A kids imagination: Bright Horizons | Nurturing Creativity & Imagination for Child Development

Bright Horizons | Nurturing Creativity & Imagination for Child Development

Cleo, a 4-year-old preschool child, excitedly told her Mom, “…and then we drank purple milk that came from a purple cow.” Webster defines imagination as “the ability to form a picture in your mind of something that you have not seen or experienced; the ability to think of new things.” Every child is born with an imagination. At times, parents and adults nurture children’s imaginations and take joy in their creative thoughts and acts. Other times, we might (deliberately or unknowingly) stifle children’s imaginations, perhaps concerned that children don’t understand what’s real. Most children older than three, however, know that purple cows don’t really exist but enjoy opportunities to imagine and think creatively. Allowing children to use their imagination is helpful and there are many benefits of pretend play in child development. According to Susan Engel, Ph.D., author of “Real Kids: Creating Meaning in Everyday Lives,” two and a half year olds understand the distinction between real and pretend. But when they’re in play mode, they can lose sight of that distinction, or it becomes unimportant.

Creative Thinking & Imagination for Child Development

Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Imagination is the door to possibilities. It is where creativity, ingenuity, and thinking outside the box begin for child development. Imaginative and creative play is how children learn about the world. During imaginative play, children manipulate materials, express themselves verbally and non-verbally, plan (intentionally or unintentionally), act, interact, react, and try different roles. Great opportunities for learning are possible when children participate in creative play with dolls, vehicles, blocks, rocks, cardboard, or boxes. Employing creative thinking while manipulating play dough, creating recipes by mixing dirt and water, working with art materials, splashing in puddles, or pretending to fly can further child development.

Imagination fosters cognitive and social development. Everyone wants to raise children who reach their highest intellectual and social/emotional potential. In early childhood education, critical thinking skills and creative problem-solving abilities are goals for children’s development. Imagining, trying new ways of doing things, and experimenting help develop critical thinking in children and foster creative problem solving. Furthermore, imagination builds social-emotional development by allowing children to contemplate different resolutions, thus boosting children’s confidence, which can be used in interactions with others. Imagination and creativity are also skills that our children will need when they join the workforce of the future.

Creativity for Kids: Tips for Nurturing Creative Minds

Below are tips and suggestions for nurturing your child’s imagination and creativity:

• Spend time outdoors. The benefits of nature for child development are endless. Because nature is ever changing, it provides countless opportunities for discovery, creativity, and problem solving. The natural world inspires children to think, question, make suppositions, and develop creative minds. Children can draw in sand, make designs with twigs, build forts with branches, or simply lie on the ground and look up at the sky

• Invent scenarios. When your child invents a scenario, he tries on lots of different roles and organizes his thoughts while developing social and verbal skills. Encourage your child to play house, doctor, zoo, farm, space station, school, or store. Join in the imaginative play by taking on a role yourself. Play with stuffed toys or puppets (make simple puppets by putting your hand in a sock). Let your child lead your playtime together. If your child is into superheroes, think of the power your child might want as his own superpower feeling. Consider having your child create a new superhero!

• Verbal activities. From rhymes to riddles, silly sounds to phonics, games such as “I Spy” or making up lyrics to common tunes, verbal interactive activities can inspire and nurture creative minds. Simultaneously, these activities build vocabulary and help your child learn phonics. These games are also the perfect and fun way to spend time in car rides.

• Encourage art activities. Art is creative expression that nurtures imagination, not a lesson in following directions. Through painting, sculpture, collage, clay, drawing or any other medium, art is a way for children to work through emotions, make decisions, and express their ideas. Manipulating art materials provides a sense of freedom yet also encourages focus and concentration. Art activities also develop fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination. Furthermore, art activities build confidence because children gain a sense of mastery over materials resulting in a new creation.

• Share literacy activities. Make reading time memorable and discuss other possible scenarios or endings for the story by using your child’s imagination. Make up stories with your child, at times with her as the main character; other times propose moral dilemmas. Take turns making up a continuing story.

• Ask open-ended and thought-provoking questions. Asking questions that provoke imaginative and creative thinking is an effective way to invite your child to express his ideas and share his visions, while giving him the message that his ideas are important. “What do you think would happen if….?” “What’s the difference between a dog and a cat?” “What are some other ways to do this?”

• Limit screen time (television, movies, computer, tablet, smart phone, handhelds, video games, etc.). Nurturing imagination and parenting in the digital age can be tough. Focusing on a screen is a passive way of learning for children. An alternative would be to encourage children to create something new and different. Engaging children in a kinesthetic manner using their entire bodies and their five senses also opens the mind.

