Looking for Easy and Creative Invention Ideas for Kids?

This quick guide on how to find invention ideas for kids will show you how to work with children to help them find ideas for new inventions that they can develop for fun, for a school project or just to encourage their creativity.

If you are a child yourself, then this is a great place to find inspiration for your future invention ideas. Let's start!

If you are a parent or a teacher - then this page will hopefully be a source of inspiration.

The best tip you can give the child in your life is that finding new invention ideas is a process.

They should never look at it as a one time eureka moment in which a brilliant idea just pops in your brain and you go about developing it.

There is a great lesson in the process of inventing for kids – effort and perseverance win the game every time.

It was Thomas Edison, the famous inventor of the electric light bulb and other well known inventions who said : “Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration”.

One of the greatest inventors, who significantly changed our daily life, admits that most of the work of invention comes from working hard, persevering, trying and failing.

It’s more sweat and hard work than moments of sudden inspiration.

Instead of daydreaming, thinking hard and hoping an idea will pop out of the blue, there are ways to think ‘within the box’ and help jump start a creative process that will lead to new invention ideas for kids.

Here are some great methods to think of new invention ideas - one of them is sure to help you inspire your child to come up with a new innovative invention.

1. Brainstorm frustrations and problems – at a kid’s level

The best inventions solve a problem, address an unmet need. This is true for all inventions and invention ideas for kids are not different.

Encourage children to conduct a frustrations diary. What annoys them in every day life?

Don’t think about solutions yet, just brainstorm ideas.

Write down every problem that comes to mind – no judging!! Don’t stop to think how you will solve the problem that come up, just write the ideas down.

Take a few days to do that – at the end you are bound to come up with a few problems that can be solved through a new invention.

Nothing is too small or inconsequential. Make a list of everything you would like to change.

Cassidy Goldstein was only 11 year old when she was annoyed with broken crayons, which were too small to draw with. She realized her crayons were breaking easily and she often ended up with small pieces of a crayon that were hard to hold and draw with, and therefore useless. she had to keep buying new boxes of crayons just to replace one missing color.

This realization led her to look for a way to use her small pieces of broken crayons. Her invention - the crayon holder. a little tube, inspired by the tubes used to hold single roses fresh in water, that is used to hold small pieces of crayons.

She registered a patent for the invention, and it is now being sold across the US. It is also the basis for writing aid products aimed at helping people with disabilities.

Encourage your child to interview other children, or just observe his friends and other people at school– what problems are other children having?

Walk around with a notebook and act like a detective – what are children at school or the play ground doing that annoys them? What products are they using and frustrated with?

Quick invention ideas for kids: Let’s take an easy seemingly trivial example - Do your hands get sticky after eating a Popsicle?

Why not invent a frozen treat that comes with a disposable wipe stored in its stick, so that hands can be cleaned immediately after eating?

Do you find it annoying that you cannot read your book at bedtime without opening the light and waking up your siblings?

Why not invent a bookmark that lights in the dark?

The important step is not to disqualify or judge any problem that comes to mind. Don’t think about the solution or commercial potential of your ideas. At this initial stage just make a list of frustrations.

2. Discuss bigger problems - how can you help others and improve their life?

Inventions can often make a big difference in the world.

Just because you are looking for invention ideas for kids, does not mean they should be unimportant.

This is a great educational exercise as well. Discuss some of the bigger problems in our word. From the need to recycle to ways of helping the homeless. Depending on your child age, you can cover different issues.

Introduce them to older people or people with disabilities. Learn about the difficulties these people face each day. What ideas can they come up with to provide some help?

Chandler Matthew Macocha a 12 year old, invented the wheelchair backpack holder after seeing his neighbor struggle to get her belonging from the bag she had hanging behind her back on her wheel chair.

He invented a device made of a lever that brings the bag from behind the wheel chair to the front – a helpful construction for wheelchair users anywhere, and especially to disabled school kids.

Open a discussion on people less fortunate then yourself. Observe older people– is your grandmother struggling with holding her pans while cooking? Can you invent a product that will make it easier for her? Your ideas could really make a difference.

3. Invention ideas for kids? Let your imagination go wild

If you could invent anything at all – what would you invent?

Ignore practicality. List your most crazy ideas, or just fun ones.

Quick invention ideas for kids: Do you like hot chocolate but not really crazy about tea? What if you could create teabags with cocoa in them, that you can dip in hot milk and create yummy hot chocolate? Viola, the invention of chocolate bags.

Usually when you allow yourself to imagine anything at all, you come up with ideas that provide some value to you and potentially others.

Not all ideas might be practical, but postpone the filtering and rejection to the last stage.

You will be amazed how many seemingly crazy ideas can actually be created in real life and have a real potential.

4. Get inspired by existing inventions

Look at inventions you know and like – can you improve them? Can you do a similar thing only this time aimed at a different audience?

How can you make an existing product better? How can you make an ordinary object do additional things?

Look at a specific existing object  - who usually uses it? who else can benefit from its characteristics? what needs to be added or improved to it, in order to better meet the needs of this new audience?

Quick invention ideas for kids: Fantasizing about warm slippers when you come home out of the snow? Why not invent a slipper with compartments where you could insert heating pads, warmed up in the microwave? And here you go: the perfect warm slipper.

5. The combination method

Take two existing products and put them together to create a new product with the combined characteristics of the two original ones.

Think which two products are complimentary to each other, and can benefit from being combined into one product. Can these two products be brought together?

Quick invention ideas for kids: How about a fork whose body is hollow and can be filled with ketchup or other sauces? You can now eat chips and press the fork to have some ketchup pouring on it – less mess and easier all around.

6. The removal method

Take away part of a product- can you come up with a new use for it? a great example for this method is the stationary exercise bike.

By removing the wheels off a bicycle, you get a bike with no wheels. However, with some inventive thinking you can come up with a use for your seemingly useless invention - the stationary exercise bike!

First choose a product, than list its parts. In the next stage, systematically remove one part at a time and ask yourself - can this invention be useful for something?

This is a great method to come up with invention ideas for kids.

Try to remove parts of a product in your mind, and then think of how the new product you created can be used. Can you think of a use for your new invention?

To read more about how the removal method works to generate new inventions ideas: click here.

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