THE CREATIVE LADDER 
 (Development Games) 
 BORIS NIKITIN 
 Translated by Aleksey Nikitin & Guy Braithwaite 
Copyright Aleksey Nikitin 1993
LONDON 1993
TO CHILDREN - CREATORS OF THE FUTURE 
TRANSLATORS’ PREFACE
The origin and development of the creative abilities of children remain only partly understood. One of Boris Nikitin’s first published work, “The Gifted Child: Not a Gift of Nature”, dealt with the theoretical side of the nurture of highly independent minds. Not surprisingly, this proved unacceptable to the Soviet regime and subsequently the Nikitin family had an uneasy relationship with the authorities, almost amounting to proscription. The offending book, like “The Creative Ladder”, was very popular in Germany and Japan. It is suggestive of Russian misconceptions about the West that when Boris Nikitin’s wife met the German and Japanese translators of the book she was surprised to find that they talked of the same problems of restrictive education: she had thought that such problems were confined to the USSR. If we learn only one thing from Boris Nikitin, then, let it be this: we must not be complacent about our children’s education.
This is an abridgement of a book which was written in Russia in 1973 but was not published for several years. A shortened version under the same title was published in booklet form in 1976 as a supplement to a magazine. 
Due to political circumstances in the USSR, publication of the full text was still held up. However, a full version appeared in Cologne in 1980. The censored first edition was issued in Moscow in 1981, where it was well received by parents and by the unofficial family clubs which were springing up to promote a more independent approach to education. In spite of its popularity and the limited print-run of the first edition, it was four years before the second edition appeared. Again, too few copies were available so manuscript copies began to circulate. The author received many letters requesting a new edition in expanded form and in many more copies.
The book’s popularity grew quickly, both within Russia and abroad. It was published in Japan in 1986. Like the German translation, this Japanese version included the chapter “A Bit of Theory” which would not then have been countenanced by the Soviet regime. Finally, this full version with some new material was published in Moscow in 1991 as the third edition. Many new tasks were added to the Multicube section, mostly to the more difficult end of the sequence. In all, the number of tasks was roughly doubled. An important addition was a set of games which applied more directly to a child’s-eye view of the world. 
In this abridgement of the book, we have attempted to give an outline of the theory behind Development Games, as well as an explanation of the method of play. We hope to bring out a complete version, with the full sequence of tasks and games, in the near future. We use the pronoun “he” to denote “the child” wherever gender is unspecified, since we assume that no reader will be so pedantic as to think that we do not include girls. Similarly, where we use the terms “parent” or “parents” we do so for simplicity’s sake and not to exclude grandparents, uncles, aunts, elder brothers and sisters and friends from the role of helping to bring up children.
A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR
Boris Nikitin was born in 1916 into a Cossack family in the Northern Caucasus region of what was then the Russian Empire. His father ran a chemist’s shop. Boris graduated in engineering from the local Polytechnic Institute and in 1941 he completed his training as an aircraft engineer at a Military Academy. He served in the armed forces from 1941, when the Soviet Union entered the war against Germany, until the mid-1950s. His first educational research was done “on the job” whilst training pilots during the war years. This was a crucial job, since lives depended on the pilots learning quickly and thoroughly; and Boris found that he was an effective teacher. He was also becoming increasingly interested in the assessment and measurement of educational performance and improvement. 
In the mid-1950s, after demobilisation, Boris was one of a small group of enthusiastic and unorthodox teachers who planned to found an independent school. This brave project proved impossible because the State would not tolerate any institution outside its control. Boris and many of his colleagues lost their jobs and were blacklisted from posts of any professional status. One of their number, a war hero, was so disillusioned that he committed suicide. For Boris Nikitin, it was a formative period, during which he met his future wife and decided to pursue his ideas about education in a smaller sphere: that of the family.
Boris met Lena in December 1957 at an Educational Conference which they both found so boring that they went to a cafe instead. Fourteen years his junior, Lena was the daughter of an engineer and a maths teacher. She had followed her mother into the teaching profession, graduating in languages and literature. However after two years’ experience in a school, she had become frustrated with the educational system and had left to become a librarian. Deeply impressed by Boris’ ideas, she helped him apply them to the upbringing of their seven children. State interference had put a stop to the plan for an experimental school but it could not control the home life of a young family.
Aleksey, their first child, was born in 1959; Antony, their second, in 1960. Their early development was described in Boris and Lena’s first book, “Are we on the Right Track?”, published in 1962. It was a fresh insight into children’s development based on totally novel propositions which may have crossed official educational guidelines but made no reference to political ideology. So extraordinary were the ideas expressed in the book that it sold out in a matter of weeks. The public were starved of such reading despite the thaw since the death of Stalin. However, the very success of the book caused its downfall with officialdom. The sense of freedom which pervaded the book and which had contributed to its popularity posed a challenge, albeit indirect, both to the educational and, more ominously, to the medical establishments. The Nikitins were unprepared for the subsequent furore and for the trouble it brought to their door. In the long dispute with the monoliths of Communist medicine and education which ensued, they became figures of some celebrity, somewhere between the die-hard academic dissidents and the distinguished scientists and sociologists who supported and applauded their work despite its unorthodoxy.
To begin with, the second edition of the book was banned and Boris lost his job as researcher at the Academy of Pedagogic Science. He found a job as a schoolteacher. Meanwhile, his two little sons and their sister Olga, born in 1962, were subjected to an elaborate series of tests by the medical authorities. Aleksey remembers the pointed questions designed to make him incriminate his parents. Try as they might, the doctors could find nothing wrong with the three children, apart from below-average weight. Nevertheless, they filed a damning and also completely falsified report which appeared in a sensational form in the press under the headline “Be careful with childhood”. The Nikitins were accused of being irresponsible parents who conducted dangerous experiments on their children by journalists who had not even met them. The allegations might have led to prosecution had the courts given any credence to the “evidence” in the report. The public drew their own conclusions and the Nikitins began to receive many visits and supportive letters. During the following decade four more children were born: Ann in 1964, Julia in 1966, Ivan in 1969 and Lubov in 1971. The Nikitins’ income of 200 Roubles per month had to suffice for a family of nine at a time when the state recommended at least 50 Roubles per month per person for subsistence. Both the parents worked and continued their research, perfecting the Development Games. Theories were verified, ideas improved. Much of the work was made possible by unofficial support from around the country: gifts of money and clothes and messages of moral support. The Nikitins’ work attracted the attention of many important thinkers in the educational and scientific fields, most notably the child-physiologist Professor Ilya Arshavsky, whose private laboratory provided independent confirmation of some of Boris’ results. Also crucial was the tacit support of the elite Physics Research Institute at Novosibirsk. The Nikitins’ house became an unofficial research laboratory, attracting 1500 visitors and over a thousand letters every year, as well as being a home for seven children who, meanwhile, all excelled at school and college.
In 1980 Boris and Lena at last had some books published in the West where they could hope for a less prejudiced reception and perhaps some royalties. The books were popular and began to produce a healthy income, although the Soviet government levied a special tax of up to 80% on it. How Ironic that the State should profit so much from books they disapproved of! More works written years before by Boris or by Boris and Lena began to appear in print having previously only circulated in manuscript or in unofficial print runs. These officially published works were heavily censored but they still sold out in hundreds of thousands of copies. Library copies usually disappeared!