• Remember to allow for down time. Unstructured, unscheduled time allows children opportunities to imagine and create.

Early childhood is the peak time to nurture children’s imaginations. So if your child comes home and says, “…and then we drank purple milk that came from a purple cow,” or something similar, offer encouragement for their creativity and imagination.

More on this Topic

• Building imagination can also happen on the playground. Learn the benefits of playing at the playground for child development and how to use classic children’s outdoor games to boost learning.
• With imagination and creativity, a cardboard box becomes a whole new world for kids. Learn how to foster this skill as your child grows.
• Reading together is a great way to foster imagination. Find tips on how to make reading aloud to kids and storytelling more fun and engaging.
• Arts and crafts allow children to use their imagination and practice creativity. Check out our collection of fun crafts for some artistic inspiration.

Tips for building a child’s imagination

Credit: iStock.com/wundervisuals

Would it surprise you to learn that encouraging your child’s imagination and creative thinking is likely to have a greater impact on their future learning than knowing letters and shapes before school? It is also great fun.

Young children tend to be curious, have great imagination and enormous creative capacity. These are valuable qualities that support learning in school and throughout life, and should be nurtured from an early age. 

Over the past decade, there seems to be increased pressure for children to build formal literacy and mathematical knowledge at an earlier stage, for example, to learn letters and sounds, colours and shapes, facts and figures.

A friend told me that she attended an interview with her son’s Prep teacher and was gifted a laminated alphabet sheet to support learning at home over the Christmas holidays.

Similarly, some centres are using letter and sound programs designed for use in school with children as young as three years. While the intent is to support learning and successful transition to school, evidence suggests that a narrow focus on teaching such skills too early is not the best approach.

Why is imagination important in child development?

Imagination supports learning and the acquisition of knowledge. It does this in two ways. Children draw on their imagination in play to revisit prior knowledge and experience (e.g. a day at the beach, visiting a relative in hospital). This, in turn, expands their knowledge and understanding of these experiences. However, it is not simply about learning what is already known.

Importantly, children use their imagination to explore new knowledge and ideas, for example, revisiting the day at the beach could lead to imagining life underwater. When play taps into the imagination of other children and adults, the possibilities for exploration and learning are endless.

The connection between children’s imagination, knowledge and learning has been known for some time. Celebrated Russian psychologist, Lev Vygotsky, has had a significant influence on early childhood education in Australia and around the world.

Vygotsky was particularly interested in imagination and creativity in learning. He distinguished between two types of brain activity: the ability to store and reproduce existing knowledge; and the ability to draw together existing knowledge and experience to create new ideas and possibilities.

While recognising both support learning, he maintained that building children’s imagination, creative thinking and ability to generate new knowledge and ideas was critical in modern society.

Imagination and creative thinking in the curriculum

Drawing on the work of Vygotsky and others, the Australian Early Years Learning Framework requires educators to work with children and families to support the development of lifelong learning dispositions such as curiosity, creativity and imagination.

Supporting imaginative play and other creative experiences are recognised as providing opportunity for children to:

• explore new ideas
• practise problem-solving
• plan and test ideas and solutions
• learn through trial and error
• take calculated risks; and
• learn to accept failure and try again.

Building on the Early Years Learning Framework, the Australian School Curriculum includes a focus on teaching children to be creative thinkers. This is defined as follows:

“Creative thinking involves students learning to generate and apply new ideas in specific contexts, seeing existing situations in a new way, identifying alternative explanations, and seeing or making new links that generate a positive outcome.” (Australian Curriculum, 2019)

Vygotsky would be pleased. In early education and school, there is currently a strong focus on encouraging children’s imagination and building their ability to think flexibly and creatively, to innovate and solve problems.

From a very early age, most children have great imaginative power and creative ability. However, like all areas of learning and development, these are enriched through practise and experience. Some children may need a little more help to develop their creative thinking skills.

What is most important in the early years: Knowledge or imagination and creative thinking?

Albert Einstein is often quoted as saying “Imagination is more important than knowledge”. His rationale was that knowledge is limited to what we currently know and understand. In contrast, imagination enables us to explore and create new knowledge and understanding.

As an educator, I don’t believe it is ‘either or’. We want children to learn things that we feel are important to know. The knowledge that we think is important is identified in the Early Years Learning Framework and Australian School Curriculum. However, recognising that knowledge isn’t fixed, we also need children to be flexible, imaginative and creative thinkers.

Best of all, imagination provides a foundation for both. Encouraging your child to use their imagination supports their acquisition of knowledge and capacity for creative thinking, and will equip them for success in school and life.

