and T. Nakagawa 2001

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1. Increase - shrink

2. Assemble - disassemble

3. Upside down

4. Speed up - slow down

5. Transit in time

6.  Binomial of Fantasy

Workbook

     The central topic, studied in the first semester, is Fantogram.  This a method, elaborated by G. S. Altshuller for developing the fantasy, and also for solving problems of technical esthetics  ("Theory and Practice of Solving Inventive Problems", Gorkii, 1976).  Fantogram is a chart, where the vertical axis has universal characteristics of the system under consideration, and the horizontal axis has some ways of changing these characteristics.  While studying the system operator the children have learned some universal characteristics of the systems.  At the CID lessons the children will learn how to work with the methods of fantasy: to obtain original fantastic ideas, and to solve creative problems.

     Methods of making images, elaborated by G. S. Altshuller for engineers and inventors, can be used in the elementary school:

for developing children’s imagination,

for diagnostics of developing creative abilities of the students,

for psycho-technical correction of a child.

     The methods of fantasy may be compared with musical alphabet.  Distributing “the melody” of fantasy between separate methods, it is easier to teach the children to make images, to diagnose in case of  “false” notes in order to reach harmony in the world of fantasy.  Improving the fantasy world of child is a way to improve his inner psychological world.

Method of Making Images
Lesson 1.   To Increase - To Shrink

Workbook

     “Gulliver’s Travel to Lilliputians”, “A Town in a Snuff-box”, and “Alice in the Wonder World” are amazingly interesting fairy tales’ images, created  with the help of a rather simple device: to increase – to shrink.  The children are familiar with it from the fairy tales and animations.  Our acquaintance with the methods of making images will start with this device.

     The classes are arranged in such a way that the children discover for themselves the methods and ways of applying them.

1.  Warming-up

“Card Index to the CID lessons for the second grade “, games on developing of attention and memory.

Read out 2 or 3 best advertisements.

Emil has got for you a new problem.  Every day, coming home from work, a man doesn’t reach his ninth floor but comes out at sixth floor, and then he climbs the stairs.  Why?

     (If in your thoughts you will shrink a man, it will be clear that a dwarf can’t reach the necessary button.)

4.  Main topic
 

     To get familiar with the methods of making images I. N. Murashkowska suggests presenting the wizards who can do ... nearly everything.
     “How to explain the methods and their possible application to small children?  They don’t need either our complicated explanations nor various devices.  They need the feeling they have somehow “I can!” or “I am succeeding!”  And who can find lost things and realize the most unbelievable wishes?  Of course, the wizards!  If one can not do anything, a wizard will always help; if you are bored the wizard can easily create a miracle.“
          I. N. Murashkowska: “When I Become A Wizard” in Informational methodical collection “Poznanie” Issue. 5, Riga, 1993.

Activity 1.

The magician Deli-Davai has a friend, i.e. a wizard Giant-Little One.  Do you know why he has such an unusual name?  He can increase and shrink everything around.  Help the wizard to find out, which is better to be big or small in order to:

 

To enjoy a delicious cake:	________________________________
Not to be late for a train:	________________________________
To finish eating a nasty porridge:	________________________________
To reach the sky:	________________________________
To talk to the insects:	________________________________

Activity 2.

The wizard Giant-Little One can increase and shrink everything.  But there is a certain condition: he makes a small thing big and a big thing – small.  Therefore if you want the wizard to increase anything, you need to prove that this object is – small.  And if you want to have it shrunk – prove that this object is – big.  So…

 

I want to make it big:	Prove that it is small:
	_______________________________ _______________________________
I want to make it small:	Prove that it is big:
	_______________________________ _______________________________

     The activity makes it possible for the kids to draw a conclusion about a relativity of the system properties.  One of the possible proofs: a system is bigger (smaller) than the other one.

	The wizard Giant-Little One  prepared for you an unusual assignment.  How to depict the wizard Giant-Little One to be big and small at the same time?

5.  Psycho-technical and developing games
 

Giant-Little One has made us very small (as a school-bag – a doll – a book – a pen – an eraser – a needle – a drop – a fluff – a microbe and so on).  What do you see?  What do you hear?  What do you feel?  Is it good or bad to be so small?