The most popular title, both in the USSR and abroad, was “We and Our Children”. It was translated into German and Japanese. The book is not prescriptive or didactic like other works in this field. It is more like a free conversation, sharing the accumulated experience of bringing up seven children with a sympathetic listener, and providing a fascinating insight into the development of healthy and clever youngsters. It includes a preface by a famous Ukrainian cardiosurgeon, Nikolai Amosov, who found that the children had reserves of health beyond the norm. He wrote that the doctors who had described the Nikitin children as underdeveloped back in 1962 had never seen a healthy child! Moreover, the children, he said, displayed an intellectual standard way above average. None of them was a genius, but all had found school untaxing to the extent that they skipped a few years. Owing to the rigidity of the Soviet education system, this caused the children a few problems, since their schooling never instilled a disciplined approach to learning.
Those early medical tests on the Nikitin children had predicted a very unhealthy future. Thirty years on, they all enjoy good health, and have excellent minds. Wherever they go in the CIS they are recognised as Boris Nikitin’s “experiments”! All over the countries of the former Soviet Union, parents know about Nikitin’s ideas, either through his published writings or through one of the many Nikitin Clubs which formed during the 1970s to unite thousands of parents who took an active interest in the healthy development of their children despite the illegality of such associations and the strong opposition of the medical and educational authorities to these ideas. Despite the lifting of the ban on publishing the books and the great changes in the country since 1989 Boris Nikitin has received no official recognition or honour, nor anything more than a pittance for the millions of copies of his books sold in the Soviet Union for the profit of the state. Indeed, it is only recently that a publisher has come forward to issue a collected edition of his works, even though all previous editions, amounting to several million copies, always sold out within a few weeks, sometimes days, of publication. This enduring popularity is suggestive of a widespread concern about the challenges of parenthood that are as acute today as they were in 1959 when Boris and Lena started their family. They thought at first that the problems they addressed were peculiar to the Soviet Union. It is clear now that these issues cross geographical as well as ideological boundaries and characterise something fundamental to the relationship between parents and children everywhere in the modern world.
INTRODUCTION 
This book is about games. Not ordinary games, though: you cannot just hand them to a child and say “Go and play” as if they were simple toys. Nor are they games which can all be played at once: they must be introduced one at a time, with a week’s pause in between, or perhaps a month or even a year.
This set of games involves a wide range of tasks with a very wide range of difficulty. The first puzzles would be enjoyable for pre-school children, whilst the last ones have made mathematicians stop and think for hours! In between is a ladder of tasks to suit everyone from schoolchildren to teenagers, students and adults. You can play them alone, with a friend or the family, in the playground or in a class competition. You could even stage your own tournament. 
With this sequence of games it is possible to assess constructive ability, quickness of thinking and powers of analysis. You might call it a “gym for the mind” - a set of tools for developing the mind rather than the muscles. Maybe such a thing is more suited to the 21st Century since our modern education system develops only the executive faculties of a child’s mind, leaving the development of the creative faculties to chance. 
Consequently ,in most adults the creative faculties remain only poorly developed. This is our weakness and our problem since it is the creative abilities of our minds which are the most complex and important. In principle, every healthy child has the potential for creative development, but received knowledge and custom tend to impede it. A truly creative mind is rare. However, practical experience can often outstrip science, so here is the first instruction manual for this! Don’t be afraid: just give it a try!
As time goes on the similarity between the principles on which the games are based and a growing relationship between children and parents will become apparent. If parents maintain a balance between discipline and freedom - giving the child space for experiment and discovery, not insulating him too much from problems and difficulties but guiding him and praising his achievements - the child will learn something about life’s rules and necessities at the same time as developing his creative abilities. To this end “Development Games” can be a powerful tool if they are allowed to become a natural part of family life.
“Development Games” are not a magic formula for creating gifted children. They cannot replace the nuts and bolts of a sound education, nor can they free a child from life’s problems, but they can be an excellent method for developing a mind towards its fullest potential.
A BIT OF THEORY
For those who wish to understand how you can develop a child’s creative abilities and why you must begin as early as possible, this chapter is essential reading. This bit of theory is not only a key to understanding the principles involved in the games, nor only a basis for your own creativity in devising further games, but also a starting point for serious thought about the role of the parent or teacher in the very responsible business of fostering a child’s intellect.
What is the essence of creativity? Is it sheer brain power or is it what Marie Sklodovskaya called “feeling of nature” which transforms a working hypothesis approximating to reality into something original and successful?
“In pursuing artistic creation, man produces either harmony or chaos: either he is working in tune or out of tune with nature, and he who makes music succeeds whilst he who creates discord fails - this is the essence of creation.” This quotation is not from a teacher or an artist but from a scientist, the metallurgist V.E.Grum-Grjimailo (1864-1928). 
Like most parents, we did not devise a theory for raising our children but just got carried away bringing them up and helping their minds grow over twenty years or more. We developed our own ideas about this process which in many respects turned out to be different to the common opinion. At first, this difference caused us some confusion and then it put us into disagreement with the educational establishment. Nevertheless, we kept to our way and it produced very good results in our seven children. Now we think that we must have been “in tune with nature” and because our approach succeeded so well we believe that we have no right to withhold the benefit of our experience from other parents.
Not all parents understand the abilities of their children. Only some have an inkling of the potential locked up in those young minds. Only these parents will be concerned about realising this potential. Other parents will not see why it is so important to begin the development of this potential so early and, most importantly, why there must be a different form of learning relationship between parent and child than that which is found between schoolteacher and child. If you understand how “Development Games” differ from ordinary toys and games, how they involve creativity both in the parents devising games and tasks and in the children solving, enjoying and discovering, then you will find how rich the child’s environment can be and how fruitful the parents’ efforts can be.
CREATIVE AND EXECUTIVE ABILITIES
People perform countless different activities every day - small and large, simple and complex - and every activity can pose problems more or less difficult. In all this diversity and apparent incompatibility, these activities can be divided into two groups: familiar and unfamiliar, or more simply, old and new. For example, the secretary types a letter, or the driver drives a bus. They are performing the professional tasks which they know very well, for which they have studied or been trained and in which they have acquired good experience during their careers. The tasks they perform and the decisions they make in the course of their professional duties are well known to them, and this familiar work we may call executive activity. In learning their jobs, people develop their natural executive abilities: attention, memory, the skills of imitation and then of reproduction or copying. Eventually, the ultimate executive ability comes into play: the conversion of a familiar function into a habitual or automatic one which can be done quickly and efficiently, without monopolising the attention. This ability enables the secretary to speak whilst typing and the driver to make a route announcement whilst driving. 
Let us take this a stage further. What happens when the secretary is given a document for typing which must be laid out in a particular way? This is not an automatic activity: this particular job has not arisen before, it is a new task. Similarly, when the driver arrives at the garage one morning and finds that the bus does not start, he knows that the fault could be in any number of places: ignition, wiring, fuel system etc. No instructor can have predicted all possible faults and have taught their remedy to the drivers in his training class. In this case the non-starting bus poses a new task. Like the secretary, our driver has to think by himself to find a solution. These may not be difficult tasks but they are essentially original or creative ones nevertheless.
The range of difficulty of creative tasks is very wide: compare page layout or fault-finding in an engine to the design of a new motor or a scientific discovery. The essence, however, is similar: in solving all these problems there is a creative act - finding a new idea to fit a novel situation. 
Here you will need different mental skills to those discussed before: 
observation, comparison, analysis, combination, association and linkage, and the ability to extract principles. Together, these comprise the creative abilities. More complex than the executive abilities, they are unique to the human being. Many executive functions can be delegated to animals or specially designed machines.
In life, of course, all this is much more complex since a simple division of executive and creative activities is not always possible. Human activity usually involves both executive and creative processes in varying proportions. A job on a production line or machine tool involves much less creative ability than the job of a skilled technician, engine repairer or inventor for example. Creativity pervades their work because it constantly poses them new problems. Nevertheless, however creative our occupations are, we all encounter new problems throughout our lives.