Ways to build your child’s imagination at home

Here are some ways you can assist your child to tap into their imagination and support them to be creative thinkers.

• Help your child to activate their imagination. Show your child that you value their imagination. Encourage them to use their imagination in play and talk with them about their thinking and ideas. If your child is younger, you might describe what you see and respond to their play (e.g. “Oh, you have made a mobile phone. Perhaps you are calling me. ‘Hello’.”).
• Ask thoughtful questions. This is about your child’s imagination, so let them lead thinking and play. However, asking thoughtful questions, now and then, can support creative thinking. Australian educator, Sandy Houen promotes the use of “I wonder” questions that allow children to share their knowledge and ideas. For example, “I wonder what you are going to use to build the rocket”?, “I wonder what would happen if….?”.  Be careful not to get carried away with the questions though. Creative thinkers need time to work things out for themselves.  
• Make time for imaginative thinking and play. Family life can get busy. Make sure that your child has plenty of free and unstructured time to think, explore and pursue their interests and ideas. There is evidence that playing outdoors and in nature stimulates imagination and learning. So too, some quiet time alone can help children to plan and work through an idea.
• Encourage different experiences. Read and tell imaginative stories, listen to a wide range of music, visit the museum, art gallery or botanical gardens. There are lots of no and low-cost ways that you can stimulate your child’s imagination and creative thinking.
• Show your playful side and imagination. As adults, we can become focused on what needs to be done at home or work. We can also be a bit self-conscious and find it hard to really get into imaginative play. However, showing your curiosity, imagination and creative thinking will encourage your child to do the same.

Children’s Imagination Development ☰ Polycent – Children’s Education Center

Imagination is a person’s ability to create new images based on experience. In other words, to imagine what is not, with the help of our memory. For example, imagine what the characters in the book you read look like. It turns out that the imagination is an active creative process, during which you can create new ideas, images and objects based on real knowledge.

Fantasy is closely intertwined with imagination. Only created objects and images here acquire an unreal, fairy-tale motif. For example, a mermaid who sits on a tree branch in A. S. Pushkin “Ruslan and Lyudmila”.

In this article, we will look at various ways that can help develop children’s imagination. This is a talent that we are not born with, but can gradually develop.

Types of imagination

Recreative . We can imagine something when we see its description. For example, on the pages of your favorite book.

Creative . This is the creation of new images according to their own fantasies.

Unmanaged . And this species already belongs to the fruits of violent fantasy. The holders of such an imagination are often called inventors.

Why you need to develop the imagination

Albert Einstein believed that without imagination it is impossible to make any discovery. Even to work in a regular company, you need to have such talent. Everyone knows such a thing as brainstorming, when colleagues think over a further strategy using a huge number of different options. A good imagination plays an important role here.

Any product, technique, painting or book was at first an idea of ​​someone’s imagination. Without imagination, there would be no airplanes, rockets and wireless Internet today.

General recommendations for the development of imagination

There are various ways to develop imagination in children.

Through creativity . Now there is a huge amount of materials for crafts – multi-colored paper, self-adhesive colored foil, felt-tip pens, pencils, plasticine, stickers, coloring books and so on. You can also use natural materials – autumn leaves, walnut shells, pebbles, sand, and so on. Using them, you can create various fairy-tale worlds and stories on a regular sheet of paper.

Through traffic . Movement is one of the ways children learn about the world. Invite your baby to move like a big elephant, jump like a little bunny. Depict some kind of animal and let the child guess who you are showing. Play crocodile and charades, guess the animals by the sounds they make. This is a very fun activity.

Through role-playing games . What could be more interesting than trying on some new role? Play mother daughters, doctors, firefighters, ice cream shop. If possible, create costumes for your game from scrap materials.

Through art . You can touch the beautiful even at primary school age. Now there is a huge number of children’s performances, exhibitions, musical concerts. Don’t be afraid to take the little ones to a regular museum or to a summer concert in an open area. After all, nothing stimulates the imagination like a rich life experience.

Through reading . Read lots of good literature to your children. Cartoons and films give out ready-made images. They often hinder the development of children’s imagination. But reading poetry, fairy tales and children’s stories perfectly stimulates him. After reading together, you can offer to draw the characters as the child presented them. Or supplement the finished image with your imagination, continue the story.

Through games . There are many imaginative games. For example, ask your child to choose what kind of animal they would like to be and why. Or look at the clouds together and imagine what they look like.

The proposed methods are more suitable for preschool children. But there are some interesting games that stimulate the imagination for older children.

How to develop imagination in older children

For example, one can imagine what it would be like if one of the famous personalities of the past happened to be in our time, so that they feel what would surprise them the most. Or what would have happened if the dinosaurs had not died out and continued to exist in our time. Based on the ideas received, you can write a short fantastic story.