This game is better to be played in the empty space of the class-room free of desks and chairs.  The children can move, act out images that appear.  The game is potential for developing imagination, abstract and image-bearing thinking.  The children have an opportunity to see the world from a very unusual point of view.  Pay attention to gradual developing of presented changes.  You have to agree that it is difficult to imagine on the spot the world of microbes.  Let’s use the images familiar to the kids: dolls, cars, soldiers, constructor – a habitual world of the children’s game.  Further steps will be even easier to make.  In a game the children learn to form the images of a new world.  And, what is very important, learn to predict possible positive and negative consequences of the changes in the systems.

  Some time later (for example, at the next lesson) you may arrange the same game, but the size of the players should be changed: they will be increased.

     Giant-Little One made us very big (as a wardrobe – a car – a crane – a tree – an island – a planet – and so on).  What do you see?  What do you hear?  What do you feel?  Is it good or bad to be so big?

     Methods of making images help us when we solve creative problems.  Applying of certain methods stimulates thinking, helps to overcome inertia of thinking.

Activity.
 

While constructing a hospital in a small Finish town the architects have come across a problem.  All the buildings in the town are small, 2-3-stories.  The hospital according to the project has to contain many large premises – the building must be big and high.  How to combine such contradictory demands?   ( Let’s divide the contradictory properties between the system and its parts: instead of one big building several small building have to be projected.  They will contain all the necessary premises)

6.  Activities on speech developing or designing a creative product

     Once Giant-Little One has shrunk a big lion by mistake.  The lion became so small that could get into the pocket.  What does he see?  What does he hear?  What does he feel?  Is it good or bad for a lion to stay in the pocket?
     Travelling in the pocket, the lion found a big bread crumb.  How such a small lion can eat it?  The crumb that the lion ate was not ordinary, but magic.  So, the lion’s ears began to grow bigger and bigger.  Is his life better or worse?  How to use such big ears?  In what situations will they be a problem?   Write a story about a lion in the pocket, about a lion that has big ears.

7.  Sum up

     Home-work:  Write down on the cards the examples of applying of the method: increasing – shrinking.
 

 Methods of Making Images
Lesson 2.   To Assemble – To Disassemble

Workbook

"Card Index to the CID lessons for the second grade", games on developing of attention and memory.

2 or 3 best cards with the examples of applying of the method: to increase – to shrink.

     Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy told his students the following parable.

     A father had three sons.  They lived in peace and friendship, worked together in a field, and helped each other in everything.  Then their father grew old and got sick.  The sons began to look suspiciously at each other: " Whom will our father leave his wealth…?"
     The father found out about it.  He called his sons and said: ”I’ll give you an assignment.  The one who carries it out will be my heir.  Here is a broom made of willow twig – try to break it…”
     The brothers tried to break the broom: turned it this way and that way but could do nothing.  They came to their old father: ”We can not carry out your assignment…”
     “Well, well”, - said the father, unwinding the string that kept the twigs together, - “every separate twig can be easily broken, but if they are together, it is impossible to break them.  So in life: as long as you are together, you can not be crushed, but if you are separated it is easily done…”

4.  Main topic
 

     The method of assembling – disassembling at first sight is very simple and available. Indeed, in the early childhood, while disassembling and assembling a pyramid and blocks, the children in their activities were learning those methods.  Later they could realize that they assemble two chairs, they could reach the highest shelf of the cupboard (i.e. to solve a contradiction: on has to be tall to reach the high shelf, but one cannot be tall being a child.  A child himself is short, but a child together with a chair is tall).  The aim of this lesson is to teach the children mentally to assemble and disassemble systems and their parts in order to solve creative problems, to obtain fantastic ideas and to predict possible consequences.

     Moreover, it is important to attract the children’s attention to the fact that after assembling the systems or their parts in a new system, a new quality always appears, and this new quality is not possessed by each separate systems or their parts.  If a new quality does not appear after assembling (for example, a spade or a broom fixed on one handle continue to function as the spade and the broom), it means that this change does not solve the problem presented.

