4 Ways to Encourage Creative Development in Kids

As children, the desire for self-expression and creativity is at its highest, making it an optimal time for parents to instill encouragement for children to express their creative abilities and skills freely. Essentially, children welcome any opportunities to express their creative skills. Nurturing these abilities and encouraging creative thinking allows an opportunity for both parent and child to bond, while requiring a certain amount of distance from the parent, allowing the child to openly explore his or her imagination.

As kids grow older, their ability and desire to openly express their creative sides is limited, in a sense, by the demands of modern society to portray themselves and act as adults. For this reason, utilizing this period of childhood to enhance and encourage the development of creative skills is an important part of developing life-long skills and creative thinking.

Write A Story

From a very early age, children have a natural desire for reading stories and hearing stories being read to them. By encouraging children to create their own fictional story, this area of creative exploration takes on an entirely new role by opening a child's creative mind to new ideas. Writing one or two paragraphs about a Christmas or other holiday character or building a poem about friends or family is a great starting point in teaching kids the wonders of creative writing.

Play Pretend

Since physical activity is an important part of childhood play, offering children opportunities to play pretend games opens their minds to alternative lifestyles and activities that vary from the aspects of their everyday lives. Camping is one such pretend activity that is fun for the entire family, while simultaneously allowing kids to express themselves openly. Whether indoors or outdoors, setting up a tent area can set a perfect scene for telling stories, making s'mores and other snacks or going for an outdoor adventure in the 'woods.'

Fruit Paintings

A child's fascination for arts develops from an early age, often beginning with his or her discovery of crayons and markers. Creating drawings and crafts opens an opportunity for children to express their thoughts, emotions, ideas and personalities freely. Fruits such as apples, kiwi, strawberries, grapefruits and oranges give a unique spin on popular sponge paintings by slicing fruits in half and allowing children to dip fruits in paints of their color preference to create beautiful fruit designs on colored paper or canvas.

Creative Baking

To further encourage creative development, why not allow children to add their own designs to those cookies and cakes by decorating them? Decorating cookies together as a family is an excellent bonding experience that offers encouragement to children to express themselves. Giving children a theme to focus on for their designs, such as holidays or animals helps them to explore varying forms of creative thinking.