10 Activities to Support Creativity in a Young Child

Your child’s imagination is endless. The way your child’s imagination grows depends a lot on their age and general stage of development, as well as their day-to-day environment and the attitudes of their teachers.

One of the most interesting developments at the preschool age, around age 3 or 4, is that children enter Piaget’s preoperational period, a period of creative thinking that is marked by a greater understanding of representational thinking. For instance, children are able to see that symbols, drawings and items can represent something else: for example, they begin to understand that the word “horse” or an image of a horse represents a horse in real life. This is the beginning of a phase in which your child begins to create items or images with the intention of representing the things in their life that they see or think about.

Top 10 Activities for Young Children

1.    Use natural spaces. Outdoor spaces such as grass areas in parks, beaches, wetlands and specialty gardens allow your child to learn to be creative with their play using natural materials, including sticks, rocks, plants, water, or natural surfaces to draw on or interact with.

2.    Drawing outdoors. Taking children outside to draw with chalk or watercolour paints on footpaths or rocks can help to stimulate creativity.

3.    Working with art materials. This is a good way to introduce your child to creative activities and a variety of art materials and canvases helps your child to understand artistic nuances and increase vocabulary.

4.    Finger painting. This is a creative and sensory experience in one. Children can explore the physical and sensory experience of painting with their hands, while increasing their understanding of creative representation and colour.

5.    Glue and glitter. Glue and glitter helps a child increase their fine motor control, as well as experimenting with creative ideas of collage. We recommend purchasing bio glitter that will degrade and will not harm the environment.

6.    Baking. Baking, especially decorating cake or cookies, is a creative way for your child to participate in daily life. They can then give this baking to friends or family and take pride in their skills.

7.    Building with Lego or Duplo. This can help your child to increase their spatial awareness and to be creative with building ideas and transport roleplay (such as building train tracks or lego cars).

8.    Making a theatre play. Your children can build the set, puppets, costumes and think about what the play should be like. This is a holistic experience that covers a lot of creative bases.

9.    Facepaint. Facepaint is an excellent foray into roleplay for children, as well as helping them to be creative with their ideas and skills. They can direct adults as to what they want, or paint their faces themselves.

10.  Dress-Ups. Dress-ups are another good creative activity for preschool-aged children, even creating costumes themselves out of found materials or adult clothing. Children aged 3 and 4 will enjoy dressing up as other characters and will use their costumes as imaginative tools.

Your child can grow their creativity in any number of ways and once they reach the preschool-age of being able to represent objects and ideas creatively, their whole world opens up. At Falcon British Nursery your child will always be encouraged to play creatively and will be exposed to the above ideas each and every day.