How to develop creativity in your child?
Here, you will find tips and suggestions to nurture creativity in your child. This one is by definition and by nature creative. He can take certain objects and divert them from their primary use in order to use them for other purposes. For the child has no preconceived ideas. It is important to encourage this way of thinking in order to discover the world that surrounds him. Because nurturing this creativity is a major issue: it helps your child’s development, his communication and gives him the opportunity to see things in different ways, from different angles, which will help him to make his own judgments. The child will then learn to construct his thoughts, to express himself by developing his own personality.
Creativity allows the child to understand that everything is not fixed, that everyone’s tastes and judgment of what is beautiful or not varies from one individual to another and that we can therefore also apprehend the world in different ways.
So yes, all children are creative, but they are creative in different ways and with varying degrees of intensity. Creativity must be nurtured and even developed. It’s up to us as adults to provide the context and the tools necessary for children to express their creativity on a daily basis.
Indeed, activities such as construction games, imitation games (market, doll…) or all artistic activities allow children to develop their creativity.
Discover and explore different themes with our treasure hunts, investigation and escape games.
Why Stimulate Children’s Creativity
Creativity depends on our sensory and intellectual experiences. By varying all these experiences, we offer the child the necessary framework for him to develop his own creativity. It takes its full place in the child’s development. It has many advantages:
- Thanks to artistic activities, the child in full development phase, gains self-confidence. He acquires a better self-esteem because he is proud of his creation and often even more proud of the approving look of his parents or adult. The recognition of his creativity allows the child to be more self-confident. He feels capable of doing, creating, inventing…
- It is a way to strengthen his personality. Indeed, through his games, his inventions, the child asserts himself and shows his personality. He makes choices and the result depends on him.
- All creative games allow the child to build himself, to forge his own points of view, to see things from different angles which allows him to acquire a greater openness of mind, understanding of the world around him, to better manage his emotions and in a more general way to be more open to others.
- Creativity is used to express oneself. The child shows his emotions and through play he can allow himself to give free rein to his emotions. Even the most withdrawn or shy children can easily express themselves in such activities.
- Finally, in a concrete way, all these activities, especially manual activities, allow the child to develop concentration. Manual activities require successive steps to achieve a project. This allows the child to follow steps and therefore requires a certain logic to achieve a result.
What to put in place to encourage your child’s creativity?
In order to encourage creativity in everyday life, it will be necessary to let the child be imaginative, free to try his own experiments and make his own choices.
Here are several points that will help you to put this in place on a daily basis.
- Let the child choose his own extracurricular activities. These activities are very important and bring a real “plus” to the child’s life. Ask your child what he likes, think about it together but don’t impose an activity that he doesn’t feel attracted to or comfortable with. Listen to your child. This activity will be beneficial if the child does it with envy and curiosity. On the other hand, it is important to warn your child that this choice is then defined for the year and that if he commits himself then he will have to stick to it. It is also important to make him responsible, to show him that he is taken into consideration but that if he is old enough to be taken into consideration, then he is old enough to understand that his choices can represent a real commitment that he will have to keep.
- The novelty: encourage your child to dare, to try new experiences and discoveries. Vary the games and activities as much as possible to help him discover as many things as possible. After these discoveries, it will be easier for him to turn to what he appreciates the most and make his own choices according to his desires. But before reaching this point and being able to choose, it is necessary to have been able to try and experiment beforehand.
- Free play: it is essential to develop creativity. In this constantly moving world where we often live at 100 per hour, it is important to let the child settle down and find himself in his game. He will be able to choose his activities, his games and how he uses them. This is his moment. Let him do it and explore within the limits of the rules of the house, the school… Freedom yes, but within a framework…
- Put a variety of materials at his disposal: in fact, the more materials the child has at his disposal, the more he will be able to express himself and experiment. There is not always necessary to invest. With recycling materials, you will see that the child will find many fun ways to use it: keep cans of infant milk, make a slit in the lid and the child will be able to insert tokens into them. Old clothes will be used to disguise themselves. Empty bottles filled with different materials will be used to make musical instruments and so on…
- Telling a story has many interests. It awakens the child’s curiosity and interest in reading, which is essential for his schooling, but it also allows to make his imagination work. You can even interrupt yourself in the middle of a story and ask him how he imagines the end of the story before telling its outcome…
- Take an interest in your child’s different activities and show that you are proud of him. Accompany him if he feels the need. You can take part in them and by your presence bring him/her to ask new questions in order to make him/her think about what he/she is setting up and how he/she will develop his/her activity.
- Accompany him to outdoor activities depending on his age: cultural or artistic activities. Visit museums, castles, go to the library or toy library in your neighborhood. Take part in shows and even travel! Open up to the world around you. Accompany him in all these discoveries…
- Finally, it is important to limit the time spent in front of the screens. This will not be the debate here. Children can relax with television, tablet (there are many educational applications) or video games. It’s all about dosage and balance! It’s not always easy to find…
Every child has a real potential for creativity within him or her. It is up to us as adults to allow the child to develop and maintain this creativity which allows him to develop his view of the world around him and to be always curious and amazed by it, which will make him want to discover it more and so on. This creativity is thus continuously nourished and keeps growing, allowing the child to develop his full potential.
Discover our treasure hunts, investigation and escape games to share with family and friends as an immersive activity that appeals to children’s imagination!
