Convergent vs Divergent Thinking

Some parents have asked what kind of play are best for children, and there's no absolute right or wrong answer to the question. What we want to be able to provide are play activities that promote convergent, divergent or even both types of thinking.

If you think about it, we use both types of thinking in our day to day life. When we're starting a new project and coming up with ideas, we tend to go towards more divergent thinking because we want to come up with different ideas and maybe even innovations. Once you've brainstormed all those ideas, you would then need to apply convergent thinking and narrow down those ideas and come up with what is most plausible and doable. 

Because we believe that children practice for real life situations through play, we can also introduce play activities and toys that support these two types of thinking. Convergent thinking is applied with activities and toys that usually has a correct solution like our puzzles, shape sorters, coloring books and worksheets. Whereas divergent play can be with more open-ended toys such as our blocks, legos, dolls for pretend play. 

We want to exercise the mind to become more flexible to these types of thinking so that it can support how children will eventually problem solve and come up with solutions as they grow older.

In such a volatile and uncertain world, we can encourage our young children to think outside the box and innovate, but also know when certain rules may need to apply. Getting to do these things during play is where they get to practice those skills.