Creativity is not an extra you add when there is time left over. It is how people make sense of a changing world, and the good news is that it can be taught. Grounded in decades of creativity research and shaped in real classrooms, these books help you bring creative thinking into the places where learning actually happens, from K-12 classrooms to college courses to the kitchen table at home. Find the one written for your world below.
Three books that work in collaboration and on their own. One gives you the thinking behind creative teaching, one hands you lessons you can run tomorrow, and one keeps the energy going with short daily warm-ups. Use them together as a set, or reach for whichever one your classroom needs first.
Cyndi Burnett and Julia Figliotti · illustrated by Barney Saltzberg
This book shows you how creative thinking actually works in a classroom and how to build it into the subjects and standards you already teach. Clear models, real examples, and a way of teaching that makes room for original thinking without adding hours to your week.
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Cyndi Burnett and Lola Schnapp · foreword by Susan Keller-Mathers · illustrated by Barney Saltzberg
Twenty ready-to-teach lessons that pair a creative thinking skill with content you are already covering. Each one comes with the steps, the timing, and the teacher notes, so you can open the book and teach it the same day.
Cyndi Burnett and Barney Saltzberg
Short, low-prep warm-ups that get students thinking creatively in the first five minutes of class. Use them as openers, brain breaks, or transitions. This one is our gift to you, free when you join the newsletter.
Taking creative thinking into the college classroom and beyond.
Cyndi Burnett and John Fitzgerald Cabra · with 33 contributors from around the world
A guide for college and university educators who want to build creative thinking into their courses, programs, and everyday teaching. Thirty-three contributors from around the world share how they make room for original thinking in higher education, with practical approaches you can adapt to your own discipline and student level.
Creative thinking for the youngest imaginations, right at the kitchen table.
Cyndi Burnett and Michaelene Dawson-Globus · illustrated by Barney Saltzberg
A fun, warm parenting book that grows your child's creativity through the play they already love. Inside are 10 creative thinking skills that set children up for success in whatever they go on to do, skills that will serve you both for a lifetime. Watch young kids for a while and you will see it everywhere: they sing, they dance, they talk to imaginary friends and invent wonderful reasons to stay up past bedtime. That is creative thinking at work, a way of seeing the world, thriving through change, and solving all kinds of problems, and it is never too soon to nurture it.
Start with the free Creative Thinking Warm-Ups, then build from there. Bringing creativity to your whole school? We run professional development for teachers and administrators.
