How Important is Creative Development in a Child’s Education?

 

Creativity involves both a child’s skill and unique ability to create. This should be nurtured within their Early Childhood Program. It helps in developing a child’s language, confidence, imagination, emotional understanding, as well as their physical and thinking skills.

Let us delve a little bit deeper about creative development.

How do you define creative learning?

Creative development or creative learning is an activity where a child is encouraged to adapt, refine and explore various materials and concepts in a fun and artistic way. This allows them to explore and see how things work around them. It also indirectly teaches them the concepts of cause and effect, problem-solving, and developing hypotheses through activities such as cake making, paper folding, simple science experiments, painting, and other DIY crafts.

 

What are the creative learning activities we can use?

The early years are one of the most creative times in a child’s formative years. Therefore, it’s the best time to encourage and develop:

• Confidence
• Creativity
• Communication skills
• Motor and coordination skills
• Decision making, problem-solving, and critical thinking skills

Below are different activities we can use for the creative development of a child.

 

Dramatic Play

It is normal to see a child using new songs they’ve learned as the basis for their dramatic play. At one moment, they are little red riding hood and then the next they are one of the pigs being chased by the wolf.

As they take on a role, it allows them to see things from someone else’s perspective. It helps them to express feelings and make sense of the world.

Dramatic play can also develop a child’s vocabulary and imagination. Sometimes, a child might enjoy acting alone but at some point, they’ll want you to join in too.

 

Arts and crafts

Arts and crafts are a great way to foster creativity. You can help a child to express themselves by using crayons, playdough, clay, paints, glue, scissors and papers.

They can create basic shapes to explore colours, textures and space. For example, they can draw a house with a triangle roof or a sun. This way, they can learn the basic shapes like the triangle, circle and squares.

Through arts and crafts, they can also practice decision making by deciding which colour to use in the house. Will it be red or brown?

 

Music and Dancing

Another activity that can help in the creative development of a child is music.

Music and dancing can help develop their concentration. They can also use this to express an idea or feeling such as happiness, sadness and excitement. A child can jump for joy or stamp when they’re angry.

By singing and dancing, a child can learn about rhythm. They’ll be able to differentiate slow, fast, short, long, loud and soft rhythm. Dancing can also be used as a form of physical exercise as they move fast or slow along with the music.

 

What are the benefits of creative learning in early childhood?

Creative development is beneficial for both the physical and brain development of a child. It encourages them to be creative, curious and independent which will carry through to adulthood.

Here are some of the benefits of creative learning in early childhood.

 

Motor Skill Development

With creative learning, a child is asked to be physically involved. It can be in the form of a game, dance or an obstacle course. This will help develop their gross motor skills along with balance and coordination. Other motor skills that will help in their development involve simple tasks such as  holding a pencil or using scissors. Both of which can be practised through art and craft activities.

 

Language Skill Development

As we’ve mentioned above, creative learning includes using dramatic play and music in developing a child’s brain. This leads to better language development of a child. Their vocabulary will expand and their communication skills will be broader.

 

Emotional Skill Development

Creative activities are prone to unexpected events. After all, these actions are not scripted but are done spontaneously by them. So, expect children to make mistakes as they learn things.

Through this process, children are taught how to handle failures and the value of trying until they succeed. They can then develop resilience and a positive attitude when trying new things without the fear of failing.

 

Independence and Self-care Establishment

Through creative development, a child can learn things like pouring, cutting and sorting. As they learn to be independent and confident in using these skills, they’ll be able to use these in different areas such as self-care.

 

STEM Concept Introduction

Creative development exposes children to mathematical and science-based ideas, which includes cause and effect, physics and numerical value. Through the process, they learn how to predict the outcome of a certain action and intuitively compare it with the result they expected.

This is introduced and developed through simple block stacking, where children learn mathematics and engineering while analysing the ideal number of blocks that will lead to a stable foundation and higher tower. You may consider it a simple task, but these simple activities are the foundation of your child’s STEM skills.

 

Creative development with Cherubs Early Learning and Kindergarten

Creative development is an important part of educating children. It helps in moulding children into the creative adult they will become. These are not done as a routine, rather children are given the freedom to freely play and express their feelings and interests in the learning process.

To know more about the different learning activities we use for our creative development course, talk to us today. We’d be happy to show you our centre.