So, why is creativity important? Developing your child’s creative thinking skills not only helps them to perform better at school, research also shows that nurturing creativity in your child can make them happier and more fulfilled.
This blog will explore the fundamentals of nurturing your child’s creativity and will cover the following topics:
- How to make a creative environment for your child
- Improving creativity with creative activities and resources
- Nurturing creativity through time
- Building creative confidence in your child
- How Think Tutors can help
At Think Tutors, we offer tutoring support that will complement your creativity nurturing, from Mentoring to Art Tuition. You can contact us online to find out more about how we can support your child with tuition.
How to Make a Creative Environment for your Child
One of the most important ways to nurture your child’s creativity is by giving them a creative environment where they feel safe, comfortable and free to unleash their imagination.
There are number of ways in which you can achieve a creative environment for your child:
- Creative home environment – Having a creative environment at home will help your child to feel safe and comfortable to express themselves. Allowing them to think, play, create and express themselves without fear of judgement, providing an environment that helps nurture their skills. Creative activities can often be messy, noisy and chaotic but this should not be seen as a negative as they allow your child to freely develop their creative skills.
- Go outside – Going outside is a great way of nurturing creativity in your child. There are a limitless number of things to do with your child outside, from inventing their own outdoor games to building objects with sticks and other materials.
- Mix up your child’s environment – It is important to mix up your child’s environment as a way of nurturing creativity so that they don’t become bored. This could be as simple as moving to a different room in your house to do creative activities, or visiting somewhere new. You and your child could visit a park, museum or art gallery to spark their imagination.
At Think Tutors, our Younger Years Tuition combines learning and fun to inspire creativity and to develop core skills that are important for children. Find out more about our Younger Years Tuition.
Improving Creativity with Creative Activities and Resources
Knowing how to improve creative skills is important when nurturing your child. Creative thinking skills can be developed through a variety of activities and resources, such as:
- Creative Resources – Keeping arts and craft materials around the house is a great way to nurture your child’s creativity. Paints, stickers, colouring pens and other creative resources are useful, but you don’t always need expensive materials to inspire your child to be creative. Recycled materials can captivate your child without costing you an extra penny; cardboard boxes, toilet roll holders and empty jars can spark your child’s creativity and encourage them to build their own fun!
- Open-ended toys – An open-ended toy can be used in multiple ways for multiple purposes, such as building blocks, fancy dress clothes, and play dough. These toys are particularly good for unstructured playtime as your child has free reign over how they use these toys.
- Role play – Participating in role play activities with your child is a fun way to get involved with nurturing creativity. Role playing as teachers, doctors, vets, popstars, superheroes or princesses develops your child’s problem-solving skills and encourages them to use their imagination.
- Read, tell stories and talk – Reading and storytelling is a fantastic way of nurturing children’s creativity because it encourages them to visualise and imagine what the stories would look like if they were happening in real life. Also, encouraging your child to invent their own stories will improve their creative thinking skills.
You should consider your child’s learning style when deciding on creative activities to do with them. If your child is a kinaesthetic learner, play dough and building blocks are great creative resources, and if your child is an auditory learner, listening to stories and music is a brilliant way to nurture their creativity. Find out more about learning styles in our recent blog post.
Nurturing Creativity Through Time
Time is an important factor to consider when thinking about how you can best nurture children’s creativity. In particular, there are two key elements of time to think about:
- Unstructured time – Children are often most creative when they are left alone to do what they want, rather than having a structured and planned out playtime. Allowing your child to have time each day to express themselves in whatever way they want will nurture their creativity and encourage them to use their imagination.
- Screen time – Technology can be a great way to learn and develop skills, and has been particularly useful during the Covid-19 pandemic, as we have written about in our blog on learning outside of the classroom. However, screen time can limit your child’s creativity because it encourages passive engagement, rather than active engagement. As a result, your child is taking in other people’s creativity (other people’s videos, images, games) rather than creating their own. Reducing screen time, therefore, will help you with nurturing creativity.
While it is important to reduce screen time to nurture your child’s creativity, online learning is still an effective way of learning. We offer both in-person tutoring and online tutoring support, depending on your child’s needs. Find out more about how remote working can benefit your child.
Building Creative Confidence in your Child
Building confidence in your child is important in all aspects of their development, but particularly for nurturing creativity. You can develop your child’s confidence with the following:
- Open-ended questions – Asking your child open-ended questions encourages them to think for themselves and gives them confidence in what they are doing. If you ask your child questions, they are also more likely to ask you questions and become more open to exploring new things. Open-ended questions are questions that avoid one word answers and usually begin with ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘when’, ‘where’, ‘why’ and ‘how’.
- Being Different – Reminding your child that it is okay to be different, and that every person is unique, is important because it helps with building creative confidence and encourages them to express themselves in whichever way they please.
- Lead by example – Leading by example is one of the most important ways of nurturing creativity because your child looks up to you as a role model. If you join in with their role play, draw with them, watch their performances, go on trips outside together or let them see you being creative, it will give your child confidence in their own creativity.
Alongside tutoring support, Think Tutors also offers mentoring support to help students reach their full potential in a healthy and happy way.
Contact Think Tutors
So why is creativity important? Being creative allows your child to express themselves, helps them to develop creative thinking skills, perform better in school and live a happier life.
Nurturing creativity can be achieved by considering four key factors: environment, creative activities and resources, time, and building creative confidence. You can find out more about how your child can reach their full potential by reading more of our blog posts.
Whether your child is in their younger years, studying for the common entrance exam, or a GCSE student, we provide tailored tutoring services available to support them.
If you have an enquiry about how to nurture your child’s creativity, or keen to know more about tuition or mentoring, then please contact us and we will be in touch shortly.