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Get ready for a veritable feast of innovative thinking. Please find below, a list of 130 innovative projects that can stretch anyone's thinking. Some may be completed in 5 mins. Others might take days. The focus for these thinking projects? Innovation, creativity and outright wonder.
Thinking Provocations

You have decided that your family’s pet dog should have a birthday party each year. Write out your plans for this gathering, and place them under the following headings:

  • the invitations
  • the guests
  • the presents
  • the games
  • the food
  • the entertainment.

Create some highly original presents by combining each of the following pairs in some way:

  • candles and wallets
  • skipping ropes and watches
  • dolls and computer games
  • frisbees and running shoes.

Your leisure company has decided to develop a new product called the Global Toy for the world market. This Global Toy is a detailed full-colour model of the Earth, and is the size of a basketball.

Design at least five innovative features of this toy that would encourage people to be more environmentally conscious. These features could include:

  • that it turns brown when it is held up in highly polluted air
  • that it emits a piercing alarm when it is placed in polluted water.

When you complete your design, draw up a visually exciting advertising poster for this Global Toy.

As a special activity for World Environment Day, your class has decided to focus on the previous 200 years in the life of a tree.

Choose one of the oldest trees in your area. Then divide a large sheet of paper into ten sections, with each section representing 50-year frameworks from the past. Include the actual year, e.g. 2020, 1970, 1920, 1870, 1820, and so on.

Now draw the tree as it would have appeared in each of those years, and include its surroundings (as well as the people in that time) in detail.