The Creativity Column: Rev 1 The role of parents

                                                                              

                           The role of parents in the development of their children’s creative skills

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How is creativity developed in preschoolers?

Activators or stimulants for creativity in the life of the preschooler

• Creative play develops preschooler confidence, language, physical and thinking skills, imagination and emotional understanding.
• Dramatic play helps preschoolers make sense of the world.
• Arts and craft activities encourage self-expression and decision-making.
• Sound play, music and dance let preschoolers express all kinds of feelings.

Benefits of learning and development through specifically arts and crafts

• Improving self-expression: Preschoolers love to express themselves and their ideas using crayons, paints, play dough, clay, scissors, glue and paper.
• Exploring shapes, spaces, textures and colors:  Your child will begin making basic shapes, and might enjoy experimenting with texture, space and colors in pieces of art. For example, preschoolers often draw houses with shining suns above the roof. This is because this kind of picture is made up of basic shapes like squares, triangles and circles.
• Developing decision-making: Craft activities also let your child make decisions for herself. For example, should the roof be red or blue?

How is creativity developed in school children?

Activators or stimulants for creativity in the life school children

• Sharing: It’s important for a child to enjoy and think about the process of creating things. Parents can help this happen by encouraging their child to share artworks and creative activities with the parent and their family.
• Involvement: When the child is creating something, it’s good for them to keep experimenting and changing their artworks until they feel they’re finished. Parents can encourage this by showing interest in what their child makes and helping them when needed.
• Dialogue: Whatever artwork a child comes up with, the parent should encourage their effort with lots of descriptive praise. This is great for your child’s confidence.
• Space: Parents can also encourage creative activity by giving their children free time to play and stepping back from their child’s play. Even boredom can encourage children to think creatively

Ideas on how to get your child started with creative activities:

• Form: Use large cardboard boxes to build chubby houses. Let your child come up with the structure and decoration.
• Space: Give your child a large piece of paper or cardboard to decorate or draw as an imaginary place. For example, your child could paint an outer space scene and then drive cars between planets.
• Texture: Play with textured paint. Add sand, dirt or sawdust to paint and use this to decorate boxes or make paintings.
• Exploring: Make invisible ink out of a mixture of lemon juice and water. Your child can write a secret message with the ink. When it’s dry, he can hold the paper up to the light and see the message reappear.
• Imagination: Make robots out of recycled materials like boxes, kitchen materials like foil and craft supplies like pipe cleaners.
• Media: Combine drawing, painting or clay-making with digital media. For example, make a clay model and take photographs of the model. Your child can use these photographs to make up a story using an app.

Other specialist sources to consult on this aspect:

The Importance of Art in Child Development

“Simple creative activities are some of the building blocks of child development. Learning to create and appreciate visual aesthetics may be more important than ever to the development of the next generation of children as they grow up….” Read more at: http://www.enhancethearts.us/images/ChildDevelopment.pdf

“You may already know that art is a great way to treat anxiety and stress in children. But did you know that it also positively impacts their cognitive and physical development? Keep reading to learn more about the amazing benefits of art!..........” Read more at: https://exploringyourmind.com/importance-art-child-development

As kids manipulate a paintbrush, their fine motor skills improve. By counting pieces and colours, they learn the basics of math. When children experiment with materials, they dabble in science. Most important perhaps, when kids feel good while they are creating, art helps boost self-confidence. And children who feel able to experiment and to make mistakes feel free to invent new ways of thinking, which extends well beyond the craft room. Read more at…. https://www.parents.com/toddlers-preschoolers/development/intellectual/why-art-and-creativity-are-important/

Famous art quotes from  ilovemykidsart.com

• “Coloring outside the lines is a fine art” Kim Nance
• “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up” Pablo Picasso               
• “The urge to draw must be quite deep within us, because children love to do it” David Hockney
• “Art is the colors and textures of your imagination” Meghan, Los Cerros Middle School, 1999
•  “Why do you try to understand art? Do you try to understand the song of a bird?” Pablo Picasso
• “Art is not what you see, but what you make others see” Degas

Our closing thought of the week: What do we see in our child’s artwork? Should we not start look deeper and beyond the scrabble and blots to find and explore the real hidden value?

                                                        

                         

                                                                                                      

Apr 22 2020

By :Fanie Krynauw