You can write a short fantasy story or draw a comic strip on the theme of “time machine”. What would a child do if he had the opportunity to move into the past – where would he go, would he like to change something in his past or prevent some events in world history. And what happens to the present if you change the events in the past?

Another game that is suitable for older children is to choose some well-known paintings and come up with a continuation of the story of the characters that are depicted there.

Continuing the theme of painting, you can take some well-known paintings and try to give them your own names. It will be interesting not to reveal the real name of the picture to the child and at the end to compare who did it better – his or the artist’s. Or maybe the name is the same!

For lovers of poetry, the search for metaphors in poetry is suitable. Metaphor is the transfer of the properties of one object to another on the basis of a feature common to both objects. For example, “cunning hand”, “golden words”, etc. You can make a list of the most interesting metaphors and try to write your own poem from them.

Leo Tolstoy method. Take any object familiar to us and describe it from the point of view of a person who has never seen it. This is a fun game that can be played by the whole family. Imagine yourself as a person from the past who saw household appliances familiar to us or some kind of gadget. How would you describe it to the people of your time?

Children’s Imagination Clubs

Today there are many circles in the field of supplementary education indirectly aimed at stimulating the imagination. If you are looking for activities that will help your child develop their imagination, bring them to our course LEGO Baby . The course is designed for children aged 4.5 – 6 who have a thousand questions about the world around them, who have taken apart a single toy to understand why it works. The development of imagination here is an additional bonus to many other skills that the child will receive in the classroom. Assembling various models based on educational construction kits, preschoolers will get acquainted with the principles of mechanical transmission, get acquainted with the world of technology and design.

In the process of classes, the children will also develop logical thinking, visual memory, fine motor skills and creative imagination. Children will receive basic knowledge of working on a computer, develop an interest in technical creativity.

For children 12-15 years old, we can offer our virtual reality immersion course – VR Technologies . Students will go through all the stages of a project, from developing an idea (which is where their imagination comes in handy) to the finished product. The guys will become developers of equipment and applications of virtual and additional reality. At the end of the project, they can safely call themselves architects of virtual spaces.

The course program includes making a VR controller and VR glasses (similar to Google Cardboard and Oculus Rift DK1), developing and assembling a tracking system, linking the tracking system to Unreal Engine 4, and developing a simple VR game.

Imagination development in children | Academy of Success for Dads and Moms

The trees seemed huge, the meadows – immense, the rivers – endless, and the dreams were so vivid and colorful. Children’s fantasy more often touches adults, but the constant inventions of the baby are also alarming, becoming the subject of irritation and anxiety. Parents often scold the child for deceit, thereby returning him to reality, destroying a fictional world full of exciting adventures.

Let’s imagine for a moment that if humanity did not have imagination, then society could lose many scientific discoveries, works of art, kids would not play various games and fun, would not hear interesting fairy tales and many stories.

Imagination helps children to think outside the box, to find a way out of a difficult situation. With a developed imagination, various life problems, conflicts with peers, adults are easier to endure, curricula are better mastered.

Parents, raising preschool children, must understand what imagination is and the stages of its development.

What is imagination?

So, imagination is an outstanding, unique ability of human consciousness to represent and create in thoughts what is not there and from what is in memory. Simply put, it is the ability of the brain to create mental images based on previous experiences.

Imagination can be:

• Recreative – i.e. images are recreated, arise on the basis of books read or stories heard. In other words, the child imagines and imagines what has been read to him or what he has heard.
• Creative – i.e. images arise in the imagination without relying on what is read, heard, seen. In other words, the child independently creates stories and images with the help of his thinking. It is this kind of imagination that needs further development.

– Uncontrollable, it is also called “violent imagination”, “unbridled fantasy”. This is when a child creates stories that are not connected by any sequence and logic. In other words, a child with this kind of imagination constantly fantasizes something and says that this is exactly how it was. In preschool children, this ability needs special care, since this age is sensitive for the formation of the imagination. And the goal of parents is to improve the activity of this function by various methods. In order for the imagination to develop, it is necessary to accumulate the baby’s own experience and increase his horizons about the surrounding reality. This experience is acquired through both personal observations of children, and through communication with adults (parents, teachers), who pass on their own baggage to the child – a store of knowledge about objects and phenomena around them, their own creative experience.

