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Creativity For Kids

A warm welcome to the creativity for kids section of the web site.
Life can be thought of as one big creative adventure – but kids seem to have the most creative adventure. They always seem to be re-inventing themselves, playing games where they pretend to be someone or something else.

Kids love to experiment too, often they will find new ways to entertain themselves with an old toy and often by using the toy in a completely different manner to what was intended.

creativity for kids

(Photo Credit: D’Arcy Norman)

Kids seem to have an inherent drive to explore and solve problems. This creative instinct appears to wane a little as kids get to 4th grade and beyond.

I think this is probably due to the fact that we force more competition and evaluation into children’s lives. We watch over them, pressure them, over control them and force them to follow strict schedules. All of which acts as constraints and barriers to creativity.

Do Schools Kill Creativity?

Below is an excellent and humorous TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson entitled”Do schools kill creativity?”. Sir Ken suggests that we are educating people out of their creative capacity and that teaching creativity should be as important as teaching literacy.

Below is another presentation by Sir Ken titled “Changing Paradigms” but this time with an excellent video-based animation created by the RSA group to complement it. The talk centers around the theme of how do we make change happen in education and how do we make it last?

Developing Creativity

Can you further develop the creativity in creative kids? Certainly – and one of the best ways to do so is to encourage and allow children to play, follow and work with whatever they are currently showing passion for.
Below is an excellent video with a nice twist and which emphasizes the importance of encouraging children in everything that they do…

Your Creativity For Kids Ideas

Do you have any creative ideas or games that kids can play? Write about it here!

Do you have a story to share related to children’s creativity? A particular game that you play or an idea that you have to enhance creativity in kids?

If yes, then please share it with others that visit this site by writing about your story here and sharing it with the global community.

Your Creativity For Kids Idea

Creativity For Kids Ideas

 

Creative Kids

In thinking about creative kids, most children have a lively creative streak, some are endowed with outstanding creative promise. But the teaching they get at school and the training they get at home tend to suppress creativeness. Yet it is a precious quality that, if developed, can make the difference between a routine life and a life of distinction and great satisfaction.

How do you spot “creativity”? Can you measure it with a test? No, not the way you can measure the ability to get good marks in school. Tests have been devised, it’s true. But they’re still experimental and tentative—and no one is sure that the qualities they do measure are the same as creativity. In fact, no one is clear on what creativity is.

creative kids
(Photo Credit Flickr D’Arcy Norman)

From experiments and studies made so far, there’s a general assumption that the following characteristics probably indicate a creative youngster. She’s original, independent, flexible, open-minded, imaginative, and inquisitive.

She “plays with ideas,” doesn’t settle for obvious answers to problems. Ordinary people trust hard facts; creative types are intuitive—they look beyond facts to what might be.

Creative children often don’t seem to be paying attention in school or appear unwilling to accept what they’re told. They can get good marks but don’t always care to, usually because they’re involved in some special interest and don’t like to conform to what others demand. Tests that measure academic prowess don’t spot creative kids very well.

Can you help a child develop creativity? Yes. Pay attention to her ideas, however odd they may be. Respect her creative efforts, no matter how rough or unfinished. Help her learn to test out ideas and to be tolerant of new ideas. Don’t force her into a thinking pattern give her freedom. Help her get along with others, but don’t teach her to suppress individuality in order to conform. Stimulate her to ask difficult, even unanswerable questions teach her to value all creative activity.

What about older students? Can creativity be taught? Possibly. Experiments at the University of Buffalo indicate that students put through creativity problem-solving courses do better on creativity tests than students who don’t take the courses.

Still up in the air though, is the main question—whether what’s being taught and tested is really the mysterious quality that makes the difference between producing a good idea and producing one truly creative.

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You may also be interested in my other website leadership-and-development.com covering topics on leadership and personal development.