Jumpstart! Creativity

by Steve Bowkett

Published 23 August 2007

Jumpstart! Creativity contains over 70 games and activities that any primary teacher can use to quickly and easily boost students’ creative and critical thinking skills, allowing their thinking to flourish. Now in its second edition, the book contains fresh material that will help children to engage with the new National Curriculum.

Applicable across a wide age and ability range, Jumpstart! Creativity is designed to help children learn to generate, organise and refine their own ideas and to explore, question and connect knowledge presented to them in the classroom. Focusing on getting the children to do the thinking work, the jumpstarts cover:

  • Creative thinking
  • Creative questioning
  • Creating reasoning
  • Creative problem solving
  • Creative wordplay

Filled with practical, fun-packed and easy-to-do activities, Jumpstart! Creativity is an essential companion to any primary teacher looking to inspire creativity and independent thinking in their students.


This collection of inspiring and simple-to-use activities will jumpstart students' understanding of philosophy, and is a treasure trove of ideas for building philosophical enquiry into the curriculum. It offers teachers a range of quick, easy and effective ways for developing children's comprehension of and engagement with philosophy, and will help them 'learn how to learn'.

With a wealth of activities, including puzzles, class discussion techniques and group tasks, Jumpstart! Philosophy in the Classroom covers the following topics:

  • curiosity and imagination
  • language for thinking
  • critical thinking
  • creating a community of enquiry.

Practical and immersive methods will encourage children to think, analyse, evaluate, discuss, judge and arrive at reasoned conclusions across all areas of the curriculum, stimulating philosophical conversation and changing the way that content is processed and understood in the classroom. This book will be a vital resource for all those who want to develop thinking skills and philosophical enquiry in their school.


Jumpstart! Thinking Skills and Problem Solving presents a collection of simple to use, multi-sensory games and activities which will jumpstart students' understanding of problem solving in action. If you are one of the thousands of teachers looking for a range of practical and fun ideas to engage pupils in effective proactive learning, then this is the perfect book for you.

Specifically written to help teachers work within the guidelines of the new curriculum, activities in the book will help pupils to explore and learn a wide range of problem solving and independent thinking skills in an atmosphere of fun, mutual support and tolerance.

Sections within the book reflect key areas of the new curriculum and offer a treasure trove of ideas for building problem solving and thinking skills into daily teaching.and provide tried and tested methods of helping children 'learn how to learn'.

Areas include:-

Building problem solving confidence

Thinking and problem solving in literacy

Thinking and Problem solving in science

Problem solving in philosophy

Emotional resourcefulness and life skills

Jumpstart! Thinking Skills and Problem Solving will celebrate the joy of critical and independent thinking and become a vital resource for all classroom teachers at Key Stage 2 and 3.


Jumpstart! Wellbeing

by Steve Bowkett and Kevin Hogston

Published 22 August 2016

This collection of engaging and simple to use activities will help teachers to develop children's mental and emotional wellbeing while also including the thinking skills necessary for learning.

The authors show how developing such skills within the context of a wellbeing agenda aids children's motivation, their ability to concentrate and their willingness to explore, investigate and question, bringing huge benefits for children's sense of achievement, self-confidence and resilience. Drawing on a wealth of practical activities that include both creative and critical ways of thinking, chapters cover:

  • Wellbeing in the Classroom;
  • Emotional Resourcefulness;
  • Relaxation and Meditation;
  • Mindfulness and Reflectiveness;
  • Being Well.

Jumpstart! Wellbeing is a treasure trove of fun activities and ideas for building wellbeing and its constituent skills into the curriculum.