Children are born creative, they are in-born futurists who see the world always filled with endless possibilities. It is something parents usually crave for their kids to be so that kids grow up to be great people, to be scientists, entrepreneurs, artists, etc. What to do for your children to remain creative until they reach adulthood is an important task for parents to perform and hereby, we would like to discuss more about creativity for kids in this blog, diving deep into what it creativity, how important it is for kids and how to build up creativity for your child with Skidos!
When you hear the word “creative”, you will probably picture in your mind a scientist, an artist, a painter, an author or a chef, these are people who make things. It sounds like a label of the “creative type” but just for you to know, there is no such a label. Every child are creative in their own way. Maybe it is not fully correct that creativity is just about people creating stuff, hence, we just need a more proper definition of creativity for kids.
According to Oxford dictionary, “creativity is the use of imagination or original ideas to create something; inventiveness. It is about turning a kid new ideas and imagination into reality, to invent something different from the current existing stuff.”
In fact, creativity not only involves making things but also means mashing up ideas in innovative ways. It can mean to think out of our boundary within our minds, the boundary between what we know and what we still have not thought about yet. It can mean for the children for them to thinking differently, finding out unique solutions to their problems.
It can mean exploring original ideas more and navigating information until you become an expert curator. It can mean designing new systems to empower the creative work of others. It can mean creating changes in the world by speaking the hidden truth and leading movements and empowering people. The more they can see creativity around them, the more we can be able to appreciate the creativity inside of ourselves.
Children are curious and they tend to think expansively while overtime, adults become to think reductively. They are born creative and they see the world not as what it is but how it can become. It is important to know that the world keeps changing rapidly and tangible objects such as the houses we live in, the cars we use, the TV we watch as well as many kinds of intangible services will also be transformed real soon.
On the road to the future, human never stop making new things and the creators of the new world in subsequent decades will be children of today. For kids to be prepared with the future modern world, creativity – the ability to think differently, imagine new stuff and produce work unconventionally is vital.
In a world which is more and more globalized and rapidly changing, it is crucial to prepare young children with important skill to thrive in the set of 21st century skills for kids. In this era of fast changing technology, a huge number of jobs will soon become things of the past while many others emerge and become greatly wanted in the labor market. Imagine the world of the near future where automatic robots will replace people to perform various repeated tasks, people will be expected to get the jobs that robots cannot perform very well and that would probably be involved substantially with creativity and imagination.
According to a research conducted by IBM in 2010, 1600 CEOs in more than 60 countries around the world responded what to prepare your companies to the future’s uncertainty, creativity came out on top. If your children are taught to think and act creatively, at least they can probably go far in this world without worrying much of being unemployed because they can produce astonishing work that can compete with robots and automated machines.
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To think optimistically, creative kids at their best can become great scientists, artists, entrepreneurs, painters and so on, the ones who can change the world into a better place for living. It is well said that one of the success factors for 21st century skills is creativity, the materials used to invent something new.
Like doing exercises, being creative needs practice. It is important that you teach and let your children to know how to get out of the box, where to go and how to put the innovative ideas to come inside of the box where the world we live in and make that world change. Hereby, Skidos would like to suggest 3 ways to foster kids’ creativity.
It would be better if you let your children freely extend their thinking beyond sets of rules and principles that are currently existing. Long thinking is something that takes our kids far. Imagine listening to music or reading a poem, you do not just pay attention to the single notes or words but it is the whole combination of the notes and words that ensemble, give you special feelings and take you far. It applies to our concept of creativity that we need to allow our children to go far in the road of exploring and thinking out of the box.
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Parents and school teachers are suggested to be open-minded to encourage kids to look for new ways of thinking, to come up with new ideas and alternative ways of doing things, not just to give correct answers. There is no such a bad idea and your children should deserve the applause due to their thought or rationale process, not because of the right answers.
A good way to stimulate kids’ creativity is to request them to generate more than just one single solution to a problem but as many alternatives as possible. For example, parents can hand a random stuff to their children and ask them to invent new ways of using the thing.
It can be something simple in-house like a pencil, a cup, a pillow. In that case, your children can see the world differently; they are expected to think unconventionally, to look around, to innovate and to create new options for what could be. As a result, kid’s creativity can be greatly nurtured by doing so.
Children are curious and they keep asking parent many questions which sometimes their parents find hard to answer and, in several cases, parents would try to stop their children from asking after making some attempts to answer.
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But if you want your children to be creative, please encourage them to ask questions and try to answer them with appropriate responses. It is fairly common that many parents usually give direct answers but it would be better if you could somehow ask them back about what they think of as an answer to their questions.
Your children may ask “Why does a dog stick his tongue out?” while watching a television documentary. A typical parent response is: “Because it feels hot.”
The answer is not wrong at all. But, why not ask: “Uhm, what do you think?” Your child has just watched a documentary about the dogs and probably can do some guessing in her mind.
Or else, she has possibly thought of the answer already and is simply waiting for your confirmation. If your kids can give a correct answer, you can find that letting your kids think and answer her question herself is quite a success and a reward is expected to be given.
In case her reply is wrong, you can still reward her and ask her why she thought this was the correct answer. After that, you can reward her rationale and later give and explain the right answer. Stimulate your kids to collect information and make deductions based on that knowledge will shape her creativity and problem-solving skill.
Try to apply this technique often and you will find it work very well for building up creativity for children. Plus, it is also important that parents pose questions to kids such as “What if?” questions to children to help them naturally think of creative possibilities and paint futuristic pictures in their head to encourage creativity in children.
Good questions motivate kids to think outside of the box, to act and solve problems creatively.
Kids like stories and stories they like are not just limited by fairy tales in bedtime stories books for children but many times, they fancy creating imaginary stories of their own. Imaginary plays are created by children with their imaginations to shape make-believe scenarios.
They love this type of play and the tools are ordinary stuff in your house such as toys, puppets, dolls, or stuffed animals. Additionally, dressing up and making their own rules of the game and designing things such as clothes for dolls is also a part of the imaginary plays.
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Parents and school teachers are suggested to let kids engage in their own pretend plays, play with them not just for fun but as a way of appreciating their stories and ideas. You can also dress your kids up and enact a couple of scenes from their pretend plays.
Moreover, parents can ask the children to make a description of what would have been if an event in their stories had changed in a different way. Try to make assumption; for example, “If Cinderella did not meet the Prince, what could she do to be happy?” Above all, please remember to give children enough time to play their creative games and to encourage them to think of more other creative games.
Skidos believes that there will be more suggestions for stimulating creativity in children available out there. If you have any thoughts or tips, please let us know!
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