Creative expressions preschool: Preschool: Creative Expression | Virtual Lab School

Creative Expression and Movement – Action for Healthy Kids

Overview

Feelings don’t give a warning sign before they come up, so it’s important to help children create a toolbox of activities or expressive outlets to work through different feelings and emotions. Creative expression offers children an opportunity to develop important skills that support positive social emotional health including the ability to name and identify their own feelings, think critically about the world around them and practice self-regulation for positive behavior management.

Creative expression through movement also comes with the added benefit of physical activity – supporting the mind-body connection. The best part? There is no right or wrong answer! Feelings are special and specific to each and every one of us – so how we express them is, too. Use movement to bring the attention back to the body and have fun exploring feelings and emotions.

Take Action

Move to the music. Just turning on some music and allowing your body to move to how it makes you feel is a great way to get your body moving while reflecting on feelings and emotions.

• Make a playlist of songs with different melodies and intensity. Encourage children to move to the music based on how it makes them feel. A slow, harmonic song might elicit feelings of calm or mellow while an upbeat, bouncy song might bring out feelings such as happy or inspired.
• You can also create your own music. Use household items such as pots and pans, upside down cups, shakers made of rice in a plastic container, etc. Develop a list of feelings and emotions and create the sounds that come to mind with your very own living room band.

Interpret the sounds and sights of nature. Our surroundings can influence how we feel including the sounds of nature. It also offers an outlet for creative thinking and self-reflection.

• Step outside and listen to the surrounding sounds and look around at what you see.
• Draw a picture or write down a list. Think of what feelings or emotions come to mind with each of these sounds and how you might express those feelings through movement.
  • Snow is quietly falling – It feels calm and sleepy – I move with long stretches and quiet steps.
  • Cars are zooming along the street of a busy city – It feels energetic – I spin and move quickly.
  • Thunder rumbles – It feels angry – I dance with big movements and loud stomps.
  • The sun is shining brightly – It feels happy and excited – I move with hops and jumps.

Dance through the rainbow. Colors can be interpreted to mean different things and represent different emotions. Create a rainbow ribbon and dance through each color and an associated feeling.

• Create a rainbow ribbon stick or ring by using different colored ribbon or up-cycling strips of old t-shirts.
• Encourage children to think about each color of the rainbow (you can also add in neutrals like white, grey and brown) and feelings that come to mind.
  • Orange is bright and energizing – I feel excited and hopeful.
  • Green is calming – I feel relaxed.
  • Grey is hard to explain – I feel mellow.
• With their rainbow stick or ring, invite children to dance through each color and express an associated feeling. At the end, ask them to dance to all of the colors of the rainbow they feel today together. This can be done to music or with children speaking their thoughts out loud.

Tips

With whatever activity you choose, create space to reflect and “debrief” afterwards. As children explore feelings and emotions of their own, it’s important to give them an outlet to talk through them when needed. You can also do this through journaling or arts and crafts.

Reinforce positive ways to express feelings – whether through movement, creative play or quite mindfulness activities. Encouraging children to express their feelings in ways that feel the most supportive to them, helps them to develop a routine or “go to” strategy when feelings and emotions are running high.

Avoid discrediting how children connect feelings in some of these activities. Children may interpret sounds, music or colors to mean different things to them. Avoid leading questions that influence them to answer one way or another and instead invite them to share more around their connections and seek to understand their perspective.

Model creative expression by sharing in the activity with children. Children may feel more comfortable to express feelings and emotions if they see the adults around them doing the same. It also affirms that there is no right or wrong answer and invites them to express a little more freely.

Always be sure to invite not request. Sharing in feeling and emotions can be sensitive and take time for children. Building trust and allowing the pace to unfold at a speed that makes the most sense for them is key to creating an open line of communication.

Creative Expressions and Activities for Preschoolers

Most parents have the misconception that education is limited to only reading and writing. But the real goal of education is to hone your child’s skills and encourage their curiosity.

Every child has different needs. Every child learns at his or her own pace. Some kids are creative and artistic, while others are astute observers.

With one child, it’s hard to keep up with their energy and with the other, you wonder if they’re even in the room.

