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A child's creativity can be encouraged by creative play at home.CREATIVE PLAY
Kids are naturally creative.
Try to remember when you were very young... or watch any young child at play. They can be amused by the most common of items - a blanket thrown over a couple chairs can be a castle, a head band becomes a royal crown and a piece of card board transforms into a life-raft adrift on the mighty ocean. When our grandparents were young, before the age of television and video games, they were encouraged to use their imagination ... to be inventive.
Kids Need Unstructured Free Time
Today's kids seem to find it harder to entertain themselves when faced with free time, no electronic games, computer or television.
For one thing, today's youth doesn't have a great deal of free time just to "be"; to use their imagination; to be inventive. Their time is filled with sports, after-school programs, club activities, homework and a pot-pourri of lessons.
Kids don't have time for discovery, for trial and error, for exploring. The are so focused, but the adults in their lives, on results that they cannot and do not enjoy the journey.
It has been shown that environment is more important then heredity when it comes to creativity. Children whose parents encourage spontaneity, experimentation and non-conformity go a long way towards influencing kids to be self-reliant, less susceptible to peer pressure and confident in their own feelings and thoughts...creative.
Creative Play Can Be Encouraged
From Birth
From as early as infancy parents can encourage children to use their imagination by giving the safe, everyday items to play with... plastic bottles or containers, empty boxes, etc. Singing, music, bright pictures, all sorts of different textures, shapes and sizes can stimulate creative curiosity in an infant.
As children gain better hand-eye coordination they will delight in drawing with crayons, chalk or easy-to clean paints.
They can be encourages to tear and paste colored paper, working with modeling clay, create collages using all kins of varied materials. This will all be very messy, but with the proper preparations (and drop cloths), the mess should be encouraged and celebrated. Remember to stifle the urge to "show" your child how to be creative or demand that they "stay in the lines" and follow the rules. When the urge gets to strong, read the lyrics from Harry Chapin's "Flowers are Red", that should put your priorities in order.
Fantasy should be nurtured. Children who fantasize generally are self reliant when it comes to creative play. They tend to be original, spontaneous and have a high degree of flexibility.
Parents can provide an atmosphere that lends itself to fantasy platy by encouraging and participating in pretend games... providing dress-up clothes, dolls, stuffed animals, common household items that children can :"pretend" are anything in the world. Even if very young children can concentrate for no more then a few minutes, adults should guide them during that time towards using their imaginations, exploring new things, developing multi-dimensional thinking.
Multi-dimensional Thinking
One dimensional thinking - Parent brings home the hottest new prefabricated toy, a super hero perhaps. The child takes the toy out of the box and begins to play…well sort of play. He begins to reenact the last TV show he saw the hero in and begins to repeated the words he heard the hero say. Not making up his own story but using someone elses. He lets the super hero use his super powers, the same powers he saw in that movie last month. And then that’s the end of that toy. It really doesn’t do much more, and it stifles the child’s imagination Multi-dimensional thinking - Now, let’s take a little boy age 6 and give him a box, coloring tools, child’s scissors, and other art crafts. We leave that child to their own creative devises and the world is their oyster they can make whatever they want and create their own story. The child could build a TV set and pretend to be inside. He could build a castle and create his own characters that live there. He could build a home or a space craft. The point here is that he can build whatever his mind wishes and is not limited by the story of the super hero.
Pre-school Years
When children are ready for pre-school they still will delight in using crayons, chalk, modeling clay, etc... but in more complex ways. They should be encouraged to explain and talk about their works of art.
Play takes on a more expressive role. It becomes an exploration of things they experience in life, what the see on television or read in books. It becomes a way to process their emotions. When a child pretends to be the king of the world he is not just imitating what he thinks a king would do or say, he is experiencing the power of being in charge and the reward of making command decisions. Kids typically will choose to be the hero... they want to be the best, be powerful and adored. Starting around this age kids will spend a lot of time pretending, playing actions games and incorporating super heroes. They lose themselves in their daydreams... which can be channeled into creative stories, plays or poems.
School Years
If properly nurtured, children can take this love of discovery into school. A good teacher will be able to use the child's natural creative nature to excite them whether they teach history, science or math. Even if you aren't fortunate enough to have an enlightned teacher... parents can support their students at home.
Studies have shown that creative play/activity encourages creative thinking in other area such as academics. Families can encourage creativity by offering kids an atmosphere that allows them to expore and encourages them to engage in creative play for the sheer enjoyment of it.
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