How to Nurture Your Child's Creativity to Enhance Their Learning

By Joyce Svitak

The ability to create has one of the highest values in our society. Having the room and opportunity to be creative can be one of life’s most satisfying experiences. Children are born to be creative and ingenious. Unfortunately, as they grow, more and more rules are imposed on them, and some students gradually loose their creative edge, or they channel their creativity in to non-learning activities.

When you know how to nurture your child’s creativity, their learning will flourish. One of my daughters doesn’t enjoy math as much as other subjects, but she enjoys making up stories. So I began to encourage her to make up stories that involve numbers. She started to write a word problem. I would then ask her if the problem in her story made sense. In order to prove that her problem made sense, she’d have to solve the problem herself.

She happily and willingly went through the routine of adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing to solve her word problem.

This same daughter is not so confident in her ability to draw, but she likes to write stories. So I encouraged her to illustrate the characters in her stories, which gave her ample opportunities to practice her drawing skills. She now illustrates many of the characters she creates and her drawing skills have improved drastically.

My older daughter is not as interested in current affairs as I’d like her to be. However, she loves to design her newspapers. I use her excitement for making newspaper to introduce her to what’s happening in our world today. For both national and world news, I invite her to read news from the internet with me and explain and discuss what’s happening. She has become more and more interested in current events and she is writing news items in her newspaper to reflect what she has read online with me.

When your child expresses enthusiasm in creating a small item like a bookmark, making a little purse with quilt patches, making up some quiz kit, or creating a workbook for their younger siblings, please encourage, appreciate and praise their creativity.

I have always encouraged my children to use their creativity to learn new things, to reflect what they have acquired, and to discover and explore new territory in this vast sea of knowledge. When your child’s creativity is nurtured and encouraged, they associate the positive and powerful experience of learning with being creative, and it will benefit them for rest of their lives. Joyce Svitak is the co-author of "Flying Fingers", please visit Adora Svitak, the seven year old author's website http://www.adorasvitak.com Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/

 

Founders:  Susan & Brent Sitton

Discovery Journey

12400 Hwy 71 W Suite 350-251

Austin, TX 78738

512.809.2983

9:00 am - 5:00 pm CST