Methods for teaching creativity

Creative Experiences for Children 2(1+1)

Lesson 8 : Methods of Teaching Creativity

Methods for teaching creativity

  1. Ask open ended questions to involve the child in general discussions. Ask questions such as “If the plants could walk?" or “What would happen if you could fly?”
  2. Involving to challenge the assumptions: Involve the child to challenge the assumptions underlying the ideas presented by you.
  3. Showing and asking: show children something or ask them to hold or touch something and ask them to imagine themselves as that object. Imagine that you are a stone or big rock how do you feel? Imagine that you are a radio, how would you talk?
  4. Providing stimulating activities: Involve the child in the activities, which stimulate creativity and fantasy. Place a child in a different time and place and ask such question as how would you bath if there was no water? Present some meaningless similarities "I am a horse" and let the child find out how it is possible.
  5. Involving in exploring activities: involve the child in exploring activities like make a list of as many problems as possible related to environment or list of things around you in a bedroom.
  6. Observing and exploring: Present some statements of observation to explore the possibility of its reversal, for Ex: The rose is red," red is the rose" or words like noon, nun etc.
  7. Providing opportunities: Provide the child with as many activities and opportunities as possible, for the expression of ideas, which should be continuous and in the area of their interest. Give child an object or a situation and ask them to improve it the way they would like it to be other than its usual utility.
  8. Providing supplementary material: Provide the child with supplementary material, books, colours and other experiences, but avoid emphasizing the textual information. Creativity can be fostered by using lots of storytelling. Because children have great imaginations, they love adventure and fantasy through books and stories. Children enjoy stories based on themselves and people and places they know well. Use sound at story time, for example beating a drum when the giant approaches and mimic animal sounds during their entry in the story.
  9. Allow to think and express his own ideas: Provide the children with activities and projects which interest them and give openness to think originally and express the ideas in their own way. Any time a child asks a question, which requires a variety of answers; the creative thinking skills are being enhanced. What are the uses of water? What floats in water? How does water help the universe? Why water is cold in the river? Such are some examples of questions which children ask during a lesson on characteristics of water.
  10. Encourage the child to pursue their hobbies and interests. Try to give them activities with minimum instructions so that they can prepare objects of their interests. Help them to continue their hobbies and appreciate it timely.
  11. Appreciating openly: whenever a child expresses creative behavior like asking unusual questions, giving unusual ideas and taking self initiated action etc he must be appreciated openly .
  12. Appreciating the ambiguous statements: appreciate the child when he/she makes ambiguous statements. Children can either draw to show their responses or tell verbally, drawing would be better as it will give them time to visualize the new thing.
  13. Stimulate children to find a new application for something old. Children may come up with the existing uses encourage them until they come up with original responses, e.g. unusual uses without the worry that it may be wrong, since nothing is wrong the more they freely think the better original ideas they come up with. Stimulate creative ideas by encouraging children to come up with new and unusual uses of equipment.
  14. Making guesses: Encourage the child to make as many as guesses as possible about the solution while solving the problems. For eg. “How many different ways can a string be used?”
  15. Do not always insist on correct answers. Allow the child to think and re-think the correctness of the answers. Do not evaluate the goodness of the answer but insist on the number of ideas. Quality of answer is automatically taken care of when other child examines all the possible answer of each question.
  16. Take care that child is not taunted by his friends or siblings for his answers to the questions posed by you. Do not make sarcastic and insulting remarks in front of the child or on the child.
  17. Encourage to try innovative things: It is better to discourage self-criticism. Help them to develop an attitude of being different taking risk and trying new things. Self criticism should act as motivating factor.
  18. Allow the child to think and express freely and find the facts for themselves. Encourage the child to think in different ways and evaluate the answers given in different ways. Ask children to come up with solutions for dealing with everyday problems.
  19. Encourage the imagination: For encouraging creative writing stir up the students' imaginations with the following: Tell them that they will be dreaming and imagining and creating words, pictures of things that might never have existed or happened. Present the students with "What Would Happen If..." for example, "What would happen if vegetables could talk or your brother turned into your sister or water in the oceans evaporate?”
  20. Finding solution: Let children do their best in finding the solution to the problem without giving any hint. Do not tell them everything at each step. If children need to find a solution to something instead of telling them what to do, help them in reaching their own solutions. They can say something like, "What do you think can be done about this?" Always try to direct them towards their solutions rather than giving readymade answers.
  21. Encourage multiple solutions: Do not encourage memorizing the facts. Allow them to pursue as much as they want without bothering themselves about giving the expected solution or answer or product.

Some Do's & Don’ts to foster the creativity

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Last modified: Wednesday, 14 March 2012, 12:24 PM