Learning creative math never leads you to the right solution.
“Creative math” is not math at all, it is more like learning a sorcerer’s handwritten manual by rote, and is useless in the real world.
There was a reason elementary and secondary students were forbidden the use of calculators in tests by the instructors. They get lazy and never understand the underlying concepts that lie at the base of all computations.
Now, you want a challenge, teach them the use of an old-fashioned slide rule. With trig functions, log, and a log log scale. All analog, no digital at all.
learned in 6th grade science that if you aren’t part of the solution then you are part of the precipitate. that was just before the educational revolution. now...everything is just precipitate.