Unlocking the Power of Creativity in Children

It is possible to nurture the art of creative thinking in children. As mentioned before, creativity is a skill that children must cultivate with consistent practice and determination. You could be a great facilitator to achieve this goal. Teaching creativity need not be very difficult to you. You may want to learn and master simple techniques and later apply them to train children. Here are some simple ideas and suggestions to teach children how they can be creative and resourceful:

Provide an environment that suites child to unlock their thinking potential. Let the ambiance be relaxing and soothing so that children do not feel stifled and locked up. Let them be free and outgoing. However, see that the given environment suits children' age, abilities and skill levels. Let children explore their surrounding and later experiment with different ideas. The provided environment is exploratory enough to probe innards of brains. Exploration always leads to better thinking levels that in turn fine-tune the ability to think and act creative.

Children should experiment with the new, unusual and intuitive. As soon as children ask any questions, you should be ready with your answers. Provide productive comments to their questions and suggest possible solutions. Repeat your questions to seek refined answers. Questions asked repeatedly will always lead to a highly tuned exploration process.

Children should enjoy the entire process of learning. In other words, learning creativity should be playful and easy going. Never ever, force children to reach the goalpost because such a hurried attitude may lead to a loss of focus. Learning should be spontaneous and automatic.

You just cannot measure or quantify results. Here, measuring the degree by which children master creativity is very difficult while there are no yardsticks to quantify the actual quantum of skills gained. It is relative and depends on children' nature, attitude, and mental status. Make sure that children give their best during the process of learning.

One of the most often used methods is to ask creative questions to elicit creative answers. The most commonly asked question is very simple - “in what manner children can change events to make them better and easy.” Some more tricky questions are:

Creative play is possibly the best way to promote creativity in children. Creative play is usually unstructured and unorganized. It need not be rigid and inflexible. Let your children play as they wish and to their heart's content at least for some time in a day. The time children spend playing creatively boosts the skill of creative thinking in a remarkable manner.

Creative play sets and toys induce creative thinking in children. Some toys may not play fully, unless the child solves some sort of simple problems and proceed to the next step. Building blocks, puzzles, board games, playing with clay and garden soil could enhance the power of creativity. Homegrown play activity could include playing in the backyard garden, learning gardening and playing role-play by including fictional characters.

Children must harness their inner strength and enhance four important competencies that the noted scholar Epstein (an article published in Creativity Research Journal with the title “Measuring and Training Creativity Competencies: Validation of a New Test) refers to as building blocks of creativity. These four competencies are as follows:

Ideas originate from many quarters and corners. In a given time interlude, there could be 100s of simultaneous ideas coming from all sides. One should be able to capture all these ideas so that they could be retrieved later for reference and action.

Children should be able to solve any type of problems by developing creativity. In other words, one should be capable enough to be creative enough to develop ideas into fruitful results.

Just developing creative ideas is not good enough. Creativity goes beyond ordinary curiosity. One should be able to develop any given idea by reading, exploring and advanced activities. For example, the art of music could be refined by going to a music concert.

The art of surrounding the environ with objects and materials that induce creativity

Creative environments always induce advanced creativity among children. The area where children work should be stimulating and cajoling enough to boost creativity. Decorate children's room and study areas with interesting and stimulating objects and articles.

Boosting creativity in children is a multi-faceted activity. It is challenging yet interesting! It is never boring too! Our children fail to become creative just because of our failure to help them. Children are intuitive, enthusiastic and inquiring. When parents fail to answer their children something dies within their mind that eventually kills their power to be creative. The following quotation aptly describes the state of creativity in our daily life. It is so true too!

"While we have the gift of life, it seems to me the only tragedy is to allow part of us to die - whether it is our spirit, our creativity or our glorious uniqueness." - Gilda Radner

The Genius in Every Child: Encouraging Character, Curiosity, and Creativity in Children
By Rick Ackerly

Every parent wants the best for their child and it can be difficult for parents to watch from the sidelines when their child goes off to school. But Rick Ackerly helps parents through this transition with a reassuring book that shows them that while they will always be their child's first teacher and can continue to see themselves as educators, it is critical that "parents" and "teachers" play their respective positions.

The accounts and learnings in The Genius in Every Child are so deep and layered, you feel in your bones Rick Ackerly's forty years of teaching kids and parents how to grow their brilliance. This book, and Rick, have so much heart and wisdom, you'll not only read their words gratefully, you'll return to them again and again. This just might be the only book on parenting you'll ever need.

Unlocking the Power of Creativity in Children - Learning Simple Techniques