The rudiments of imagination appear in the pre-school age, by about 2 – 2.5 years. The foundation for the development of a child’s imagination is a properly organized play environment at home and, if possible, a change of scenery – visiting playgrounds, traveling in the park, visiting guests by public transport, etc. It is appropriate to add that in this age period there is a rapid development of speech, which gives an auxiliary stimulus in the formation of the imagination. Until about the age of three, the baby’s imagination will be reduced to familiar situations.

By the age of three, the main and significant activity in children is play. It is in the game that the imagination is initially laid down and improved. While playing, the child learns to “replace” some objects with others and applies them in other roles. In other words, a child, playing with one toy, can imagine another toy in its place (for example, a baby who has learned to use a spoon, in a game situation, instead of a spoon, takes a stick or other object and “feeds” it to mom, dad, and all other toys ). Thus, an imaginary “feeding” occurs. For babies of this age, it is very important that the substitute object be visually similar to the object that is being replaced. This substitution is the birth of the imagination. This happens as the child begins to master the meaning of actions “for fun”, “not for real”.

By about 4 years of age, the child’s need for visual supports disappears. The imagination is now able to refer to objects that are not “replacing”, and there is a so-called “transition” to play action with an object that is actually missing. The child gives a different new meaning to this object, and in his mind he imagines effects with it. The fictional situation takes place entirely in the inner plane of the baby.

For example, a child playing with any “tea” box can imagine that this one is a saucepan or a box, a spaceship. Any wand can transform into a saber sword, and an ordinary piece of cloth into a mantle for a musketeer, etc.

The imagination that develops in the game smoothly flows to other activities of the child. The imagination manifests itself most clearly when children draw, sculpt, construct, invent fairy tales and different stories. Of course, fictional fairy tales are not particularly original and are just a kind of familiar fairy tales to a child, and the stories are quite simple, but getting something new as a result of the activity of one’s own imagination allows the child to see the world from a different perspective.

In younger preschoolers, the imagination is not yet controlled, it starts suddenly, while in older preschoolers the process becomes controlled, i.e. voluntary imagination is born.

When imagination becomes voluntary, the child gradually begins to plan his activities. So, older preschoolers first come up with what they want to draw, build, and only then they start working, selecting the necessary materials for this. And three-year-olds who do not know how to plan their activities, starting to draw, sculpt or design, cannot really explain what exactly they are going to draw or mold, and only then, as they do, the image of a drawing or craft is revealed. It often happens that in the course of the process itself, the final goal can easily change.

Closer to the age of 5-6, children accumulate a certain amount of worldly experience, and this experience allows the creative imagination to actively develop. The child no longer waits for tips from an adult, he can invent games himself, and immediately fills it in his mind with fictional characters, and determines the roles of characters among peers. The game can last quite a long time, while the idea of ​​the game is preserved and saturated with more and more new, interesting details.

Sometimes preschoolers are immersed in a fantasy world. The object of fantasy becomes something that is very alarming, captured the child (an exciting story, a cartoon or movie watched, a long-awaited toy, etc.).

Children create their own imaginary worlds, in which “imaginary friends”, “non-existent heroes” appear, with whom they can play when they are alone. They help to overcome children’s fears, in this fictional world everything is the way the baby wants. Of course, close attention is drawn to the fact that some preschoolers are trying to replace the real world with a fictional one and prefer to satisfy their own needs in it, “avoiding” solving real difficulties. The reason for such fantasies may lie in the personal problems that the preschooler has. The emergence of such fantasies in a child is an opportunity for adults to reflect on the fact that the needs of the child may not be fully met.

Summing up, it can be noted that the development of imagination in children is of very significant importance. When a child fantasizes, dreams, he does not just play, he masters the knowledge of the world around him, acquires the necessary knowledge, becomes more sociable and self-confident.

Some techniques are used to develop the imagination:

1. All kinds of creative activities (drawing, modeling, designing, etc.). To do this, offer to come up with and draw a non-existent type of transport or an unusual house and supplement the drawing with additional plasticine details that are missing in the drawing.

2. Fairy tales are an excellent tool for developing a child’s imagination. You can read a fairy tale up to a certain episode, and then invite the child to come up with its ending. Try to compose a fairy tale for your child and draw an illustration for it.

3. Didactic games should be interesting for children. Examples of games: – The child must associate himself with any living creature and explain why the chosen animal or bird interested him.

• Draw to the child something that does not exist, for example, a non-existent animal, plant. Let the kid come up with a name for him and tell a story about him.
• Have your child make up a “fairy story” about three objects that are not related to each other, for example: a ladle, a ball, a table.
• Ask your child to draw geometric shapes, for example: a circle, a square, a triangle. After the kid finishes drawing, you can ask him what he did. On a sheet of paper, drip a blot of paint and invite the child to come up with an image of the blot.