Developing Creativity in Your Children

ENCOURAGEMENT: Set out different activities but let the children be the ones to direct the activity. It's ok if they get things wrong, that's how they learn. Encourage them to try again and get other ideas. Stimulate their thinking. Be a supporting educator, value them and share with them.

SET OUT A CREATIVE CORNER: On a table set out old magazines, newspapers, odds and ends, objects such as a camera, a radio, a telephone where children can explore, imagine and pretend. Let them find new uses for the objects. Let them take items from one center and items from another to create a new center.

PROBLEM SOLVING: Fix yourself a goal -- to bring up to them two-three problems (of varying degrees) a day. Ask them to give you answers, and write the answers down. You'll be enriching language, thought and fostering the idea that there's more than one solution to every problem. Later during the day or week, go back to the problem and see how it was handled. Did the solution work? What else could be done? Encourage them to verbalize. Ask them how they would have handled it if they were sick? Or in a bad mood? Overly tired?

Use your influence to make them think and develop good thinking skills! Be creative and flexible, it's paret of the keys for fun and learning.

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