WHO NEEDS CREATIVE ABILITIES?
It might at first seem irrational to suggest that everyone’s creative abilities should be more highly developed, particularly as creativity itself can make life difficult and can involve real sacrifice. However, overcoming such difficulties can give great pleasure and satisfaction, and creative activity always attracts people of all ages to itself. Moreover, since we are all living in an age of unprecedented technological progress, life in all respects is becoming more complex and varied. Traditional habits are everywhere being rendered obsolete. In the face of problems large and small we need versatility, adaptability and nimbleness of mind if we are to keep up this constant reorientation. Typical of this need for adaptability is modern industry. Here, new professions are always arising whilst old-fashioned monotonous jobs are in decline. A person with a creative mind can not only more easily change to a new job but can also discover the rewarding side of any occupation, thereby taking an interest in it and making it fruitful.
Human progress depends on the quantity and quality of creatively developed minds, on their ability to extend the achievements of science, technology and industry. But must we all be creators? Yes - perhaps not all to the same degree, but without doubt we would all benefit. Most people will ask, however, where we will find so much native talent and natural ability. They will say that Nature is not that generous in her gifts, that genius is as rare as diamonds. Is this true?
WHETHER NATURE IS GENEROUS IN GIFTS OF TALENT
Fortunately, the Human Race can solve very difficult problems. Diamonds may be rare, but we have solved the mystery of how they are generated by Nature. Not only this, but Man has learnt how to make artificial diamonds. If the origin and generation of one of Nature’s greatest mineral treasures has been discovered, then we should expect that the origin and generation of Nature’s greatest mental treasure is discoverable too. Small wonder that there is research in this field in every developed country in the world. The results of these researches are amazing. Biologists estimate that of the 15 billion cells of the human brain only 3 to 5% are active. Similarly, sociologists are agreed that the human brain carries huge unexploited potential and that genius is not a freak or deviation from the average as was always believed in the past, but merely the highest development of natural abilities inherent in the average brain. 
It looks, then, as if Nature is generous to every healthy child in gifts of potential. Any such child could reach the highest level of creativity, but in practice we see a different story. How many tears are shed by children struggling with learning? How many parents are there whose children have problems at school? How often do parents resign themselves to the thought that you have to be born clever? It is now well known that in the genes of a foetus are encoded many of the individuals future characteristics: skin and hair colour, the shape of the face and so on. However, are intellectual traits similarly encoded? For many years it was generally thought, and by some still is, that intellectual abilities depend on heredity but the Russian geneticists N.Dubinin and U.Shevchenko contend that mental development is not laid down in the genes. Rather, it is fixed in the social programme which is passed on by upbringing, environment and social interaction. This social input is becoming more complex each generation.
What does experience show us of this? Children who are mentally well-developed before starting school do well at school. Usually, it is enough to give school-beginners a few tests to determine who will be good learners, who average and who will have problems. Some already have enquiring minds, others do not. Some display creative potential whilst others have none discernible. When did this difference in mental ability begin to happen? Studies of pre-school children have shown that amongst very young infants there is scarcely any difference in mental ability. This is when the field is equal. So, if you want to set your child on the path to good results at school and beyond, you need to start developing his mind well before school - from birth even. 
Which abilities can be encouraged in a baby? When the first experiments in teaching babies to swim were conducted, the purpose was to study physical development only, not intellectual development. Under the banner “Swim before you walk” it was shown that at 8 months old, babies could be taught to swim, dive to the bottom of a pool for a toy and stay 9 minutes in the water without the assistance of an adult. But what was absolutely unexpected was that the young swimmers later on showed above-average intellectual development. Similarly, American scientists conducted an experiment in teaching newborn babies to walk. Six brave mothers took part. Before feeding, each baby was supported in a standing position on a table. It was striking that the babies shifted from foot to foot: a “stepping instinct”. Moreover, it turned out that these babies were walking normally at 6 or 7 months old rather than the usual 12. Again, these children eventually showed an above-average intellect.
When we were bringing up our family we did not know about these experiments, but coincidentally we encouraged physical exercise and gymnastics very early on in our children. We must have been in tune with nature. I remember putting my fingers in our newborn baby’s hands and being amazed at the strength of their grip: I could raise him up to a sitting position or hold him a little way above the cot. When each baby reached three months I fixed up a horizontal bar in the pram and cot which they usually immediately used to sit up and to try to stand. Then, if I gave the baby my fingers, he grasped them at once and I could swing him up to my chest. When, at 4-6 months, the babies began to crawl we let them out of the cot and allowed them free range in the home. Huge and challenging distances were opened up to them: to Mum in the kitchen, to Dad in the workshop. There were a lot of unknown obstacles to negotiate: sports equipment in one room, for example. All this gave them a rich and diverse field of research. Later on, we were not surprised when we read about “early and free crawling” as a very important factor in a child’s early development. Probably also of great importance were factors such as an early acquaintance with letters and numbers, from age 1 ½ to 2 years, on wooden cubes and plastic shapes and later with blackboard and chalk and pencil and paper; and an early introduction to the tools and materials in the workshop. While we were watching how fast our little ones were developing, how much earlier than usual they learnt different skills, it was brought home to us time and time again how the first few years of life can display a richness we never dreamt of. From birth to the age of three seems to us to contain as much development as age three to adulthood. This means that the first few years of life are the most valuable and the most crucial, so parents must use those years to their fullest potential. Because it is in those very years that the child is most dependent on Mum and Dad it is of the greatest importance what they choose to do for his development and what priority they give the various factors which can influence a growing mind.
DON’T WASTE THE CRUCIAL YEARS!
Unfortunately, during the first few years of a baby’s life most parents pay attention only to the routine of physical care: feeding, washing, dressing and so on. They give no particular attention to his intellectual development. “What difference does it make,” they might ask, “at what age he starts to walk, when he starts to play with building blocks, when he picks up a pencil and draws on paper for the first time, when he starts to count and read? What’s the hurry? The time will come and he will learn everything.” 
In reality, this is far from the truth. Children who learn to read before going to school, for example, study much better than others. For them, learning is usually very easy. For a 3 -4 year old to learn to read is a lot easier than it is for a 6-7 year old. The younger child learns it like a game and it is a pleasure. Child’s play! For the 6-7 year old the lesson is harder learnt and is usually done under an adult’s pressing.
How does a child learn the mother tongue? If a baby hears adults speaking from the day of his birth, if his parents speak to him constantly and encourage his response and repeat simple words, then towards the end of the first year he will speak his first words. After another year he will easily be able to make up simple phrases. Between the ages of 2 and 5, in the opinion of K.Chukovsky, every child is a genius linguist. However, this relates only to normally-developing children. If, during his first year, a child very seldom hears human conversation, if nobody inspires his need to speak, then the acquisition of language is retarded. You can see this in some children’s homes where there is little contact with adults. Predominantly in the company of their own age-group, the children begin to speak as much as three years late. More importantly, learning their first language is slow and difficult and this leaves scars on their general development. Years later, they often have learning difficulties. Even with diligence, they are significantly behind their contemporaries.
There are more than fifty cases known to science in which babies were brought up by animals. Sometimes these children were brought back to human society but usually this return proved tragic. If the child was older than 6-8 years there was no possibility of having a normal human personality. It was not even possible to teach them to speak intelligibly. Why? What happened to the capacity to learn speech?
