Magical, Surprising and Humorous Sparkles for Creative Problem Solving

Abstract

This paper is a discussion of the relationship between magic, surprise, humor, and creative problem solving, through a description of the Sparkle Street project, an attempt to involve undergraduate student-teachers in mindful artsbased experiences during a semester at the University of Nicosia, a private university in Cyprus. The project developed in the context of the students' required introductory art education, educational psychology, emerging literacy and school experience courses of their program. The general aim of the project was to engage student-teachers in arts-based problem solving while considering children as natural communicators that when given the opportunity, they can use multiple means of expression in order to discover and communicate what they know, understand, wonder about, question, feel, and imagine.