Encouraging your child to communicate using movements, words, and visuals is essential for helping them grow and develop. Here are a few creative expressions and activities every parent should teach their kids:

Dancing

There are various types of dances, and enrolling your child for dance lessons is an excellent way to help them grow. They’ll become more flexible, learn to balance themselves, and improve their focus.

Dancing will help your child learn about discipline. It’ll also help them use their energy positively. It’ll help boost their self-esteem and they’ll learn to express themselves confidently.

Drawing

Unleash the little artist within your child with art lessons. If your child has a creative side to them that’s begging to be let out, don’t hesitate.

Art itself is a form of expression. Let your child’s imagination thrive by letting them grab those paints and colors. It’ll bring their world to life and you’ll also get to learn what type of person your child is.

This is important because it will:

• Develop their motor skills
• Encourage visual analysis
• Boost self-confidence
• Improve concentration
• Establish hand-eye coordination
• Teach creative problem-solving techniques

Building

Given your child is above the age of 5, allow them to play with Legos (still supervise them).

This will bring out the innovator in them. It’ll also help hone their creative problem-solving skills and encourage their critical thinking abilities. They’ll learn to solve problems based on logic and not just emotions.

If your child is sensitive and emotional, it’s a good way to help them de-stress. You can also give them a cardboard box and let their imagination run wild.

Join in on the fun and you can improve your relationship with your child!

Ask them if they think the box is a spaceship, boat, or a car. You can even look up a few cardboard crafts videos on YouTube to help encourage your child’s creative side.

From a miniature wardrobe to a bookshelf, there are no limitations!

Puzzles and Word Games

Puzzles will help develop your child’s critical thinking skills and show them there is more than one way of solving problems. It will help think on the spot and this way, they’ll learn to remain calm during emergencies and develop mental resilience.

Words games will help increase your child’s vocabulary; they’ll learn new words and hone their reading skills.

Enroll Your Child into a Pre-School Program

A pre-school program will help your child learn to express themselves creatively. Your child will master the ability to adapt to their surroundings at their own pace. They will be taught different ways to express themselves and explore their creative side.

If you’re looking for a daycare center in Orlando, we offer an exceptional preschool program that uses a hands-on approach to help your child grow. With a safe learning environment, we will ensure that your child gets the love and encouragement they deserve to thrive.

Feel free to contact us for questions and queries.

Formation of creative self-expression in preschool children in music classes

All parents dream that their baby will grow up to be a bright and extraordinary personality, a real creator of his life. However, the dream is separated from reality by more than one step, and in order for it to come true, parents must actively participate in the creative development of their child. Before the makings turn into talents and abilities, a lot of time will pass.

The current stage of the development of society is characterized by the formation of a new type of education, the meaning-forming factor of which is the idea of ​​educating a person of culture, a “person-creator”, “a person-creator”, capable of a positive and constructive approach to solving urgent life problems.

Preschool childhood is a period during which the formation of a personality takes place, its main personal qualities, character and mental characteristics are laid. The high natural activity of children ensures their rapid development.

Self-expression is a way that helps a child to express himself to others, to realize himself. Under the self-expression of preschool children understand the age-related manifestation of independence in creative activity. Monitoring the musical development of preschoolers shows that the development of creative self-expression abilities is often a “problem area” in the work of a music director. In this regard, the problem of studying the features of the development of children’s creative self-expression, the development of a system for the formation of their musical and rhythmic feeling, motor sphere, creative activity, which is one of the components in the development of the creative abilities of a preschooler, is important.

Taking into account the age characteristics of the mental, physical and speech development of children at preschool age, it is possible to single out some ways of a child’s self-expression. At a younger preschool age, imagination begins to develop, which is especially clearly manifested in the game, when some objects act as substitutes for others. We form the same ways of self-expression in music lessons. For example, listening to music in the upper register, light, moving, children transform into “bunnies”. Or listening to music in the lower register, children transform into “bears”. Relationships between children are conditioned by norms and rules and are manifested in play activities.

An analysis of psychological and pedagogical research has shown that at preschool age there is an integral system of objective and subjective prerequisites for the successful development of children’s creative self-expression in various directions and with the help of various means. And a special role is given to the activity of the artistic and aesthetic cycle, since, by its specificity, it is designed to create conditions for the development of children’s creative self-expression, to contribute to the disclosure of their creative potential, to solve the problems of developing creative abilities.