It transpires that this capacity does not remain unchanged. A child’s brain, which at birth has only 25% of the adult’s brain mass, grows very fast, doubling its mass by 9 months and tripling it by 2 ½ years. At the age of 7 brain mass is 90% of that of the adult. However, this increase in size and number of cells is unconnected to the nature of the child’s activities. Both highly intelligent and below-average children have no significant difference in brain mass. By ontrast, the qualitative differences - that is, effectiveness of thought - between the developed and the underdeveloped children’s minds are huge. 
One possible explanation for this is that brain power is dependent not on the sheer number of brain cells but on the number of connections being made between cells. Every child has, from birth, a brain capable of a very rapid network of cell connections but this only begins to function when it receives the necessary stimuli or biological signals. The younger the child, the easier it is to make the cell connections. With age it becomes more difficult and we observe the phenomenon of a non-reversible shrinkage of potential further development. In the work of the Swedish neurobiologist Holger Heden we find pure biological confirmation of this phenomenon. Investigation at the molecular level shows that, for its full development, the brain needs, especially in the early stages, not only suitable nutrition, but also stimulation. This stimulation can be provided by the process of learning. Deprived of either of these inputs - feeding or stimulation - the cells fail to make proper connections. They become, metaphorically, empty shells. Ultimately they atrophy. 
This is precisely why it proved impossible to teach speech to the children brought up by animals and, at the other extreme, why we see some cases of extremely highly developed children.
If a child’s life is reduced to a mere biological existence, given food, shelter and a bed, then only a limited number of neural connections are made active in his brain and only a small part of his potential is realised. Deprive a child of the stimuli of family, custom and exploration in his pre-school years, then you deprive him of the proper sequence of a full intellectual development and condemn him to the slow lane of learning in which a huge expenditure of time and effort will ultimately produce poor results. We recognise that this experience is, to a certain extent, the norm. That is why it is essential to encourage every child’s development as early as possible and why the first years of life are the most fertile, when sensible care on the part of the parents yields the richest fruit - fruit which will flourish throughout life and which, with the best will in the world, cannot be grafted on later in life.
HOW WE SHOULD DEVELOP THE CREATIVE ABILITIES
The first prerequisite, then, of the successful development of a child’s creative abilities is an early beginning. To be more specific, the first stages would be exercise, swimming, crawling and assisted walking. A little later: counting, reading and an early acquaintance with different tools and materials. All this can be started earlier than is currently standard. When and how should the development of the creative abilities be started?
A good question. Nobody asks when to begin teaching a child to speak. Nobody thinks, “Is it time to start talking to baby?” They just do it from the day of his birth when, we think, he does not yet understand anything. Time passes, five then ten months go by, and only then does baby say his first word. The conditions for beginning speech had been supplied well in advance. They precede the development of speaking; they stimulate it all the time. The maturing of the relevant portions of the brain finds its result in speech. Similarly, in musicians’ families where from birth the children are exposed to music and very early chance their arm on musical instruments, the children acquire a very highly developed musical faculty. In painters’ families it is a visual ability which is stimulated. In a mathematician’s family it is numerical ability. In the same way, it should be possible to accelerate the development of other abilities by surrounding the child from its earliest months with suitable conditions. Our purpose is to create the conditions for the development of very diverse creative abilities from the beginning of a child’s life. Thus, the second essential condition for the development of creative abilities is the provision of a suitable atmosphere and relevant stimuli from the first months of the child’s life.
When Aleksey, our first child, reached his first birthday and was beginning to speak, he was given a set of alphabet cubes. How surprised we were when we found that by his second birthday he already knew half the letters of the alphabet! At 2 ½ he knew all of them; at 2 years and 8 months he was reading his first words. Our part in this process was merely this: we named the letters if he asked and we showed our enjoyment when he pointed out the letters he knew on shopsigns, in books and in newspapers. For the rest of our children we prepared not only letter cubes but also an alphabet chart for the wall; and we had ready to hand a blackboard and chalk and books with big letters. We found that all of them began to read at 3 - 4 years old, very easily, without any pushing or special lessons. Then reading became for them a source not just of information but also of enjoyment - so much so that now you cannot tear them away from books. In other pursuits besides reading we tried to create an atmosphere which was one step ahead of the child’s development. There were books on many different subjects; maps and pictures; gym equipment like ropes, ladders, wallbars, rings and so on; a workshop with tools and materials; simple equipment such as measuring devices; building blocks and bricks and of course our Development Games. We mounted little expeditions for which we allowed the children to do many things independently: from the planning and preparation to mapreading and pitching tents. All this significantly expanded the world around them, widening their knowledge and improving their abilities in a wide range of activities. Convinced that force is the enemy of creativity, we deliberately allowed our children great freedom in choosing what activities to do and when to do them. We tried to play and work with them as much as we could, praising each step ahead and every little success, because we did not want to miss out on their progress.
The results surprised us. The children were growing up to be independent and inquisitive, skilled and quick-witted, with strength and stamina. School was easy for them: they were up to three years ahead of their age-group. Anthony, for instance, finished secondary school when he was 13 instead of the usual 17. He went on to a Chemistry Technical College where he finished at 16 with the highest honours diploma. He completed his studies in the chemistry department of Moscow University. Ann finished secondary school at 15; our youngest daughter, Luba, graduated from Librarians’ College at 16 and, with special permission, began to work before getting her papers. They also devoted plenty of time to extracurricular pursuits, sport and gymnastics for example. Julia and Ann won the Junior Certificate for acrobatics without disrupting their home life or schoolwork. Indeed, they were just like any other children: they loved noisy games, adventure films, naughty tricks and fairy stories. They enjoyed their childhood.
We now know other couples and some clubs of young families in various towns and cities who share our ideas of creating favourable conditions for their children’s development. They get amazing results even in the difficult conditions of a modern Russian flat! Many parents give up some luxury in the home to make room for gym equipment and struggle to give their children the precious opportunity for a good start in life.
The third important condition for the development of creative abilities follows from the nature of the creative process itself. That is, to obtain the best results, one must apply the maximum effort. It has been proved in many fields that human beings are most successful when they are at the limit of their capability. We can gradually raise this limit higher and higher. This fact is well known to chess players who prefer to practise their game with players as good as them or better. For the growing child, interestingly enough, this condition of maximum effort is most thoroughly achieved when he is already crawling but not yet speaking. The process of learning at this stage is very intensive: the child cannot ask anyone’s advice, nor can he rely on outside knowledge. He must find out everything for himself. At this stage the little one, more than before or after, has to be creative in order to solve many problems absolutely new to him, independently and without any relevant prior knowledge. Of course, to derive the most from this potentially very fruitful period, the child must be left, as far as is possible without risk to health and safety, to his own devices.
Consider a ten-month-old baby who wants to retrieve a ball which has rolled under a sofa. He lies on his chest, looking: the ball is far off, near the wall. He stretches out his hand but cannot reach it. He cannot crawl under the sofa because it is too low. After a few unsuccessful attempts to reach the ball from the front our little hero tries at the side; but here a stool is in the way. He puts his arm in the narrow gap between wall and stool but again he fails: his fingers just touch the ball, but he cannot grasp it. Twice more he tries, still without result. Already disappointed by his failures, the baby disconsolately draws back his hand but in so doing moves the stool aside, widening the gap between it and the wall. The ball can easily be seen through the gap. Our little friend pushes the stool further away so that where there was a narrow gap there is now ample room into which he can squeeze. The baby immediately crawls in, pushing the stool yet further out of the way. The ball now in his hands, our young engineer is smiling, though only a few minutes before he was ready to cry.
