Creative thinking is one of the essential life skills that is crucial for children to develop. Be it any profession or field, creativity and innovation are indispensable skills for one to be successful. Most of us think creativity is an inherent ability, i.e. either we are born creative or we are not. But the good news is it can be learnt and enhanced. So, the parents and teachers can encourage children to develop their creative thinking skills.
Some fun ways to nurture creative thinkers:
Incomplete figure activity
In this fun activity, give your child an incomplete figure and ask him/her to complete the picture. Following is an example from Torrance Test of Creative Thinking :
Teach kids the skill of asking questions
For nurturing a curious mind, it is essential that we encourage our children to learn the skill of asking questions. Parents must lend a patient ear and should make their child feel comfortable so that they can freely seek answers to their questions.
Sometimes, parents can give their child a list of questions and ask them to find their answers, by talking to people, reading, or searching online through articles or videos.
Additionally, a child could be given a scenario/real life situation and encouraged to think different alternative solutions to deal with the situation. This will help them understand that a problem can be looked at from various perspectives and there are often multiple ways to solve the same.
Title the picture
Another fun activity for boosting creative thinking in children, is to give them a picture and ask them to frame a story around it. Encourage them to use their imagination and outside the box thinking to build an interesting story-with captivating characters and twists!
30 circles activity
This is one activity that focuses on quantity of creative ideas. Give the child a paper with 30 blank circles. Provide a pencil and instruct them to draw in/fill the circles, as many as they can in 3 minutes. Sometimes, a child can also fill these circles according to a theme like body parts, flowers, sports and so on.
Paper-clip test
How can a common object like a ball, pin or button can be used in various creative ways? That’s the idea behind this activity. Ask the child to think how a common object like a ball or a pin can be put to multiple creative uses and let his creativity flourish!
These are some ideas through which we can provide children with an outlet to express their creative abilities and further enhance their creative expression. Furthermore, these activities can reawaken our own inner child, so that our creative thinking skills doesn’t get rusty as we age.
Did you like this article? Let us know, it would be our pleasure if you share your feedback, comments and suggestions with us. Follow the blog or our Facebook Page to receive regular updates of such articles.
Follow us on: https://www.facebook.com/SGVPInternationalSchool/
Learn more about SGVP at: http://www.sgvp.org
