How to nurture creativity in young children?

Early Learning Early Learning General Discussions
1

I recently read this article http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/10/the-creativity-crisis.html

I am interested to know how one could nurture creativity in young children. Is art the only way? I have been searching internet to find good books on this subject. But I could not find any. Can someone share any info on this, articles or book suggestions, etc.

2

I am just about to read the article in a moment but something that my son (19months) and I do is act out common stories. Mostly nursery stories like The Three Little Pig, Chicken Little, Little Red Riding Hood, 3 Billy Goats Gruff and many more.

We dress up in an assortment of things and act them out with various props that we find around the house. The other day we were acting out The Tale of Johhny Appleseed and we were wearing pots on our heads and ‘planting’ beads as seeds all around the house.

3

Telling/acting stories is great. How about making them up together, too - choose a couple of characters and let your child guide you in what happens (ask who/where/when/what actions etc). You could even write it down and make your own story book :smiley:

I would think music is good for creativity, too.

4

Thanks for the suggestions. I have tried few of those already but my son doesn’t seem to enjoy those. May be I will try again some other time.

5

If imagination is a synonym for creativity, I would start to introduce pretent play with him, he’s not 1 and a half. At that age we started showing my daughter how to ‘feed’ her plastic/stuffed animals with bottles, brush dolls, having stuffed animal speak to one another etc.

6

arvi,
thank you very much for this article.

you should read these

http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/
http://www.alfiekohn.org/parenting/gj.htm
http://www.janetlansbury.com/2010/03/praising-children-risking-failure/
http://forum.brillkids.com/coffee-corner/brilliant-kids-lack-confidence-the-perils-of-praise/

this is what we do. If my kid does something creative, like role plays etc., I try to encourage it, in “praise for effort” style. I am not very creative but sometimes I also try to start various fantasy games.

this also helped us
http://forum.brillkids.com/teaching-your-child-other-topics/creative-game-with-3-year-old-our-experience/msg66342/#msg66342