Observe the baby overcoming these obstacles: how intense his concentration, how fast he develops the intensive mental effort which in an amazingly short time converts a fresh childish mind into a tirelessly inquisitive one. Here you cannot be in danger of overstraining the child if you keep to our fourth condition, which in fact we have already touched on. You must allow the child great freedom to set his own schedule: to start, continue or stop a particular activity, and to choose a method. Here the child’s wish, his interest and enthusiasm will provide a reliable protection against overstraining his capabilities. The stretching of his abilities will be both healthily stimulated and safely limited by his interest and enthusiasm.
This grant of freedom, however, should not exclude someone to oversee or lend a hand where necessary. This is the fifth essential condition for the development of creative abilities: help where necessary but no interference. This is not as simple as it may seem: there is a fine line to be drawn between useful freedom and a licence for unruly behaviour, and between necessary help and prompting. You must not do for the child what he can do for himself; you must not think for him when he can solve a problem himself. Unfortunately, prompting is a very common kind of “help” to children - in games, hobbies and homework - but it only ever makes things worse!
I remember an occasion when Aleksey was two; he was carrying a saucepan of milk to the larder door and stopped in perplexity: How can I open it? His grandmother hurried to help him and was about to open the door for him when I said “Stop, mother. Let him work it out for himself.” I thought he should not be deprived of the difficulty and pleasure of making a small but real discovery. “Work it out for himself!” Grandmother replied, laughing, “Just put the saucepan down first, silly!” Too considerate, she did not let her grandson think for himself. No discovery happened. It is “help” like this which could kill the tender shoots of creativity. 
What should have happened? Alex has to open the door, but both hands are full. I am nearby, but I do not intervene. Instead I ask “How are you going to open the door?” Alex tries to open it with his foot, but has no luck. He tries to hold the saucepan against his chest but the milk begins to spill. He can hold the pan with one hand because it is not heavy, but then he cannot reach the door handle. I encourage him, “Well, Alex, let’s think.” He puts the pan on the floor and on tiptoe opens the door, but the pan is now in the way. He moves it to one side and now the problem is solved! Alex smiles; everyone is pleased. A little discovery has occurred.
A favourite saying of K Ziolkovsky, pioneer of the theory of space travel, hints at the secret of the development of the creative mind: “First I discovered the truth known to many people; then I discovered the truth known to only a few; finally, I began to open up the truth which nobody else knew.” If this is how the mind of an inventor and researcher develops, then it must also be the way the creative side of all our intellects can be developed. Our duty is to set our children on this track. The Development Games are expressly designed for this purpose.
WHAT ARE DEVELOPMENT GAMES?
WHY CHOOSE THAT TOY?
Imagine a huge shop called “Kingdom of Toys”: it looks as if everything must be here, catering for every taste and age. Soft toys, mechanical and electrical toys, musical instruments, board games - a sea of colours and on it a fleet of children’s wishes. “Please, Dad...”, “Mother, can I have one?” accompanied by the entreating eyes of a child to which it is hard not to yield. Already your hand is reaching for your wallet. Wait a minute! Lets try to understand what influences you when you buy a new toy or game for the children. Is it at the child’s wish alone or is it perhaps partly for your own peace and quiet? Maybe your neighbour’s child has that toy and you feel that your little one deserves it just as much. Is the toy just a bit of fun or is it the fashionable one to have? Is it useful; is it safe? 
All right, you have bought it. Expensive, shiny and all too real. A new toy is always a joy; but after an hour or two - in the best cases a couple of days - it is cast aside as no longer interesting. Where does the fault lie: with the toy, the parent or the child? This is a very good question. As the physiologist H.Hogland said: “Understanding the atom is easy compared to understanding children’s play.”
Many books have been written about games; there are teams of specialists designing new games; a large sector of manufacturing industry is busy making them. All this activity is not devoted solely to giving pleasure to children. Toys and games are amongst the strongest means of cultivating the child’s role in society. The game is one of the basic structures of a child’s world. Different aspects of a child’s personality are moulded in play: it serves emotional needs, it provides intellectual stimulation and physical exercise, it builds the character. You think that you are just buying a toy - no, you are designing a human personality!
SOCIAL CONTEXT
Most games, in one way or another, but always in an easily understood way, model life itself. Naturally, each era is reflected in its most popular games and toys. Our period is characterised by rapid technological progress and this has been mirrored in the toyshops. Now that we are all surrounded by so much technology and ever-improving equipment, we all need more developed creative abilities in order to cope, adapt and get the best from life. Do we find our children being adequately prepared for this by the toys and games available, as well as by their upbringing and education, or are the toyshops full of things which only superficially refer to modern society?
Consider this: which toys are most often bought for girls? Many different dolls, dolls houses and furniture, miniature sewing machines and washing machines. Little models of family life with which many girls will be dealing with for the rest of their lives. Of course, there is nothing bad in this introduction to adult life and housework - it’s useful. However, what is bad is that so often girls’ toys are limited to this. Why is Lego a more popular present for boys? Jigsaw puzzles are considered suitable for both girls and boys, but construction toys - why can’t girls play them? Boys are inundated with toy guns, cars, aeroplanes, lego, mecchano, model kits and remote-control toys, many of which would be useful for the intellectual development of any child. With the help of a game like Lego it is definitely possible to develop many sides of the creative abilities but such games are not always used in the most effective way. Moreover, so often what is suitable for the 2 - 3 year old is no good for the school-age child.
THE NEED FOR A NEW TYPE OF GAME
Parents usually start buying lego or similar toys when their children are eight or nine. What filled the gap until then? What can you give a child to play with at the age of one, two and three which provides as much interest and enjoyment as lego will but which is also geared to the youngest age-group? What will give food for thought and still be sufficiently complex as the child grows? Remember that a child’s mind grows very quickly, so the complexity of the toys that you give him should increase at a similar pace, staying always one step ahead of his ability. A good game might achieve this for a matter of weeks or months. It is a rare game that will do this for years.
So often you see a child who has lots of toys but doesn’t play with any of them. Why does this happen? There can be several reasons but most often it is because each toy is drained of its interest. The novelty, which was what attracted the child to it in the first place, has gone. So often a ready-made toy cannot give a child material for thought for very long. It provides no continuing mental activity. From this point of view, a better bet would be some building blocks, for example, which give interest and enjoyment for longer because of their versatility. However, though a toy like this has many possibilities, its potential for encouraging development is limited. It does not motivate or inspire thought beyond a certain point. It does not demand any deeper thinking or effort at the limit of the child’s abilities. At best it satisfies his current appetite, without nourishing his creative development at an age when time is precious. What is the answer? What can be done in the comfortable modern home where there is nothing designed for children’s activities. It is clear that there is a need for a new kind of game, one that will model the creative process itself and create an atmosphere suitable for intellectual development.
DEVELOPMENT GAMES - BASIC FEATURES
Development Games are a new kind of game. Though very diverse, they all spring from the ideas we have been discussing and they all share the same basic features. The first four points describe the essence of the games; the next six describe their distinctive features.
1) Each game consists of a set of tasks which is solved with the help of cubes, building blocks and various shapes made of card or wood. 
2) The tasks are set in different forms: such as models, pictures or drawings, or instructions either written or verbal. This acquaints the child with diverse methods of transferring information. 
3) As is common with traditional games, the tasks are arranged in approximate order of increasing difficulty. 
4) The tasks have a very wide range of difficulty: from those achievable by a 2 - 3 year old up to hose which most adults would find taxing. Because of this, the games can provide interest well into adulthood. 