     The magician Deli-Davai has taught us to assemble and disassemble things.  We know that everything in the world consists of parts and is a part of something even larger.  Today Deli-Davai will teach us to apply the method of assembling – disassembling for solving creative problems and designing unusual toys.  So…

Problem 1.
     Once the telephone rang in Emil’s house.  His aunt asked him to bring her urgently the slim long glass sticks, which she had left behind during her last visit.  Emil is always glad to help his favorite aunt, but there is a problem: the sticks are long and slim.  No matter where you put them they will get broken.  What to do?

     The sticks should be tied together by a string.

     Probably, Aristotle had taught Alexander to use fully the resources available, for example, by assembling systems.  Nobody knows whether it is true or not, but the King of Macedonia solved this problem assembling the boats with the help of logs.  So, Alexander built a bridge over the river and his troops could cross the river.

Problem 3.
     Once the scholars got together to discuss how to fight the weevil.  And it turned out that they knew about this weevil very little.  Nobody knew, for example, what is the temperature of its body.
     - Weevil is small,- said one scholar, - a regular thermometer can not be used.
     - We need to construct a special device, - agreed another, - we’ll lose much time ...
     And then the inventor appeared.
     - We don’t need any new devices, he said.  Take an ordinary…
     What did the inventor proposed?

     We need to fill a glass, a box or a small sack with the weevils and measure the temperature with a regular thermometer.  A hundred of weevils gathered together, form a system, that possesses new properties.  The size of this system is much bigger than the size of its separate parts; therefore taking the temperature does not present any difficulty.
          G. Altov: “And Suddenly The Inventor Appeared", Moscow, “Detskaya Literatura”, 1989, pp. 25-26.

     To do this activity you have to prepare the items to hand out: the objects that the kids can assemble with their own hands (e.g. pencils, pens, count sticks, needle bobbins, color paper, candies, small toys, plastic rings and others).  After mastering skill in an activity with objects, you may pass to an activity performed mentally.
     This activity, apart from developing the notion of interconnections between different systems, may serve a diagnosis of developing of creative abilities of the kids.  Working with a group of children the answers may be compared.  If a child easily and quickly finds unusual interconnections between far systems, then finding interconnections in complicated systems won’t present difficulties to him.  And thus the child’s mind is ready for predicting the consequences of the changes in systems when solving problems.

5.  Psycho-technical and developing games
 

[Two paragraphs are temporarily missing in translation.  July 15, 2001]

6.  Activities on speech developing or designing a creative product

     Let’s mentally come back to our morphological chart.  To designing a new toy we also applied the method of assembling-disassembling.  In the next assignment it is necessary to change simpler systems.
 
 

Draw any system, consisting of triangles, circles and squares.

7.  Sum up

     There are many interesting examples of assembling and disassembling of systems for performing new, unusual functions [in "Card Index to CID lessons for the second grade"] in the section “Very capable hands”.

     Home work:  Write out on the cards the examples of assembling systems and their parts for performing new, unusual work.
 

 Methods of Making Images
Lesson 3.   Upside Down

Workbook

     A method of upside down (inversion) is the most difficult for understanding and for independent active using.  For the elementary school students the good results of work at the lesson, devoted to this topic, might be to learn to single out the examples of applying the method upside-down and together with the teacher to use it for solving simple creative problems and obtaining fantastic ideas.  During the period of further study of the CID course (at junior high school and high school), the skills of practical applying of this and other, more complicated methods are formed as a result of special activities and become a powerful instrument for solving creative problems in different spheres of human activities.

1.  Warming-up

 Exercising “upside down”.  The versions of activities you will find in “Card Index to the CID lessons for the second grade”.

2 –3 interesting examples of applying the method “assembling-disassembling “.

     How to behave the right way?
     UPSIDE DOWN.

4.  Main topic

     The examples of using the method “upside down” in fiction literature you will find in “Card Index to the CID lessons for the second grade”.  Remind the children of one or two episodes, where the method “upside down” is used, and then ask them to recollect themselves similar examples.  Mind that the children are not yet familiar with the way of applying the method “upside down”.  If their examples are not quite exact,  read out one more example, emphasizing what and how things are done upside down. 

