What creative children these are! Really, they're no more creative than any other children. Creativity isn't a trait that some people have and others don't. It's a way of using your mind and body as you engage in a task that has no prescribed approach. In the creative process, your ideas, feelings, skills, and knowledge flow together in innovative ways, allowing you to make or learn something new.

All children can be creative—including yours. We just have to give them the opportunity. To help children's creativity flourish, we offer them choices, encourage exploration, help them develop new skills, and share their delight in their creations. When we encourage their imaginative impulses in these ways, children develop the confidence to let creativity happen. 

Visit any early childhood setting and, in the course of the day, you'll see all kinds of activities that build on children's creativity. An early childhood classroom is set up to offer children creative experiences. One corner is for dramatic play. In another area, shelves burst with wooden blocks, toy cars, and miniature animals and people. Over at the writing 'table, you'll see paper, pencils, markers, and perhaps even an assistant to take dictation. Nearby is the science table with objects children picked up on their nature walks. The art center includes easels with paints, clay, crayons, and paper. In another corner is the water table, stocked with measuring cups, funnels, and pails. Each area offers an invitation to discover and create, but this is just the beginning of how teachers invite creativity in their classrooms.

Teachers engage creative minds by setting up familiar activities that children can revisit and build on. And they offer new things for children to discover and explore. One day the art table has buttons of various shapes and sizes, glue, and paper for children to make collages with— a chance to use something familiar in an unexpected way.

 Another time there may be corrugated cardboard to paint on instead of paper. The science table invites examination of a new object, such as a fossil one day and an unusual leaf to put under a magnifying glass the next. When children are given something new to work with, they can't do things the same old way—the surprise invites new ways of doing and thinking.

During the day, children move from one learning center to another. They create imaginary worlds and scenes in the dramatic-play area, build cities with blocks, experiment with measuring and comparing at the water table, paint at the easels. This free-play time lets children follow their own interests and express themselves through a variety of openended activities.

Listening to one's own voice is an important part of being creative. There are times when children feel they have to do something even if they don't want to—because someone asked, to win a prize, to get a grade, or even to avoid punishment. But these external incentives change the meaning of the activity—it's no longer done simply for the joy of it. When children do something for reasons other than interest in the activity itself, they're less likely to experience the relaxed flow of ideas that makes creativity possible.

Creativitv, isn't limited to solo experiences—group activities also invite creative thinking. At some point in the day, children are invited to explore certain activities together—to talk about ideas at group time, play musical instruments, act out stories, move their bodies to music, or go on a nature walk. Exploring together as a group exposes children to the ideas of others, which can then spark more new ideas. 

Working together often requires children to come up with creative solutions to real problems. For example, a kindergarten class had decided to act out a favorite story. Two children wanted to play the lead character, a little skunk. Instead of choosing one child or coming up with her own plan, the teacher asked the children to think about the problem overnight. On the following day, several children suggested that each child play the skunk for half the play. Everyone agreed with this creative solution—and both children got to be the skunk.

The creative process draws on everything we know and feel —including skills. To explore our feelings in a painting, we have to know something about how to use a paintbrush. Teachers help children learn the skills and give them the tools they need to represent and explore their ideas—and they do it in ways that support rather than limit creativity.

Often, teachers introduce skills through fun activities and games — seeing how watercolors mix, singing counting songs, making name tags for interesting objects in the room. Teachers spur children to look at the world more carefully by inviting them to make maps of'the school area or use the attendance chart to figure out which child is absent from school today. They ask questions and encourage children to find words to describe their feelings.

 You won't see many coloring books in an early childhood program. In the realm of art, coloring books structure the activity so completely that little imagination, observation, or thought is required. Exploring color is the only creative part of the activity. In fact, if a child becomes tense about coloring outside the lines, the activity discourages rather than encourages creativity.

Teachers usually don't draw for children either. Though children may enjoy seeing what an adult draws, this can send the message that there is a right way and a wrong way to draw. Worrying about being able to do something as well as the teacher can sap a child's confidence and creativity.

Creative work can be frustrating, for adults as well as for young creators. When the work runs into problems, children, like adults, are likely to stop and judge themselves failures. One important way teachers and parents support creativity is by showing children that they can overcome the obstacles that block them. And there are plenty of opportunities for adults to teach and reinforce this lesson.

One such opportunity arose when a girl began to cry as the block she was trying to stand on end fell over for the fifth time. The teacher encouraged her to think about "using little blocks to help the big blocks stand up." She did, and the big block stayed up.

Another time, a boy was drawing a man with crayons. After he drew a large head, he realized he didn't have room for the rest of the body. "My drawing's no good," he told his teacher. "There's no room for the rest." The teacher asked him to think about how he could draw the rest of the body. After a little thought and discussion, the boy said, "Put another namer under?"

 Instead of saying: 

There's no such thing as a purple cow." Limiting what's possible puts a lid on your child's ideas.

Try saying:

Instead of saying:  

Try saying:

  Instead of saying: 

Try saying:

 Instead of saying: 

Try saying:

 Sometimes children need more than a suggestion or hint. There are · some creative projects young children cannot do without help—they cannot saw wood by themselves or write books all alone. But here an adult can help by doing just the parts children cannot do.

 Children as young as 3 can become authors when an adult listens to their stories and writes down exactly what they say. One teacher uses construction paper and folds it in half like a greeting card. She writes the child's story on the inside exactly as the child dictates—not corrected for fact or grammar in any way, for it is the child's story. She puts the title and author's name on the cover. These young authors can tell their parents, "I wrote a book in school today."

 As parents and teachers, we need to show children that we support out-ofthe-ordinary ways of doing things. While we have to make it clear that it isn't okay to splatter paint on the walls, we can encourage children when they trv out their new ideas.

 One example is a little girl who was playing with colored markers. Instead of drawing with them, she lined them up and made a color train. "I am going to make the longest color train in the world," she said. The teacher smiled and handed her another box of markers.

 Another way teachers support children's creative endeavors —and encourage their awareness of themselves as creators— is by treating children's work as something to be respected and shared. A teacher will ask a young painter, "May I use your painting to make the room pretty?" Or she'll ask the builder of a block zoo, "Would you like to talk about your zoo at group meeting time?" Sharing the child's work makes the creator proud and can spark other good ideas.

And you know how pleased your child looks i when she shows you what she created at school. Displaying your child's drawing on the refrigerator r or sharing the book she wrote with Grandma and Grandpa confirms that her imaginative work is valuable—and gives Pleasure to others.

In their creative activities, children develop skills that will support them later on—in school and beyond. They learn to make choices, take chances, see new possibilities, listen to their own voice -- and let their imaginations soar.

Article source:  (Scholastic Parent & Child Magazine December/January, 1998 Pages 37-43)

Charlotte Doyle, Ph.D., is professor of psychology at Sarah 7.awrence College in Bronxville, New York. She is the author of 10 books, for both adults and young children, and has spent more than 2 S years studying and writing about the creative process. M'ist of the examples ill this article were observed at Sarah Lawrence's Early Childhood Center.