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Teaching Kids to Think Creatively – Seven Activities You Can Do at Home

By Dr. Linda SilbertIf left to themselves, children are creative–often more creative than we are. However, it seems we’ve created an environment for children that doesn’t allow for much creativity.

Lots has been written about the causes: Television, computer games, mind-numbing toys, highly structured free time, the emphasis on skills and knowledge for school testing, and teaching for mandated “No Child Left Behind” tests.

It goes without saying that children need knowledge and skills, but they also need to learn how to think creatively, that is, to create new ideas from scratch. Creativity is, after all, an important life skill.

Even if your child’s teacher is restricted by “teaching for tests,” you can encourage creative thinking at home. So turn off the TV. Turn off the computer games. Suggest activities and games that promote creative thinking.

Try these activities:

1. Drop one of your children’s structured activities. Encourage them to go outside and play.

2. Do “free” arts and crafts. Put paper, scraps, glue, trinkets, markers, crayons, rubber bands, paper clips, buttons, yarn, and anything else you can find on the table. Invite your kids to make something.

3. Play animal games with younger children. Ask questions. How does the shape of their body parts help them? How does their color help them survive? Ask them to draw a creature with the head of one animal, the body of another and the tail of a third. What would they name this animal? What would it eat? How would it survive? What sound would it make? Where would it live?

4. Tell stories. You start with the first two sentences.“Once upon a time there was a little girl named Suzie Q who loved her little dog named Squizzer. One day all of a sudden Squizzer . . .” Kids come up with the end of that sentence and another sentence that stops in the middle. You get another turn. They get more turns. Then someone says “The end. Add a timer to the game. Kids love it. Each one gets one or two minutes and when the buzzer goes off, even if it’s in the middle of a sentence, it’s the next player’s turn.

5. Make things out of wood. Children love to make things out of wood. Help them make a bird house. They’re easy to make. Birds will love to live in them even if the house is lopsided. Use plans from books or from on-line searches. Better yet, just wing it. Make a little box with a roof, a hole, and a stick for a perch. Hang it in a tree and now kids get to watch for birds.

6. Play with puppets. Use paper for finger puppets. Even something as simple as a small face drawn on a piece of paper, cut out, and taped to a finger can be a puppet. Old socks make great hand puppets. Puppets can talk. They can sing. They can be silly. Now you can graduate to puppet stories. Start with just two characters: one child and one grown up, two children, two animals. They’ll start adding characters. Now give them a box. Soon you’ll be invited to watch puppet plays performed in a decorated cardboard-box puppet stage.

7. Experiment with science. Get directions from the internet or a book on making a buzzer or electric motor from junk: soup cans, wire, screws. Have a race. Get a board about two feet long, and make a race course hill by propping up one end Race a full soup can and an empty soup can. They’ll probably be surprised at which one wins. Next race the can and a free wheeling toy car. If they can figure out why the winners won, great. If not, it doesn’t matter. Someday they’ll learn it in physics.

If you’re not thinking too creatively yourself, libraries, bookstores, and the internet are loaded with “thinking out of the box” ideas for kids.

And be sure to encourage your child’s school to promote creative thinking. Talk to teachers and the school principal. Bring up the importance of creativity at PTA meetings. Suggest creativity play days to other parents.

Today, schools throughout the US dedicate most of their time, effort, and resources to developing mathematical and reading skills. And, while these subject areas are most certainly important, this emphasis has often left the arts to a secondary role in a child’s development.

We need to take a look at Art Teaching Education

Are you aware that Studies show that 33% of children are visual learners. And art is an excellent way of not, only letting a child express themselves but also enhances Self esteem. It is also a fact that kids that are involved in Art class or after school art, also tend to do better in all their studies such as math, reading and science.

Art lessons can have a positive impact for kids of all ages, it teaches them to me creative, strengthens their thinking process, how to engage in problem solving. When Art Class is integrated with other curriculum, children become more engaged in learning process. And therefore retain more and learn at a faster pace then those students that are not involved in any kind of Art class at all.

Why is Art Important?

Kids Art Class nurtures the human soul! (It feels good to do it!) Children can share and reflect on their art to learn about themselves, each other, and the world in which they live. Engagement in the arts nurtures the development of cognitive, social and personal competencies. We all need to be aware that Art Teaching Education can increase academic achievement, hand-eye coordination. Open-ended thinking. and it gives Children a place in school to express themselves. Which is essential for a child overall development?

The problem that we face is teachers usually lack the type of teacher-friendly resources that enable them to Teaching Elementary Art in the developmental fashion necessary to inspire and engage their students making a lasting difference in students’ development and approach to the world.

However, Teaching Elementary Art is easily accomplished with the many programs that are available such an Art Curriculum program that I found that is offered by ArtsAttack.com. They have a award-winning video/DVD-based art curriculum that addresses the needs of the art specialist, classroom teacher, or parent volunteer. Using video/DVD-based teaching methods, Arts Attack provides the art specialist or classroom teacher with unprecedented ease-of-use. They also offer programs for After School Art that are also excellent.