Activity 1. 
     There are words and even whole expressions, which are read from the right to the left and from the left to the right in the same way.  They are called palindromes.
 

     Read upside down.

     Do you know such words?

From the words, given by the children, try to make a sentence.

Activity 2.
     As a rule, in the fairy tales there are positive and negative characters: a character and a character “upside down”.
     Find a character “upside down”:

 

Buratino	–
Carlsson	–
Winnie-the-Pooh	–
Aibolit               [Doctor Powder and Pill]	–
Chebyrashka   [An unknown animal]	–
Neznaika          [A Know Nothing Boy]	–
?	–

This activity may be done in oral and written forms.

     Sometimes in Nature the methods of upside down also can be traced.
     Sometimes the rivers flow in an opposite direction.  It happens, for example, with Dnieper, Ob, and other big rivers [in Russia].  During spring high flood the flows are free from ice quicker, and the water, reaching the  river-bed, come back..

     For the first time the children have to learn how to use a device of making images for getting new ideas and for solving problems.
     In the diagrams below the following signs are used:

S :      system;
P :      properties;
AP :   anti-properties
AS :   anti-system
F :      function
AF :   anti-function

Problem. 
     When the prosthetic appliance is being made for the legs, it is very important that an artificial leg was exactly like the real one.  It seems not a difficult task – one should make a mould from the real leg and make in it an artificial one.  But as a matter of fact, it doesn’t work because nobody needs the identical legs.  What should be done?

   The left leg is a mirror reflection of the right one.  Let’s apply the method “upside down”: one should make a mould using some elastic stuff, for example  rubber, and turn out.
     In the “Card Index to the CID lessons for the second grade” you will find “yes-no” games, that are solved with help of the method “upside down”.

5.  Psycho-technical and developing games

   The aim of the game played at this lesson is to practice in selecting of anti-properties, anti-functions and anti-systems.  The forms of conducting the game may be different (versions of a script you will find in “Card Index to the CID lessons for the second grade").

6.  Activities on speech developing or designing creative product

 

In Fantasy City there is a street, where everything is upside down: a house – upside down, trees – upside down, cars – upside down…     Make a picture of a street upside down.

7.  Sum up

     Home work:  Write out on the cards the examples of using the method "upside down".
 

 Methods of Making Images
Lesson 4.   To Speed Up – To Slow Down

Workbook

1.  Warming-up

     Race.   First stage – an assignment (for example, to pass a ball) must be carried out  as fast as possible; second stage – as slow as possible.

     During second stage of racing there is a problem similar to a “yes-no” game about horsemen (djigits) (this problem is considered in the text of “the introduction to the lesson”).  According to the rules the ball must be passed at a certain speed, some movements are required, but at the same time in order to win the ball must be passed as slow as possible, even without any movements.  If the children manage to find a solution during the game, write it down on the blackboard by all means.

2.  Home work

2-3 most interesting cards with the examples of the method of upside down.

     The problem arose as a result of applying the method upside down: the action must be performed as slow as possible, to bring the horse to the finish not first (as in a regular contest), but on the contrary – last.  How to speed the horsemen?
     The correct answer: the horsemen have to change places, and then each of them will try to bring his opponent's horse to the finish first, leaving to his horse the last, under the present rules, winning place.

     One of the devices that is often used is the photo-finish.
     With the help of slowed shooting it is possible to get lots of interesting and important information.

     So, today we are going to learn about the specific features of using the method: to speed up – to slow down, and how with its help to solve problems and to obtain fantastic ideas:

Activity 1. 
     Finish the sentences.
     I would like to grow so quick that to become an adult soon.
     I would like to play so slowly that to be always cheerful.

Here the answers of the children, that were given in different groups at the lessons on this topic.

What can be fast and slow at the same time?

Answers:

A lesson: boring – slow, interesting – fast.
Vacation: in winter – slow, in summer – fast.
A bus: for those who are in a hurry – slow, for others – fast.
Time: when one is waiting – slow, when one is happy – fast.

