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Nowadays, most children have their own gadgets and gaming consoles that keep them occupied. While such technological innovations may prompt strategic thinking, too much of those activities may start to hamper their creativity. Children need to have a good balance between mental and physical activities to fill their time. After all, their early years are crucial to their development and may influence how they process things once they become adults.
Most people think that creativity is an innate ability. However, creative thinking is actually a skill that requires constant practice and exposure. It’s something that needs to be honed in children with the help of parents and other facilitators. Fortunately, there are ways you can stimulate your kid’s creative side. Here are some tips you can follow:
Ideas And Activities To Cultivate Your Children’s Creativity
Considering all those, it’s essential to carve out time from your schedule to do fun activities with your kids that spark their imagination. If you’ve run out of ideas, below are some of the ways you can foster creativity in your kids.
1. Provide Them With An Outlet
You might be surprised how creative thinking can be encouraged through an array of activities. There are many avenues you can explore to encourage your child to be creative. For instance, if you’re musically inclined, you can teach your kids at a young age how to play instruments.
Apart from that, you can send your kids to a theater class, let them join an art club, or simply block off time during the weekend to bake treats together. Enrolling them to a class or a summer camp would allow them to bond with other children, form friendships, and learn new skills. This can help strengthen their creativity and motivate them to engage in fun pursuits.
Nonetheless, take note that some activities might not seem interesting or enjoyable to them. If you force them to go to classes they don’t enjoy, they may hesitate to try new experiences in the future. Hence, take active interest and ask your kids for suggestions. They might also want to share current curiosities or activities that resonate with their personality. However, if they’re quite unsure, you can provide them with outlets to express their creativity. From there, you can have an idea which class would suit them well.
Additionally, creativity isn’t limited to music and artistic expressions. You can gift your kids with activity books and play-based learning tools where they can answer questions after reading a story, connect the dots in illustrations, and the like. You can invest in play-based learning tools / learn through play activities to make them interested in arts. Also, try to set up a schedule when they’ll use the tools you give them so they can tackle and look forward to this after school or during weekends. You can also guide them in designing personalized items, such as socks, that they’ll surely love wearing. Simply look into different online print-on-demand shops to find out more about his option.
2. Encourage Them To Wonder
Another surefire way to cultivate their imagination is to allow them to explore and wonder by quizzing them or simply allowing them to shoot their questions. Curiosity always stimulates creative thinking.
For instance, whenever you have an outdoor picnic or go camping in the woods, you can ask them why the sky is blue, how a butterfly is born, where the sun is located, and more. Allow them to freely reason out. After listening to their answers, you can then explain such phenomena and natural processes to them. Surely, they’ll ask you more questions, which would help them widen their knowledge and enhance their imaginative skills. Although the answer to some of their questions seems obvious, try to be patient and explain each concept to them. Keep in mind that things that are obvious to you are still new to them. So, it’s helpful to teach them about concepts and ideas they’re not familiar with.
Moreover, you can help your child notice natural patterns, colors, and lines that they see every day. You can even ask them for games and activity suggestions out of these mundane observations. For example, you can both create flower bracelets and do an arts and crafts project using leaves, among others. Try to stimulate their creativity and curiosity by playing outside and using the resources they see. This way, they can create things without feeling limited.
3. Allow Them To Be Bored
Creative intelligence goes beyond thinking about the things that are often present, such as your kids’ tech gadgets. It can be quite challenging to pull them away from those, especially if video gaming has become a habit of theirs. However, allowing your children to do nothing from time to time would inspire them to be more innovative. They’ll have the opportunity to come up with something to entertain themselves, which may help develop their creative intelligence.
For instance, when kids are unoccupied, they’ll likely start going through their stuff and play make-believe. They’ll create costumes from old garments, pick up their old toys, and simply have fun.
Imaginative play is crucial as this encourages children to think outside of the box and use certain objects to represent ideas and specific actions. Saving the princess from the tower, having an outdoor tea party, imitating sounds, and playing dress-up are a few common examples. And if your children are with other kids, you might witness how they assign roles and delegate tasks. Those are some of the ways they make sense of the world.
However, if your child struggles to come up with pretend play ideas, you can prepare a list of various scenarios and character plotlines that would inspire them to use their imagination. Furthermore, you can participate in the role play as one of the characters to encourage your child to try this activity. You can also help them gather the items, images, and props needed to make their playtime a success.
The Takeaway
Honing your child’s creativity in their formative years helps them develop the other crucial skills and intelligence required to adapt to changing circumstances. It encourages them to become innovative, flexible, and better problem-solvers.
Moreover, by following the suggestions above, you can have an idea on how to approach creativity and come up with more fun activities for your little ones to engage in.