Helping your kids to think and act more creatively in life is a really valuable thing to do. The more creative they are, the more fun they will have in life, and the better they will be able to make connections between things when they are at school, which will certainly help them to be more thoughtful and intelligent in life.
Okay, but how exactly do you spark your child’s creativity? Here are a few tips that should help you to help your children get their creative juices flowing:
Show them artworks
One of the simplest ways to encourage creativity in children is to simply expose them to it. Although simply placing a blank sheet of paper in front of a child can often be enough to get them drawing and thinking creatively, many children feel more inspired to do so when they have lots of examples of art and crafts around them. The more you show them art books or prints or examples of crafts you have done yourself, the more inspired they will be to try and create something similar of their own. When they know what kinds of things are done in art, they will have a safe place to start, So, be sure to show them lots of examples of other people’s creativity.
Get them the right toys
There are some toys that are more likely to spark creativity in children than others. Things like Lego where your child will be given a number of building blocks and free reign to create anything they want with them are obviously good for sparking creativity, but things like model trains and dolls, which both enable them to act out fantasies with the toys they have in front of them and a scenario they have come up with in their head can be excellent for encouraging creativity too.
Encourage them to mess around
Getting lots of fun arts and crafts materials like paint, pens, crayons, wool and paper together, and encouraging your kids to have fun and mess around, sticking their hands in the paint or braiding the wool or doing whatever feels right to them is a really good way to get them to be more creative. When you encourage them to just mess around and have fun, then that is exactly what they will do, but at the same time, they will be noticing how much they like this new colour or how well the paint looks if they do this and how bad it looks if they do that, and they will pretty soon start to think more creatively about the process. Don’t put any pressure on them if you want them to enjoy the act of creativity.
Focus on the process
In a similar vein, when trying to encourage your kids to be creative, you should not focus on the end product but the process of creating. If you critique a child’s painting too harshly or keep correcting their use of Lego bricks because you do not think they are building a house that looks close enough to your vision of a house, you are likely to put them off and stop them from exercising their creativity at all. It is far better to let kids do their own thing, even if you don’t think they are doing it right because if you keep correcting them they will never learn how to think for themselves, and what’s more, they are unlikely to enjoy the process.
Ask them questions
As parents, we are often used to our kids asking us lots of questions. They always what to know why something happens or why something is the way it is, and often they leave us struggling to come up with good answers.
If you want them to be more creative, then turn the tables on them and start asking them more questions, Ask them why they think butterflies are so colourful or why they feel sad when it rains, and get them thinking about all kinds of questions and problems as the more they think about life, big and small, hr more creative they are likely to become as a result.
Make it available
If you always have arts and crafts available to them, alongside creativity-sparking toys, and you give them enough free time, then many kids will naturally start to explore their creativity out of boredom. Kids are so unused to being bored these days, but a bit of boredom can be just what they need to get the creative juices flowing.
Get creative yourself
Of course, one of the best things you can do if you want to spark creativity in your kids is to get involved in creativity yourself, preferably with them. Take out the watercolours and start painting the birds in the garden or the dog or even the kids, and have them help you to fill in the details or paint their own version alongside yours. They’ll love spending quality time with you, and if they see that you get a lot of joy out of being creative, they will be more inclined to give things a try too, As their parents, you are their role models and the more you let creativity into your life, the more you’re kids will embrace it for themselves too.
Don’t push it
However, one of the worst things you can do is to push creativity on them. Not every kid will want to follow creative pursuits, and all children will have periods when they are more creative than others. It is fine to encourage creativity, but if you insist upon it and try to push your kids into being creative, that is more likely to kill any creative spark they might have than anything else, so don’t be pushy, they will come to creativity when they are good and ready.
As you can see, there are lots of fairly simple things you can do to spark creativity in your children and doing so will help them lead healthier, happier, more successful lives in the future, so what are you waiting for?