5.  Psycho-technical and developing games   

     When the method “to speed up – to slow down” is used, we face contradictions.  The aim of the game played at this lesson is to find a solution to problems arising while acting out the scripts presented for activities.

     Next stage is to learn how to predict possible consequences of the changes in the systems and to present versions of contradiction solving.

6.  Activities on speech developing or designing a creative product
 

In Fantasy City there is an unusual tram: it goes sometimes very fast (as a plane) and sometimes very slow (as a turtle).  Make a schedule of this tram in such a way that the inhabitants of the city should be happy to have such a tram.

     In this activity the kids have to imagine a super-system, in which the changes are taking place.  This super-system – a city – is well familiar to them.  In order to find out about the consequences of applying the method to this super-system, it is necessary to single out as many concrete systems that form the city as possible.  For example, adult inhabitants of the city every morning during the weekdays hurry to work; so the tram has to move fast.  During the weekend, the adults will take with pleasure a slow trip around their favorite city; so the tram has to move slowly.

    In this exercise the children’s knowledge about systems in time which they got at the CID lessons in the first grade (topic “What has been and what will be”) will be applied.  The lessons in the first grade are an acquaintance with the complicated notion of time, with the possibilities of applying the knowledge of systems’ changes in time for solving arising problems.  In the second grade while studying this topic the main attention is devoted to obtaining fantastic ideas in the course of moving in time (very rich material on this topic may be found in the science fiction).

7.  Sum up

     Home work:  Write out on the cards the examples of using the method “to speed up - to slow down”.

Methods of Making Images
Lesson 5.   Transit in Time

Workbook

 1.  Warming-up

“Card Index to the CID lessons for the second grade”

2-3 cards with the examples of using the method of “to speed up – to slow down”

Correct answer: an alarm clock.
 

    Ancient philosophers used to say: “One can not enter the same river twice”.  Because between the first and second entering time will pass and the water which one has stepped in will just flow away.  There will be new water in the river and it means that the river itself will be different.
     But when you step into the river for the first time, is the water still?  Of course, not. It flows all the time without a stop.  So, entering the water, you will find out that the river changes continuously.  So the ancient paradox is justified. “One can not enter the same river twice".

     The similar thing happens to the time.  It flows everywhere and permanently.  So, one can not enter the river of Time twice.  So to say, nothing can be done in the same way.  The most looking alike events will be different after all; because they are separated in time.  And what if they are happening at the same time?  It doesn’t make any difference; one can not enter the same river of Time twice.  Therefore not a single second resembles another one.  Besides, this “the only one” second will never repeat itself!  One can find oneself in “the same place” lots of times, but to be there “at the very same time“ is impossible.  It is so because time flows only in one direction – from the past to the future and never flows back.
     So, what is the future or the past?  What is the present?  Actually, if one thinks thoroughly, it appears that the present does not exist after all.  The present is just a “transient apparition”, nearly an instant between the past and the future.

     Some day the Great Mystery of Time will be solved.  But at the present nobody knows for sure what time is.  Only one thing is obvious for everybody – one shouldn’t waste time on trifles – it will never come back.

5.  Psycho-technical and developing games

     Psycho-technique “Transit in time”.

     One of the possible scripts of conducting a psycho-technique is in “Card Index to the CID lessons for the second grade”.  It is important, while preparing the instructions for the work, to activate at most all the channels of perception (use verbs, adverbs, adjectives, that will help the kids to see, to hear and to feel the images that appear in their heads according to their abilities).
     This psycho-technique will be more successful if you use music during the session. It is very important to conduct reflection when the training is over.  Having shared their impressions with the classmates, listened to their stories, the children get a very unusual and interesting experience.

6.  Activities on speech developing and designing a creative product
 
 

     Draw a picture or describe your journey in time.

     As a rule, the work on this topic is always very interesting.  You may hold an exhibition of the best works or, if they are mostly drawings, make a big display of pictures on one big paper.

7.  Sum up

     Home work: Interesting information about the origin of technical  systems (an origin of a car, a pen, paper and other things).

     This task is rather difficult for the second grade students.  Advise them to use the Children’s encyclopedias.  They will find there a lot of interesting information.

