MommyTeaching.com

Help Children Develop Creativity

March 22, 2011

How can we nurture creativity in our kids?

• Provide children with the resources and time to make up their own stories and fantasy play. For example, give your children a towel and tell them it's a magic carpet and pretend you're flying in the air with it.
• Encourage silliness in conversation and play. Encourage play that is non-reality.
• Tell stories about characters in other countries or different periods of time. Then make your child a character of the story. Ask child to answer questions about how she would live under the circumstances of the story. For example, how would your child eat if she lived in Cairo, Egypt?
• Buy books written in other countries and read them to your children
• Use all of your sense to explore nature with you child. Smell and look at floweres. Touch grass. Hear birds.ll and see beautiful flowers. Touch the grass and trees   lllll
• Try ethnic foods. Either make them yourself or go out to restaurants. Tell children where these foods originated.
• Have children help you provide functional items for your house. Have child help you pick out a ceramic bowl you can use to hold the keys by the door.
• Have  Have your children help you decorate the house.  Move furniture around, add painting to a wall, or   shop for items together. 
• Nurture the mode of thinking that there are several approaches to every problem.
• Have children come up with different solutions to the same problem.
• Allow children to experiment and make mistakes

Lesson Plan

September 28, 2011

I recently moved out-of-state and started a new job.  It has been a busy transition and I'd like to apologize to any of my regular readers for my inconsistency in posting.  My plan is to start my regular postings on Mondays and Thursdays.

This is my first time teaching full time since my kids were born.  My worry is that my parenting will suffer now that I am working.   The other day my daughters didn't want to eat their broccoli.  I was so tired I almost just let it go.  Will one day without veggies hurt them?  Maybe not but it will throw off my consistency in making them eat a balanced meal.   Instead of forcing them to eat broccoli, I told them to imagine the broccoli as trees.  My sister chimed in that the kids could pretend they are giraffes eating leaves off a tree.  My children, niece and nephew all begged us to hold  the broccoli up in the air while they stretched their necks to reach the leaves.   I'm sure you can imagine the children wanted to continue eating broccoli and they each ate three full servings of broccoli.  Amazing that such a simple activity could motivate children to do what you want them to do.