How do we nurture creativity and innovation – two key future-ready skills? Both involve using our imagination and combining existing concepts to create something new that didn’t exist before.
In line with Bloom’s Taxonomy, which guides our educational approach at Maple Bear School, creative thinking is a highest-order thinking skill. At this level, students synthesize diverse ideas and concepts to generate original work. The taxonomy outlines a hierarchy of cognitive skills in which each higher level builds upon the previous ones.
Today, we’d like to give you a sneak peek — through a selection of three cherished examples — of how we nurture our students’ creativity.
📖 Bringing together literature, visual arts, and entrepreneurship
To mark Global Entrepreneurship Week (17–23 November) and Reading Day (21 November), Maple Bear students from classes 5B and 5C organized a school book fair.
The aim of the initiative was for our young entrepreneurs to raise funds to complete their project: printing the books they had already created, filled with original stories and illustrations – The Gods of 5B and The Gods of 5C.
Supported by their teachers in Bulgarian Language and Literature, Visual Arts, and Technology & Entrepreneurship, the students sold books from their personal collections as well as handmade bookmarks. This experience encouraged them to strengthen their presentation and promotional skills while engaging with visitors.
The event was a great success, energizing students with a creative and entrepreneurial spirit. Now, they are eagerly awaiting the moment their books come off the press!
Initiatives like this demonstrate how cross-curricular connections and project-based learning at Maple Bear inspire students to be active, creative, and entrepreneurial, empowering them to bring their ideas to life and to see the value their work can hold for others.
🎵 Mr. Dave’s Songwriting Club
In Mr. Dave’s songwriting club, students from grades 5 to 7 create their own music using digital tools such as GarageBand. The program integrates cross-curricular connections to Literature class through writing lyrics for their original songs. Each week, students explore rhythm, chords, melody, lyrics, and song structure, experiment with beats, and collaborate with classmates to remix and refine their tracks.
By the end of the program, students produce their own songs and perform them with confidence. Along the way, they develop creative and musical thinking and learn to express themselves through their work. This all takes place in a positive, hands-on learning environment led by Mr. Dave, who has performed with artists such as Robin Gibb and Grace Jones, and whose production for Warner has reached the Top 10 in Europe. How cool is that!
Mr. Dave’s club is part of a selection of lunchtime clubs available for students in grades 5 to 7.
Other lunchtime activities at Maple Bear School include dance, board games, science quizzes, sports, art, event planning, podcasting, debate club, and “Journey Around the World: Past and Present.”
🔬 Science Fair
At the end of the first term, we traditionally host the Maple Bear Science Fair: a celebration of students’ curiosity, creativity, and knowledge, with special guests – their parents. Students showcase the science projects – ideas, inventions, and experiments – they successfully completed during the past term. These projects are the culmination of the project-based and inquiry-based learning, guided by their teachers.
This approach to learning helps students develop critical thinking, problem-solving skills, collaboration, and communication. To answer a question and develop a solution, they must do far more than simply recall information. Students learn to apply higher-order thinking and to work as a team. Each one has the opportunity to demonstrate their understanding through their unique strengths – 3D models, presentations, dances, songs, or experiments – drawing on skills developed across multiple subjects to present their ideas in a meaningful and personal way.
We are already looking forward to our next Science Fair in February!
We believe that school should be a place that nurtures the whole child. In our upcoming posts, we’ll share more about how we support our students’ social and physical development.
Interested in enrolling in the primary or middle school program for the 2026/2027 school year?
Learn more here: https://sofia-school.maplebear.bg/en/admissions/
