Develop Creativity Among Children

The creativity children are more sociable, more warm-hearted and anxious. Three characteristics of personality shows the difference between the highly creative children from less creative but equally intelligent children.

The highly creative have a reputation for having wild and silly ideas.

Their work is characterized by production of ideas, “outside this world”.

“Humour, playfulness, lack of rigidity and realization” characterize their work.

The common characteristics of creative individual is his high level of effective intelligence, his openness to experience, his freedom from incapacitate restraints and impoverishing inhibition, his independence in thoughts and action, his high level of creative energy, his unquestioning commitment to creative endeavour and his continuous striving for solution to the ever more difficult problems that be constantly sets for himself: Berkeley

Developing Creativity Among Children

The child should be encouraged and facilitate openness in thought and action and provide for discovering new ideas. An important condition for the development of creativity in child is to encourage them to socially interact with the people and children around.

Researchers have shown that for the development of creative thinking non-authorization ways of learning should be encouraged.

Practical Suggestions for More Creative in Thinking and Writing

• Curiosity and wide interest in intellectual matters should be developed at an early age.
• Some children prefer to learn by discovering rather than by set rules therefore variety of learning tasks should be included in day-to-day activities.
• Learning experiences should be stimulated more often.
• You should indulge your child in questioning such questions to which he/she gives unique or original answers.
• You should accept and appreciate the unique responses given by children.
• Indulge your children in more creative activities, progressing slowly from simple to complex.
• You should avoid helping your child when seeking creative efforts.
• If possible break the set-rules of learning to develop new ideas in child.
• Full time should be provided for the development of an idea as some children are slow starters and need more time to think independently and act accordingly.

Methods For Teaching Creativity

Research suggest the following guidelines:

• Ask open-ended questions to involve your child in general discussions. For example: what would happen, if there were no rivers? Such questions will stimulate free-thinking and provide scope for many possible answers, but none of them is wrong.
• Involve your child to challenge the assumptions underlying the ideas presented by you.
• Involve your child in the activities, which stimulate creativity and fantasy. For example: Present some meaningless similarities, ‘ I am a horse’, and let the child find out how it is possible.
• Involve your child in exploring activity, like make a list of as many problems as possible related to environment, or list of things around you.
• Present some statements of observation to explore the possibility of its reversal, for example ‘The rose is red’ ‘Red is the rose’.
• Provide your child with as many activities and opportunities as possible, for the expression of ideas, which should be continuous, and in the area of children’s interest.
• Whenever possible provide your child with supplementary materials, books and other experiences, you should avoid emphasising the textual information.
• Provide your children with activities and projects which interest them and give them openness to think originally and express their ideas in their own way.
• Encourage your child to pursue their hobbies.
• Appreciate openly when ever a child expresses creative behaviour like asking usual questions, giving unusual ideas and taking self initiated action etc.
• Appreciate the child when he/she makes ambiguous statements.
• Encourage the child to make as many as guesses as possible about the solution while solving the problems.
• Do not always insist on correct answers. Allow the child to think and re-think the correctness of the answer.
• Do not evaluate the goodness of the answer but insist on the number of ideas. Quality of the answer is automatically taken care of when the child examine all the possible answer of each question.
• Take care that child is not taunted by his friends or brother/sister for his answers to the questions posed by you.
• Do not make sarcastic and insulting remarks in front of the child or on the child.
• You should discourage self-criticism.
• Allow your child to think and express freely and find the facts for themselves. Do not tell them every thing.
• Let children do their best in finding the solution to the problem without giving any hint.
• Do not encourage rote learning or memorising the facts. Allow them to pursue as much as they want without bothering themselves about giving the expected solution or answer.

Enhance You Own Creativity

• Try to explain your child the same think in different ways.
• Give various type of challenging activities to your child.
• Evaluate the answers given by your child in different ways.