5) The slow increase in difficulty of the tasks enables the child to progress and to improve his abilities without anyone’s help. This contrasts with standard educational practice in which everything is explained and controlled, thus fostering only the executive abilities. 
6) It is therefore against the theory of the games to explain the method of solving any of the tasks. So, the games only work without prompting, either by gesture, by example or by hint because by discovering the solution in practice the child is learning to find out what he needs to know from the world around him.
7) You cannot necessarily expect a solution to any task at the first attempt, since the child may not have reached the required ability to solve it. Consequently, you may have to wait - perhaps a day, perhaps a month, maybe more.
8) The solution of each task is not abstract, but is an arrangement or construction of given objects and is therefore physical, visible and tangible. 
It enables the child to compare the task to the solution and thus to check the correctness of the solution by himself.
9) The games are not restricted to the tasks laid down in the booklets. New tasks and games can be devised by the players and this will stimulate creative ability of a different order.
10)Development Games can help anyone improve his mind by encouraging effort at the limit of his ability where development occurs fastest.
SUMMARY
Development Games thus combine two important features. First, the basic educational principle of proceeding from the simple to the complicated by means of easy stages; and second, the stimulation of independent creative activity paced to the ability of whichever person chooses to play them. This combination enables us to fulfil the five prerequisites for the development of creative abilities which we discussed earlier:
a) Development Games nourish the growth of creative abilities from a very early age.
b) The ladder of tasks ensures that the player can always be faced with a task just beyond his present level of development.
c) Every time a player climbs another rung on the ladder of tasks he will be thinking at the peak of his ability, and will therefore develop more quickly.
d) Development Games involve diverse activities which appeal to children because they are inherently interesting and fun to play. These games liberate creative thinking in the free atmosphere of play. 
e) Parents playing these games with their children will unwittingly acquire a very important skill - that of restraint or self-control: not interrupting a child’s thought, nor preventing him from making decisions and then applying them himself.
Whilst Development Games develop in general the creative abilities, each individual game and each way of playing it will develop different characteristics: attentiveness, concentration, memory (especially visual memory), the ability to classify and organise, to combine and construct, to follow the laws of nature. Lastly, the child will learn two important skills: finding errors and thinking in three dimensions. Taken together, these intellectual features form the sort of mind we usually call bright, inventive or creative.
AN INVITATION TO PARENTS
Quite a lot depends on parents applying their creativity to the games. For example, what do you do if your child reaches the most difficult tasks of a particular game and solves them? Well, each game allows the possibility of improvement and variation, and the addition of new tasks. This will encourage the development of not only creative but also technical and mathematical abilities. The child can be involved in this process. Indeed, most of the games bear the imprint of our own children’s creativity. Nearly all of the Geocube tasks were devised by them. We would like to think that, once familiarised with Development Games through having played it yourselves or with your children, you will be keen to help improve the games and thereby continue to develop the creative abilities of the next generation. 

RULES
The rules listed below are a summary of long experience collected gradually from having played the game with many different children. Some of them, (1) to (7) in particular, are strict. Unless they are properly adhered to, the games will be little different from the familiar type of puzzle, the “executive toy” or the standard educational aid. The other rules, (8) to (16) are more in the nature of advice and can be applied more flexibly than the first seven.
1) The game must be fun for both the child and the adult. Every achievement made by the child is a success for the parent too. Enjoy the games. Encourage and inspire your child and his future success is guaranteed. Just think how delighted children are when they make an adult laugh or smile.
2) Try to interest the child in the game but don’t force him to play or go on playing until he is bored or tired. Also, don’t ridicule or draw attention to his failures. “Dimwit” or “You’re no good at this, are you?” will only make matters worse. Never embarrass a child in his play.
3) Development Games are creative games: all the tasks must be done independently by each child. Have patience and do not prompt either by word, by gesture or by action. Allow the child to think, try things out and find errors by himself. 
4) To determine the relative difficulty of a task before trying it on a child, have a go at it yourself. It is also worth recording how fast it takes you, as well as the child, to do the task. At a later date, try the task again and record the new times. This provides a yardstick to measure improvement.
5) Make sure you begin with tasks within the child’s capabilities. To start with a success, however small, is essential. Nothing is more off-putting than a game which seems impossible even to start. Another way to start is for the child to try just a simple part of a more complex task to give him some idea of the ladder. 
6) If a child cannot cope with a task it means that you overestimated the level of his ability. Take a break from the game and after a few days begin from an easier stage. Even better is for the child to select a task for himself, feeling the measure of his own ability. In this, as in all his play, don’t hurry him. 
7) If there is more than one child in the family, it is best if each of them has a set of the games. Then they can play alone without quarrelling over the gamepieces, or together with the possibility of races or comparisons of progress.
8) As to which order in which to introduce the games, there is no hard and fast rule, although we recommend MAGICUBES to begin with. In this game, all that is required to begin is that the child can recognise basic colours and simple forms. In general, just observe the child at play, record his progress in a special diary and try to determine which game would suit the next stage of his development. 
9) The child’s interest will, naturally enough, come in waves or spurts. So, when his interest wanes, put the game away for a while - a week, a month, perhaps longer. Then occasionally bring it out to show guests or your child’s friends and show them enthusiastically how to play. This should revive your little one’s interest. Returning to the game after a lapse of months could be for him like meeting a longlost friend. It is important to achieve some progress in the game in each wave of interest.
10) Following on from this, you should keep the game special. Don’t put it on the same level of availability as all the other toys. A rare fruit is all the sweeter. A good sign is if the child asks you to get the game out or challenges you to a game. For this purpose, it is a good idea to store the boxes prominently but not accessibly for little fingers; perhaps on a high shelf.
11) For the younger child, 1 ½ to 3 years old, enliven each game by giving names and themes to the models, patterns, pictures and figures. Invent a storyline which is resolved or completed when a task is solved.
12) Remember that the more developed one feature of the child’s character is, the stronger will be his desire to show it off. The strong lad wants to fight, the fast one wants to race; whilst the weak or slow child won’t be keen. Similarly, with Development Games, the child who is reluctant to play probably has underdeveloped creative faculties or is under the impression that he is no good at it. In both cases, what is needed is encouragement: prizes for little successes and failures swiftly forgotten.
13) Try to create an atmosphere of easygoing freedom in which to play Development Games. Don’t restrain children’s natural boisterousness and desire for movement: allow them to jump with excitement and run around.
14) When the printed tasks have become easy for the player, set him the task of devising a new problem: a new picture or shape to create.
15) Try timing the solving process once in a while; a race is a good idea too. Fast-learning children will, with practice, start beating adults from the age of about seven. When this happens, accept defeat with grace. Your child will consider this an important prize, but don’t worry - your authority will not be adversely affected!
16) You can always devise additional rules and interesting variations.
Good luck!

FIVE DEVELOPMENT GAMES

1 MAGICUBES
This game consists of 16 identical cubes. Each cube is painted in four colours in a different arrangement on each side. This allows you to make from them patterns in one, two, three or four colours in a huge number of permutations. Many of these patterns suggest in a simple way the shapes of familiar things, like animals or household objects. There are three kinds of tasks for the player:
a) Making a pattern with the cubes from a given picture in the booklet.
b) Drawing a picture based on an arrangement of cubes. 
c) Designing and naming new patterns (mostly from 9 or all 16 cubes, which produce squares). This is clearly the most creative version.
This game develops very effectively the abilities of analysis, synthesis and 
combination; that is, working out the component parts of a design and how to 
construct it from a set of simple materials. Also, very importantly, the 
game teaches young children to identify abstract depictions of familiar things 
and then to create abstract representations of other things themselves.