Methods of Making Images
Lesson 6.   Binomial of Fantasy

Workbook

     The binomial of fantasy is a method, presented by a famous Italian tale-teller Gianni Rodari.  In his amazing book “Grammar of Fantasy” he described very vividly the possibilities of using this method.  The extracts from this book are given in the commentaries to this topic:

     “…to get a spark one electric charge is not enough, we need two of them.  One word becomes animated only when it meets another one, which provokes it, forcing to get off the rails of habit, to open new semantic possibilities.  There is no life without fight.  Imagination is not a kind of isolated part of the mind; it is our mind; it forms a single whole with it and is realized by the same methods in different spheres.  Mind is born at fight, not at rest.  Henry Vallone in his work “Sources of Children’s thinking” writes, that a thought appears out of pair of notions.  The notion “soft” does not appear before or after the notion ”rough”, but at the same time, in the process of their collision, which is a creation in itself.  “The basis of a thought is its double structure, but not the separate elements that compose it.  A pair appeared earlier than one.”
     Thus, in the beginning there was an opposition.  The same opinion  is shared by Paul Clue, when he writes in his “Theory of Form and Image”, that  “the notion is inconceivable without its opposition; there are no notions as they are, as a rule, we deal with the “binomial of notion”.

     A story can arise only out of the “binomial of fantasy”.
     “A horse – a dog”, essentially, do not present a “binomial of fantasy”.  This is just a simple association inside the same species of animals.  When those animals are mentioned, the imagination stays still.  This is an chord like major third, and it does not promise anything special.
     It is necessary that two words are separated by a certain distance, that they are not alike and their neighborhood is quite unusual.  Only at this point the imagination will be stimulated, trying to establish a relationship between the words under consideration, to create a single whole, in this case fantastic whole, where both alien elements could be coexist.  Therefore, it is good when “binomial of fantasy” is defined by occasion.  Let two children pronounce two words but they shouldn’t know what each of them said; or throwing is a good idea, or a child who can not read could point to the words situated far from each other in the dictionary.

     When I was a teacher, I used to call out two students to the blackboard.  I asked one of them to write a word on a visible side of the blackboard, the other one – on the invisible part.  This small preparatory ritual had special sense.  It created an atmosphere of a tense expectation, a surprise...  If a child wrote a word “dog”, it became a special word, ready for a certain role in an unusual situation, ready to become a participant of an unexpected incident.  “Dog” was not just a four-legged creature, he was the character of an adventure, a character that is at your disposal.  Turning the blackboard we find out, for example, the word “wardrobe”.  The children used to laugh at it.  The word “platy-pus” or “tetra-hedron” wouldn’t be such a success.  A single word “wardrobe” wouldn’t make you laugh or cry.  It is dull, colorless.  But “wardrobe” together with “dog” – is an absolutely different thing. This is discovery, invention, and stimulus.
     Many years ago I read Max Ernst’s explanation of his idea of “systematic displacement”.  Ernst used the image of a wardrobe, depicted by De Chirico, - in the middle of a classic landscape, surrounded by the olive trees and the Greek temples.   Being “displaced”, put into an unusual context, the wardrobe turned into a mysterious object.  It is possible that there were clothes in it, may be not.  The fact is that the wardrobe was very attractive.

     Victor Shklovsky describes the effect of “dismissal", reached by L. N. Tolstoy, when he speaks about a common sofa with the words, used by a person who has never seen a sofa  in his life and does not know how to use it.
   In “the binomial of fantasy” the words are not used in their common meaning, but independently of the speech patterns, where they usually function.  They are “dismissed”, “displaced”, taken out  and are somewhere high in the sky.  Those are, to my mind, the optimum conditions for appearing an interesting story”.
          Gianni Rodari: “Grammar of Fantasy”, Moscow,  “Progress”, 1990, pp. 24-26.

1.  Warming –up

A game of associations.  “Card Index to the CID lessons for the second grade”

2-3 interesting cards about the origin of technical systems.

     One of the examples of using “the binomial of fantasy” from G. Rodari’s book “Grammar of Fantasy”.