Self-expression of preschool children is reflex-impulsive in nature, due to the nature of the child. In children of middle preschool age, role-playing interactions appear in play activities. In music lessons, children can independently come up with a short fairy tale on a given topic, their own simple dance movements, draw a picture for a piece of music. All this characterizes the manifestation of independence of children and the desire for self-expression. During this period, children show situational-imitative self-expression, and it depends on the amount of knowledge, information, as well as on the conditions in which the child finds himself.

Self-expression at this age acquires new qualitative characteristics, the child can express emerging images in various ways: in movement, in feelings and emotions, in images and signs. Self-expression therapy is a current and growing area of ​​psychological assistance. The most popular at the present stage are art therapy and dance-movement therapy.

A child of senior preschool age enters the stage of improvisational and effective self-expression.

Based on this, we can conclude that each child goes through stages of self-expression: in the younger preschool age, the reflex-impulsive nature of self-expression, in the middle preschool age, situational-imitative self-expression, the older preschooler enters the stage of improvisational-effective self-expression, in children of the preparatory group, improvisation is activated but-figurative self-expression.

Thus, we can say that preschool age is sensitive for the development of the foundations of a child’s creative self-expression.

Magic Garden of Childhood » Site archive Conditions for creative self-expression of children of middle preschool age

In our work we present the experience of studying the role of the family in the development of children’s creative abilities in fine arts. The study was conducted in kindergarten No. 176 “Squirrel” ANO DO “Planet of Childhood” Lada “, Tolyatti, Samara Region. The study involved children of middle groups and their parents. Fine arts include the emotional and intellectual aspects of a child’s life. V.A. Sukhomlinsky wrote: “During childhood, mental processes should be as closely connected as possible with living, bright, visual objects of the surrounding world … The emotional richness of perception is the spiritual charge of children’s creativity. ” The world in which the baby lives and grows up largely depends on what feelings we, adults, bring into it.

How often and not always rightfully educating and significant for a preschooler adults, with their worries about material comfort, forget about creating elementary conditions for the development and creative self-expression of children .

We carried out our work on studying the actual problem in two stages, within one month. At the first stage – diagnostic – a survey of parents was conducted on the topic: “Conditions for the child’s creative self-expression in art.” It turned out that not all parents of children aged 3-5 understand the meaning of the question asked. 65% of the respondents answered: “We do not interfere with the child to draw, so we create conditions for creativity.” To the question: “Do you visit exhibitions, museums with your children?”, “Do you discuss books, TV shows, films that you have read with your children?” the majority answered, “Unfortunately, no. ” At the same time, 87% of the parents surveyed note that they have mutual understanding, common activities and hobbies with their children. The results of the survey of parents once again confirm the relevance of the stated problem. The results of further experimental work showed that already in the middle preschool age it is possible to teach children to express their emotions and feelings through independent creative activity: drawing, appliqué, modeling, manual labor, which means teaching them to think creatively, to be an empathic, responsive person, capable of reflecting their feelings. It was concluded that the participation of kindergarten teachers alone is not enough, it is necessary to involve parents in solving the problem.

At the second stage of the study, we offered the parents of pupils to create conditions in the family for independent activities of children to complete a creative task on the topic: “My mood”. Previously, a consultation was held with parents on the topic: “How to create the right conditions for creative self-expression of children in fine arts. ” The work performed provided an opportunity to analyze the role relationships in the family, as well as the attitude of the parents themselves to the creative task. 76% of parents did the work together with their children: dad painted a Christmas tree, and the child decorated it with toys; mother drew a fish, and the child drew algae around it, etc. Part of the work (14%) was done by the parents themselves, without the participation of the child. 10% of parents create the necessary conditions for the child’s creativity, but at the same time they do not directly participate, the children work independently.

Later, using the results of the creative joint activities of children and parents, we conducted a cycle of combined classes in order to form in children an idea of ​​role relationships in the family and family values; created conditions for creativity, encouraging the child’s need for self-expression through creativity, as a result of which an exhibition of drawings was designed, dedicated to the mood of people.