HOW TO PLAY
Method of play depends on age and level of development. Children of 1 ½ - 2 years have a very keen ability for imitation: they like to copy their elders. So, play the game in front of them, showing them how interesting and fun it is for you. Children of 3-4 years, who know the colours and their names and can find a particular shape or facet, will also have an opinion of the attractiveness of a pattern or picture. With this child in mind, put the 16 cubes in a striking pattern in the box so that the first time he sees the game he is captivated. Together, you can admire it and say, “What do you think, can we learn to make patterns as pretty as this?...Of course we can!” Then start with task A1 (series A, task 1) which we call “The Tracks”, “Can you make this picture? How quickly can you do it?” Praise him when he has finished, and try another. He will probably expect the next one to be just as easy! Go from task to task, noting attention, speed, precision and memory. As to how many tasks you can do in one session, it could be two, five or ten, all depending on the mood and ability of the child. If the child is happy, don’t spoil his fun; but don’t forget that you should try to end the game before his interest wanes. Keep an eye on his degree of attention and keep him keen for the next time. When you do play again, start with a few patterns that you did at the end of the last time to provide a warm-up and a guide to improvement. Then introduce some new tasks. Starting with something you know the child can do will boost his confidence. You are always on the right course if you give a child the feeling “I can” rather than “I cannot”. Any task which causes difficulty at first must be rewarded with special praise or prize when it is finally solved, and perhaps recorded in a special diary or on a chart. If played, albeit briefly, every day, the game will accustom a child to daily learning - we hope in an enjoyable way. You could compare it to father’s or mother’s daily duty of going to work. This will stand a child in good stead when he starts at school.
When the game has become fun for the child and he starts to say “Lets play with the cubes; lets make pictures” you can start to give the game to him for independent play. This will not only free your time, but the child will learn to discipline himself: judging his own results, organising his time and estimating his power and ability. All this will contribute towards an increasingly creative and independent mind. In our family the children were allowed to play the game on their own when they were able to put all the cubes back in the box and bring it to me or to their mother. Even in independent play, though, the rules must be kept to; so keep an eye on the proceedings, like an occasional referee.
If you have several sets of the game, you can hold a competition. It is best played with three or more players who are all familiar with the game and who are all of a roughly equal standard. 
DESIGNING YOUR OWN PATTERNS
One more way to play MAGICUBES, and perhaps the most creative way, is to design new patterns. In our family, we usually did this when each child had come to the end of series C, having completed all the tasks illustrated in the booklet. To make any new pattern is easy, but for the game it should be in the shape of a familiar object or be attractive in some way. 
Children are very proud when they work out a pretty pattern of their own. The new design must immediately be recorded, either by you or by the child, otherwise it might be lost. All the animal shapes in the booklet were created by our children. The new patterns can also be given names by their inventors. Ask the child to draw or paint the new design on to cardboard or into a sketch pad. One of these pictures might make a suitable present for a child to give his mother. In our family it is a tradition for each child to give his mother a present on his birthday to commemorate the fact that she gave him life. And, as she says, the best gifts are always those that the giver has himself made.
On the following pages are five sets of tasks:
Series A - Pictures using four Magicubes
Series B - Pictures using nine Magicubes
Series C - Pictures using sixteen Magicubes
Series D - Letters of the alphabet and numbers using anything from four to sixteen Magicubes.
Series E - More challenging tasks, all of them devised by children. They show easily recognisable objects, symbols, birds and animals, from a cannon to an elephant! 
2 MULTICUBE
This game introduces children to an understanding of 3-dimensional space. An early development of spatial thinking takes a child well beyond the average, since in schools 3D work is taught relatively late. From the experience of parents who started playing this game with their children just one year before school entry we learnt that these children then had no difficulty in any branch of maths. You can easily see how wonderfully wide is the range of difficulty of the Multicube tasks; how it will have a strong appeal to two-year-olds, five-year-olds, teenagers and adults. The last few tasks illustrated were devised not by the author but by his grown-up children. For people inquisitive about mathematics, the MULTICUBE is a fruitful subject for research and has been found to be an excellent model for teaching geometry, graph theory, binomials etc.
What does the MULTICUBE consist of? At first glance, one would think that all 27 cubes are different. However, after classifying the cubes according to the three colours and six surfaces each, you will find that there are three uniques, each of two colours, and eight groups of three. You would very soon discover this anyway, if you tried any of the more complex tasks.
Indeed, before offering this game to a child, you must try it yourself. Put the cubes on a table and, timing yourself with a watch with a second hand, make a cube with a single colour on each outer surface. If at the first attempt you succeed in two minutes, your spatial thinking is developed to an excellent standard. The average result is 6 to 10 minutes. When you have finished, make sure that the underside is all of a colour by picking the cube up as a whole. Perhaps it was too early to be proud! You will notice that mistakes are very obvious - the cube almost shouts out “There’s a mistake here!” It is a very demanding game in this way, but how beautifully it teaches accuracy!
Having tried the MULTICUBE yourself, consider whether the child’s abilities are ready yet to cope with the colour relationships involved and whether he can make the basic constructions which are necessary to start the series of tasks. Start too early and your time will be wasted. At this stage one of the other Development Games would be more suitable. The MULTICUBE tasks really are difficult and demand much time and concentration. Because of this, you should set only one or two, perhaps three tasks per session. They can be set either with a picture or verbally - for example, “Big red cube with horizontal blue slices inside”. Try both methods. Obviously, pictures are easier for children to understand but the verbal method encourages them to think in a highly organised and practical way.
As with the other Development Games, your role is to watch the child counting, experimenting, testing, checking, deciding, solving. He must do this independently, with no interference from you, except when you spot his success before he has realised it; or when you commiserate in his failure and praise his success. For the younger child, you might also think of a story to enliven the task in hand. But remember, never offer suggestions or hints! We know how difficult it is to be silent when the little one is struggling to find an answer. How easy it is to give a ready-made solution. To do this, however, is of no lasting benefit: your child will become no cleverer. In our family, this rule was so ingrained that it was a serious offence to prompt or give an answer. “I wanted to do it myself, but you told me the answer!” This often led to tears. It is all a matter of patience. As adults, we are used to prompts in all walks of life; in Development Games we must learn to control this tendency.
With practice there will be improvement not only in solving more and more difficult tasks, but in how fast the familiar tasks can be solved. The game thus provides a wide scope for improving both depth of thought and speed of thought. For the younger child it is also an excellent way of improving manual dexterity and co-ordination. For puzzle No. 33, we offer the following guideline for the experienced player:
1 ½ - 2 minutes satisfactory 
1 - 1 ½ minutes good
under 1 minute excellent

Task No. 44 is significantly more complex than all the previous tasks, since correct colours are required not only for the outer facets but also for the internal planes. Accordingly, 
10 - 15 minutes satisfactory
5 - 10 minutes good 
3 ½ - 5 minutes excellent 
under 3 ½ minutes exceptional
The most difficult task of all is No. 60, which has only been achieved by a few people. 
It is a good idea to keep a record of a child’s achievements with the MULTICUBE: which tasks have been done, how quickly and which caused most difficulty. If all the family have a go at the MULTICUBE, you could put a chart on the wall with comparative results. This will help you to see the growing abilities of the youngsters and the point when the agile young minds begin to surpass their elders’!
3 QUADRATS
This game was derived from an ancient Chinese puzzle. The task was to make a square from a few pieces of different shapes. To the original square we added nineteen others so that there was a progression of difficulty from the very simple to the complex. We also coloured each square a different shade. The result was a game which develops colour recognition as well as the ability to combine various forms.
