Mommy Monday: Encouraging Creativity in Children

aCreativity is a WONDERFUL thing to encourage your children. Not only is it fun for your children but divergent thinking (thinking in creative ways) improves convergent thinking (knowledge, school learning type things). Keep in mind, creativity development is complete by age 7, so, you want to start these things early but, continue them throughout their childhood to keep their creativity up and going! 

Here are ten non-traditional ideas I came up with to help encourage and improve creativity:

  Provide toys for your children that can be used in multiple ways, such as Legos or tinker toys. This will allow your child to find a variety of ways to play with one toy. Offer your child pictures of things such as houses or robots and encourage them to build them. This will allow your child to have some guidance without having strict instructions. Another way to use these toys to foster creativity is to encourage them to make you instructions for a toy they have designed. This will only work well at an older age (around 8+). You can show them an example of instructions provided with a Lego set then offer them your camera to take pictures of how they put their design together. Once again they have rough tools to guide them in their task but the full creativity is up to them.

 

Allow your child to play with household items. Children can find new uses for cheap things such as Tupperware, toothpicks, and pillow stuffing. Encourage them to build forts or bang on “drums.” Do not force the child to use the object in the one way it is intended. Allow them to find different uses and perhaps integrate the more pragmatic uses into your home, this will build their esteem in their creative ability.

If you are crafty and creative yourself, allow your child to participate with you. My example is sewing because that is what I like to do. A young child cannot use the sewing machine on their own, but they can sit on your lap and help you feed the fabric through for a straight stitch. They can also help you lay out the fabric. This shows them that you value creativity and that they should too.

Create a daily challenge in your home. For example, one week you can have 100 plastic cups in a basket every day they come home from school. Each day they have to build something new from those 100 cups. Allow them to break, bend, stack and whatever else they can think of with the cups. After a week change the basket to plastic straws. The next week you can have no basket but say build a catapult out of things you can find in the house.

Engage in pretend play with them. If you go to the park and your child wants to be a pirate, offer to be peter pan. If your child wants to play princesses in the back yard offer to be her prince. If your child wants to be a famous musician, help them dress in their nicest clothes and sit on the couch and applaud as they play beautiful “concertos” on your piano. Allow them the ability to lead the play.

 Let your child choose their clothes. What they choose won’t always be in style but it will allow them to try different styles. It will allow them to wear clashing prints and discover what they do and don’t like. Don’t rush them to choose their clothes. This will allow them to have the time to think about what they are wearing and choose it based on their desires and thoughts. 

 Don’t throw out non-dirty garbage. Things like paper towel rolls and jam jars can become telescopes and biodomes. Show your child the different ways to use “trash” and encourage them to come up with their own ways. As you go about your day have a bucket where you throw things your children can use for their own crafts and ideas. Always have this bucket in their reach and in a place they know where it is. You don’t have to hover when they are creating.

  Have either weekly or monthly a day without toys. Don’t spring it on the child; let them know when it is going to be each week/month and remind them. On this day, a child cannot use electronics or any of their regular toys (dolls, Legos, racecars). Instead, they have to entertain themselves with objects around the house or in the back yard. Allow them to let clothespins become earrings and paprika to become blush as they pretend to dress up for the ball. Encourage them to jump from couch to cushion to avoid the lava floor.

Create a long-term family project. From start to finish this can build creativity. Start by having a family meeting and schedule a family meeting for the following week (great FHE). Have each family member think of three family project ideas. The following week discuss all the family project ideas, encourage your children to synthesize their projects together. It does not have to be only his or her idea; it can be a combination of both. Then complete the project together. These projects can be things like building a deck together, learning to modify all the house computers, or starting a family garden. Allow your children to plan (with your guidance) the ways to complete this project.

 Allow your child to cook a side dish to your dinner meal. Don’t have them follow a recipe if they don’t want to. Let them throw baking soda into the frying pan that has sliced strawberries. Have everyone in the family try it and encourage them to give constructive criticism, including the child that made it. Allow your child to try again the next day or may be have them cook their own dish every Monday. As you cook with them offer them some guidance to show you are engaged but allow them to decide whether or not to follow that guidance.