The ability to create has one of the highest values of our society. Having the space and opportunity to be creative can be one of life’s most fulfilling experiences. Children are born to be creative and resourceful. Unfortunately, as they get older, more and more rules are imposed on them, and some students gradually lose their creative edge or channel their creativity into non-learning activities.
When you know how to nurture your child’s creativity, their learning will flourish. One of my daughters doesn’t enjoy math as much as other subjects, but she enjoys making up stories. So I started encouraging her to make up stories involving numbers. She started writing word problems. She would then ask him if the problem in her story made sense. To prove that her problem made sense, she would have to solve it herself.
Happily and willingly he went through the routine of adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing to solve his word problem.
This same daughter is not as confident in her ability to draw, but she likes to write stories. So she encouraged her to illustrate the characters in her stories, which gave her ample opportunities to practice her drawing skills. She now illustrates many of the characters she creates and her drawing skills have improved drastically.
My oldest daughter is not as interested in current events as I would like. However, she loves designing her newspapers. I use her enthusiasm for making newspapers to introduce you to what is happening in our world today. For both national and world news, I invite you to read Internet news with me and explain and discuss what is happening. She has become increasingly interested in current events and is writing news in her newspaper to reflect what she has read online with me.
When your child expresses excitement creating a small item like a bookmark, making a small bag out of quilt patches, doing a quiz game, or creating a workbook for younger siblings, encourage, appreciate, and praise their creativity.
I have always encouraged my children to use their creativity to learn new things, reflect on what they have acquired, and discover and explore new territories in this vast sea of knowledge.
When your child’s creativity is nurtured and encouraged, he associates the positive and powerful experience of learning with being creative, and it will benefit him for the rest of his life.