HOW TO PLAY QUADRATS
Unlike the other DEVELOPMENT GAMES this one does not have set tasks to work through. So, with the level of the child’s ability in mind, the parent or teacher should offer ideas for playing Quadrats. There is plenty of scope for this, as we shall see. Remember to begin with simple problems, well within the child’s capability. Early success is the best form of encouragement. It is important that, from the word go, children associate these games with the pleasure of getting something right. Not only will this make them enthusiastic and keen to continue playing and learning, but it will give parents a sense of fulfilment too. You can start a child on Quadrats at about 1 ½ years old (keep a careful eye on the little one, because at this stage he’s likely to pop the pieces in his mouth!) 
Here is one sequence of ideas for games. At each stage, a new element of complexity, and hence a new skill, is introduced.
1) Start by giving the child Quadrat number 1 (the whole square) and the bag containing the pieces of number 2. See if he can take the pieces out of the bag and put them together to make a square like number 1. If he can do this and can tell colours apart, then you should give him up to four quadrats in their bags. Can he take them out of the bags, place them colour side up and, keeping the pieces of the same colour together, form them all into squares? Can he repeat this process without you setting the task?
2) The next stage is to increase the number of quadrats used in the game. Add a couple of new ones each time you play. If the little one has made a lot of progress, you could offer six or seven quadrats new to him if you think he will be able to do most, if not all, of them. With this many squares, the child can build bigger shapes with them: a straight track or winding road; big squares of four, nine or sixteen quadrats; rectangles of six, eight, ten or twelve; a cross or letters of the alphabet.
3) Before playing, put several quadrats in one bag. The child will have to start by sorting the pieces by colour into separate piles. Then he should make the squares as usual, tackling the piles one by one. 
4) A wicked witch has mixed up ten or fifteen quadrats in a bag! They must be sorted out not only by colour but by number (each quadrat piece has a number from 1 to 20 on the back). This task would suit children of 3 to 4 years old. It will help them to learn counting and number identification. At this age they will be starting to come across numbers in other games and activities and it is important that they become as used to them as they are with the alphabet. It is a mistake to treat numbers as a difficult hurdle that cannot be jumped before school. With the help of Quadrats it will not be long before they are familiar with them, even on thermometers, clocks and rulers.
5) An even wickeder witch has jumbled up all the Quadrats!! To sort them all out and arrange them in squares in numerical order is quite a challenge - one that would suit a four to six-year-old. The next stage would be to set them out in reverse order (20 to 1) or perhaps in random order called out by an adult (e.g.: 
15, 6, 19, 8, 10 etc.).
6) When the child can cope with these more difficult tasks, you can start timing him. Be sure to agree on rules for this! For example, agree on when you should start the timer - perhaps at the moment the pieces are tipped out of the bag or box. Timing the tasks encourages more rational methods of sorting and assembling, and produces quicker solutions. The child will become better at using time efficiently. If you have more than one set of Quadrats, you can hold proper races and competitions with prizes.
7) As with the other Development Games, the final stage is to create your own games. In the case of Quadrats, this would be to make your own squares, different and perhaps more complex than Numbers 1 to 20. The child can also devise his own quadrats. The possible number is infinite!

4 BUILDING BLOCKS
This game cultivates a particular form of mental gymnastics. Not only does it develop the spatial thinking which is also encouraged by the MULTICUBE but it also acquaints children with the basic principles of technical drawing. This is a skill which will be of use in many walks of life. The first tasks can be offered to 3 - 4 year-olds, whilst the last few would be challenging for schoolchildren even if they had begun studying technical drawing. 
Three types of task are encountered in this game:
a) Building a model from a drawing.
b) Drawing a plan of a model.
c) Devising a new model and drawing the plans for them.

The third task is quite a complex activity. Indeed, this game has been praised by engineers for its useful mental exercises. Schoolchildren of 15 have commented that they realise the point of studying technical drawing after spending half an hour solving these tasks. Younger children may learn to build from the plans without guessing the technical disciplines behind the game.
LEARNING HOW TO READ PLANS
To play the game with smaller children, you could begin with this story. There was once an architect who designed a beautiful house, with many comfortable rooms and elegant decoration. Many people heard about it and wanted to build it in their home towns. Each of them summoned the architect, saying, “I have the blocks of stone, the land and the tools. Just come and show me how to build it.” What could the architect do? If he went to help the builders in Moscow, he would disappoint those in Kiev and St. Petersburg. The architect thought hard. What do you think he came up with? (This is the moment to ask the children for suggestions. They might know about plans and will say so. If not, let them think for a while and then introduce the idea of the plan.) The architect made a careful drawing of his house from several points of view so that it was clear how many blocks of stone were needed and how they should be fitted together. “You can be the builder now: take the plans and the blocks and lets build something.”
In the booklet which accompanies this game, you will find four series of tasks:

GREY PAGES
A) Pictures, not plans, of arrangements of two blocks which the smaller child will be able to do.
B) Simple constructions of more than two blocks.
C) Some tasks which demonstrate the way to read plans by placing 
a picture of a model next to its plans.
YELLOW PAGES
D) Full plans, increasingly difficult to build. Task D1 defines the three types of plan diagram. These plans consist of a viewfrom above (PLAN), the view from the front (ELEVATION) and the view from the left side (LEFT SIDE ELEVATION).
It is better to play on a low table so that the child is able to see the blocks from the three proper viewpoints. If you show him how to do this -looking from directly above, from the front and from the left side - he will catch on very quickly. So from task D2, the little master-builder will be faced with the two problems of the architect: how many blocks and how to assemble them to match exactly the plans.
DRAWING PLANS
When the child has built an interesting model by himself, he will want to remember it even after the blocks have been put away. So, tell him that he must draw plans of it so that everyone will know what a wonderful model he designed. Here you could remind him of the story of the architect and the importance of the plans. It is best to start with graph paper; each building block is 1 unit x 2 x 4 - that is, twice as wide as it is thick and twice as long as it is wide. One unit can equal one square on the graph paper.
The game can be continued with useful results throughout schoolyears. Nos. 22-30 are good for adults. In our family we had a competition once or twice a year to see who could build No. 26 the fastest and then who was the first to solve 37, 38 and 39 without stopping. 
5 GEOCUBE
We bought the original version of this game many years ago. The seven components were all the same colour and there were only a few puzzles. Having solved these we forgot the game for several years until our children found them. The older ones very quickly solved all the tasks and were soon devising new ones. Then all the family joined in and we made extra sets. The little ones were happy to make shapes with two or three parts; the older children would make use of them all. They all found, before long, that it was difficult to make a record of the models. It was then that we decided to paint each section a different colour. Now everyone could make a picture of his favourite design without any trouble. We soon accumulated several hundred drawings from which we selected 70. The game which resulted is very good for learning how to think in spatial terms and how to use complex shapes. 
The rules and method of play are very similar to those of the MULTICUBE. The child must build a model corresponding to the given picture. In those tasks for which only some of the pieces are required, two tasks are involved: firstly, the correct pieces must be selected; secondly, they must be assembled correctly. The first part is a mental analysis of the picture; the second part is a practical synthesis of the pieces. As with all the DEVELOPMENT GAMES, the child will be thinking at the limit of his capabilities, thereby encouraging the ingenuity which is the central characteristic of any creative mind.

If you would like to learn more about Development Games (how are they look like and where to get them) please send E-mail with your address to Alex Nikitin: antonik@attglobal.net
The Nikitin games and other educational materials are available from: 
http://www3.logo-verlag.de/englisch/SID=1046287110/shop/index.php3