How To Foster Creative Kids With 4 Easy To Follow Activities

All children have different types of intellect. You might have one child that’s incredibly creative, while you might also have another that is more analytical. Sometimes they’re great at both!

Whatever your child is great at, it’s important to cultivate their talents. This particular article will focus on cultivating a creative mind.

This is for the mums and dads whose kids can’t stop drawing (hopefully not all over the walls), and who love to read, act, and role-play.

Hopefully we inspire you with some great ideas that in turn inspire your children’s young minds. Here’s our list.

Best Activities To Inspire Creative Kids

Reading

Reading is not only great because it involves so many different literacy skills, it’s great because it transports you to a new world of infinite possibilities, and this is what creative kids need.

They love to make up new scenarios, create new worlds, and create new stories.

You’ll find that with reading a good book, your children will be inspired to go on with activities relating to it.

It’s common for kids to want to draw pictures of their new world, pretend to be the book’s characters when playing with each other, and to design new objects around the book they’ve just read.

It’s almost as if their new book becomes their world.

Incorporate this with your daily life. You child doesn’t want to put the dishes away? Ask them what the hero of their new book would do. Is it part of their character to be bad? Or are they going to help put the dishes away like the hero they are?

Craft Activities

Sometimes a bunch of pencils, pens, and paper just doesn’t cut it for kids who are especially creative.

They need something to challenge their creativity to the max. Recycling can be a great way of incorporating the everyday with creative crafts.

Items such as cereal boxes, bottles of milk, tin cans, egg cartons, cotton wool, straws, and bottle lids can be recycled as items in creative arts.

Ideas include creating an ‘under the sea’ themed craft activity.

1. Cut an old milk bottle in half (vertically). Clean it out of any residue.
2. Using some pipe cleaners, googly eyes, and glue, transform each individual compartment of an egg carton into a little crab by cutting 8 pieces of pipe cleaner as legs, and gluing eyes onto the top of the egg carton.
3. Make jelly fish by using old shoe laces, and sticking them to a bunch of cotton wool.
4. Using crepe paper, create a forest of sea weed for your little creatures.
5. Place your creations into the milk bottle, and decorate the outside to your liking.

Play Groups

Imagine how much more fun your creative child could enjoy play time if they were with friends. A play group can be a great way for this to happen.

Play groups allow kids with great imaginations and creativity to work together on role-play scenarios.

Working together means that the amount of imagination needed is multiplied.

However, it’s even better if the play group is in a structured environment like the one at Wannabees.

This provides the perfect opportunity for role-play, which we all know is one of the best ways for a creative mind to boost their brain.

This is contributed to by facilitator activities run by fully qualified staff. Activities include craft, reading time, acting and scenario play, and more.

These activities are designed for all kinds of kids, but creative children will benefit hugely. The mix of hands-on learning, and self-directed play means this activity is perfect for your creative child.

Positive Reinforcement

Positive reinforcement is one of the most powerful parenting tools anyone can use. It’s the act of reinforcing positive behaviour, rather than negatively reinforcing bad behaviour.

For example, a child who has behaved well on a road trip or a day out should be praised for their good behaviour, rather than chastised for their negative behaviour.

This is because kids love attention, and believe it or not, they love positive attention more than negative attention.

Creative kids always crave positive attention, but can often shy away and become very sensitive at the thought of negative attention.

This means you might need to change your vocabulary slightly.

Instead of directly stating your child has done something wrong – say they went on a sudden burst of artistic creativity and decided to paint the walls, you should try and lay off the negativity too much.

Of course your child should  know they have done something wrong, but follow it up by asking what they could have done differently, and how they would approach such a scenario again in the future.

Positive attention and positive reinforcement tends to work the best for kids in this situation.

They need to be intrinsically motivated, and positive reinforcement is the best way to do this. Praise is better than extrinsic rewards such as lollies and prizes. It inspires a real love to do the right thing regardless of consequence, and to be motivated to be creative!

Overall, these recommendations can be used to help foster creativity in your child. From positive reinforcement, to craft and play groups, following these ideas might help your child to be more creative, and rise to their full potential. Don’t forget, role-play, creativity, and positive attitudes are the best things for creative kids!

You can also read our article “Best Toys And Activities That Will Help Your Child’s Development” and “How To Help Your Toddler To Have Effective Play Time” for more ideas.

Your Turn

What other activities do you know that can help other to foster creative kids? If you enjoy the article share it with a friend.