The children accepted her challenge eagerly and developed a schedule that was not very effective. They soon realized this and then sought her advice and fashioned a more workable one, to their great satisfaction. To be sure, on such occasions some children will come up with wild or silly notions, and their peers may quickly tell them so. Unless adults treat children as sensible, their dispositions to behave sensibly cannot be strengthened. Similarly, a first grade teacher reported that, during a daily creative writing time in her class, one boy was unable to generate more than half a sentence.
Adults are likely to have difficulty producing creative stories according to a time schedule.
Self-esteem is unlikely to be fostered by easy success on a series of trivial tasks. Young children are more likely to benefit from real challenge and hard work than from frivolous one-shot activities. Their first few attempts were flawed by their use of so much masking tape to attach the four vanes to the center that a gale force wind was needed to make such a heavy instrument revolve. The children refused to give up their attempt even though their persistence interrupted the teacher's schedule of work. Their eventual success was a source of real satisfaction to them, to say nothing of the learning it provided.