Creativity is key to a child's mental development. Boosting a child's creativity can help develop problem solving skills, gives them opportunities to come up with new ideas and new ways of thinking. It can also help a child gain confidence, develop good communication skills and learn to express themselves in different ways. Physically it is great for developing fine motor skills and coordination. The benefits are endless.
With preschool years often being a child's most creative stage in life, now is a great time to take advantage of that and we've got the best activities to get you started.
Drama
One great way to boost creativity is through drama. This could be from creating a full on play or puppet show for older kids (Look at how to make these adorable puppets) or just being really dramatic when playing games, make believe, dressing up or telling stories.
Through made up games and playing pretend, kids widen their imagination horizons and come up with new concepts all the time. They can come up with different personality traits for their made up character and how to deal with other personality traits from other characters in the story. They can learn how to speak using different tones and words or phrases to express themselves. Drama is just one brilliant way to bring out the creative in children!
Arts & Crafts
This may seem like an obvious one, one that first springs to mind when we bring up creativity. However, the reason for that is obvious. Drawing or painting pictures can help children express the way they see the world. It can also help them to think carefully about how the world is made and how to reflect that in their work.
Another reason arts and crafts are great for creativity is because kids get to work with different materials and textures, make different shapes and use different tools like scissors, glue, tape, etc which is great for developing fine motor skills and technique.
Take a look at these awesome ideas:
Dance & Music
Dance and music is often regarded as a form of expression. Not only is it great as a mood booster, it's a great way for kids to discover different ways of moving their body, express their feelings through movement and communicating through the lyrics in a song. Exposing kids to different forms of music and dance will too help them learn different styles and see that there are different ways of doing things.
By now, you probably know all the kids' songs off by heart, so here are some different styles of music to dance to and some kids songs with dance moves.
Literacy
Making up stories is a kid's favourite pastime - especially just before bed. However, creating one's own stories is great for coming up with new ideas, having different takes on situations in life and expanding ideas.
If your child is old enough, why not write a little book? Or for younger kids, you could choose to make a picture book.
Having something tangible to remember that creative moment could even inspire them to come up with a sequel!
Explore
Exploring the great doors and discovering what's around us is a wonderful way to expand kids' imaginations and learn more about nature and even other people's creative ideas - interesting architecture or an interesting make up look on a poster.
Not only does learning about the different types of clouds, trees, weather, bugs and animals help children to learn and in turn come up with some of their own concepts, the exercise from walking around is great for physical and mental development.
Try visiting different types of places near your area.
You could go to the park, the pond, hiking, along the roadside, museums, castles or landmarks.
Questions
Find opportunities to ask random questions or open ended questions or even questions that don't really even have an answer! Having to think more carefully about the answers is great for coming up with solutions or new ideas, and mental development as they try to work out what to say.
Take a look at these questions - they'll get you thinking too!
What would happen if it only rained on Saturdays?
What would be different if farm animals could fly?
What would fish say if they could talk?
What if cats could bark?
What would happen if our feet and hands swapped places?
Why do we wake up with messy hair?
Do humans have pet dogs or do dogs have pet humans?
What are our fingernails for?
Leave a comment below and tell us some of the answers your little one has come up with to these questions!
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