     “Doctor Poliphemo, on coming home, looks for his jacket in his wardrobe and sees a dog inside.  The dog is of uncertain breed.  Maybe he is trained for mushroom hunting, or cyclomen [a flower] hunting, or rododendron [a flower] hunting.  He is friendly, wags his tail, gives politely his paw, but he wouldn’t get out of the wardrobe.  No matter how much time Doctor Poliphemo asked him to leave, the dog was implacable.  Poliphemo went to his bath room to take a shower and there, in the cabinet, he discovered another dog.  The third one is in the kitchen cabinet surrounded by the saucepans, the fourth one – in a washing basin, one more – in a half frozen state – a refrigerator.  A pretty puppy is hiding in the corner for the mops, and a small Bologneese is in a drawer of his desk. 
     Doctor Poliphemo could have called an operator and ask him to throw the uninvited guests out of the apartment, but Doctor Poliphemo is a dog-lover and his heart prompts him otherwise.  He ran out to the butcher’s store and bought ten kilograms of fillet to feed his guests.  From now on every day he buys ten kilograms of meet.
     It can not passed unnoticed.  The butcher felt that something was wrong.  Talks, rumor and aspersion started.  What if Dr. Poliphemo is hiding in his apartment the spies, who are after the nuclear secrets?  What if he performs some devil experiments in his apartment?  Why does he need so much meet ?  The poor doctor began to lose his clients.  The police got some information against Poliphemo.  The head of the Police ordered to search the doctor’s apartment.  Only then it became clear that Dr. Poliphemo suffered because he was a dog lover."
                      (G. Rodari: "Grammar of Fantasy", Moscow, “Progress”, 1990, p. 28.)

4.  Main topic

     What is the meaning of the word “binomial?”

     So, choose two words:

     Combine them, using different prepositions (in, on, near, under, over and others).
         - an orange in a hat,
         - an orange hat…

     Develop the ideas you got:
 

An illustration may be drawn.

Orange decided to buy a hat.  He went to a special store.  He tried all the hats they were selling.  They all turned to be so big, that when Orange looked at the mirror he couldn’t see himself.  What should be done?  Orange went to a tailor’s shop.  The tailor was taking measures for a long time, was cutting various fabric… But he couldn’t make a suitable hat for Orange.  Orange was walking along the street very unhappy.  He met a girl.  She asked : “Why are you so unhappy, Orange?”  Orange felt embarrassed: “I want to have a hat, nice and comfortable, to keep my head warm.  But there is no hat suitable for me”.  The little girl was very surprised: “And this has upset you so much!?  Come on, I will knit a warm, comfortable hat for you, my grandmother taught me!”.

 
“At this stage the story is only “a raw material”.  To process it and to turn it into a completed product is a writer’s task.  We were interested  in one thing - to give an example of “binomial of fantasy”.  Nonsense may remain nonsense.  The really important thing is a process: the children have mastered it to perfection and have enjoyed it very much.  This activity brings, of course, quite appreciable results.
But one shouldn’t underestimate its entertaining role.  Especially, if taking into consideration the fact that at our schools the students rarely laugh.  One of the most deep-rooted, difficult to overcome, ideas about a pedagogical process is a belief that this process must go solemnly.  Something about it was well known to Jacomo Leopardi, who wrote in his “Jibaltone” on August 1, 1823: “ The most beautiful, the happiest period of life - the childhood, is accompanied by thousands of sufferings, thousands of worries and frights, by so many burdens of up-bringing and education, that an adult, in spite of all his trials, would never, even  if he could, agree to become a child again and to live over again what he had already experienced”.
           G. Rodari: "Grammar of Fantasy",  Moscow, “Progress”. 1990, p. 28.

7.  Sum up

     Home work:  Choose any of the ideas, received at the lesson and to write a small story.
 
 
 

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1. Increase - shrink

2. Assemble - disassemble

3. Upside down

4. Speed up - slow down

5. Transit in time

6.  Binomial of Fantasy

 

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Last updated on Jul. 17, 2001.     Access point:  Editor: nakagawa@utc.osaka-gu.ac.jp