A great education is that which enables an individual to make the right choice for themselves. What doesn’t work, however, is forcing students to memorize standard procedures to solve problems. In this video, Sir Ken Robinson makes a strong case for creating an environment that nurtures creativity.
It is Important to Support Your Child's Creativity-PDF
Children are always coming up with creative new ideas to get the job done. This is why it is so important to support your child's creativity. Here is a downloadable PDF to explore more.
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It is Important to Support Your Child's Creativity-PDF
Watch this rather humourous and informative video.
This is one of the most-watched TED Talks available because of the profound examples and instances that Sir Ken Robinson mentions. All these present his thoughts on how to the school system ought to be changed in order to cultivate creativity among students.
Sir Ken Robinson is a British author, speaker, and international educational advisor. He is renowned for his involvement in the education field and his attempts to modify it to suit the needs of the students. He suggested three major changes to the education system:
Offer a broad curriculum and encourage individual learning.
Spark curiosity among students through creative teaching.
It should focus on awakening creativity among individuals.
He envisions a world where children use their creativity to become wonderful citizens and great innovators.
7 Ways to Foster Creativity in Your Kids
1.Provide the resources they need for creative expression.
The key resource here is time. Kids need a lot of time for unstructured, child-directed, imaginative play –unencumbered by adult direction, and that doesn't depend on a lot of commercial stuff (see this post about unstructured play).
Space is also a resource your kids need. Unless you don't mind creative messes everywhere, give them a specific place where they can make a mess, like room in your attic for dress-up, a place in the garage for painting, or a corner in your family room for Legos.
Next time someone asks for a gift suggestion for your kids, ask for things like art supplies, cheap cameras, costume components, building materials. Put these in easy-to-deal-with bins that your kids can manage.
2.Make your home a Petri dish for creativity.
In addition to creative spaces, you need to foster a creative atmosphere.
Solicit a high volume of different ideas, but resist the urge to evaluate the ideas your kids come up with. At dinnertime, for example, you could brainstorm activities for the upcoming weekend, encouraging the kids to come up with things they've never done before.
Don't point out which ideas aren't possible, and don't decide which ideas are best. The focus of creative activities should be on the process: generating (vs. evaluating) new ideas.
Encourage kids to make mistakes and fail. Yes, fail – kids who are afraid of failure and judgment will curb their own creative thought.
Share the mistakes you've made recently, so they get the idea that it is okay to flub up. Laughing at yourself when you blow it is a happiness habit.
Celebrate innovation and creativity. Cover your walls with art and other evidence of creative expression.
Tell your kids all about your favorite artists, musicians, and scientists. Share your passion for architecture or photography or that new band you want to listen to all the time.
Embrace new technologies like Twitter so your kids grow to find change exciting, not overwhelming or intimidating.
3. Allow kids the freedom and autonomy to explore their ideas and do what they want. Don't be so bossy.
(If that isn't the pot calling the kettle black, who knows what is.) Stop living in fear that they are going to be kidnapped or not get into a great college.
Statistically, the odds are very low that they'll be kidnapped, and I'm here to tell you that I'm not a happier person because I went to an Ivy League school.
External constraints—making them color within the lines, so to speak—can reduce flexibility in thinking. In one study, just demonstrating how to put together a model reduced the creative ways that kids accomplished this task.
4. Encourage children to read for pleasure and participate in the arts.
Limit TV and other screen time in order to make room for creative activities like rehearsing a play, learning to draw, reading every book written by a favorite author.
5. Give children the opportunity to express "divergent thought.
" Let them disagree with you. Encourage them to find more than one route to a solution, and more than one solution to a problem.
When they successfully solve a problem, ask them to solve it again but to find a new way to do it (same solution, different route). Then ask them to come up with more solutions to the same problem.
6. Don't reward children for exhibiting creativity:
incentives interfere with the creative process, reducing the quality of their responses and the flexibility of their thought.
Allow children to develop mastery of creative activities that they are intrinsically motivated to do, rather than trying to motivate them with rewards and incentives.
Instead of rewarding a child for practicing the piano, for example, allow her to do something she enjoys more – maybe sit at her desk and draw or take a science class.
7. Try to stop caring what your kids achieve.
Emphasize process rather than a product. One way you can do this is by asking questions about the process – Did you have fun? Are you finished? What did you like about that activity?
Conclusion
All children need to be truly creative is the freedom to commit themselves completely to the effort and make whatever activity they are doing their own. What's important in any creative act is the process of self-expression. Creative experiences can help children express and cope with their feelings. A child's creative activity can help teachers to learn more about what the child may be thinking or feeling.
Creativity also fosters mental growth in children by providing opportunities for trying out new ideas, and new ways of thinking and problem-solving. Creative activities help acknowledge and celebrate children's uniqueness and diversity as well as offer excellent opportunities to personalize our teaching and focus on each child.
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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
How can you encourage and support children's creativity?
8 Ways to Encourage Creative Thinking in Children
Make Children Question Things.
Provide Opportunities to Express Their Intelligence.
