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Planning creative activities always begins with the child. Each child is unique; each has his own way of being and his own way of responding to the world. The teacher must try to know what each child is like and should be aware of each child’s level of development, strengths, abilities and special personality.
To facilitate means to help along, to guide, to provide opportunities, and to be sensitive and caring without interfering. Since there is divergent thinking and no single right answers in creative activities, judging is not necessary. Yet guidance and feedback are helpful. Because creative activities are open-ended, there are no simple standards for evaluating them. The teacher’s role, then, is one of encouraging, questioning and experimenting. The teacher’s patience, calmness, sense of humor, support and knowledge of children’s needs and developmental levels help greatly in these frustrating circumstances.
Developmental level: A child’s ability is closely related to his level of development. If a child understands this failure, frustration and waste can be avoided while planning creative activities.
Individual creative styles: Children as well as adults, have a right to their own style of working, learning and creating. Therefore, it is very difficult to decide when to attempt to influence or modify a child’s behavior.
Attention span: A general rule to remember on the length of a child’s interest (attention span) is this: the younger the child, the shorter the attention span. It is not unusual for toddlers and 2 year olds to have a maximum attention span of 2-3 minutes on the average. Attention span gradually increases as a child gets older, and a child of 6 years of age can be expected to attend for an average of 15 minutes maximum. A teacher may come to expect a longer attention span than is really possible, simply because the child maintains the appearance of attention. Approach to working with short attention span is to plan around the expected attention span of the children in the group. Ex- for a 10 minute circle time, a teacher of a group of 3 year olds would plan an average of 4 activities taking about 2-3 minutes each. Attention span varies according to individual nature.
Activity patterns: A good activity pattern is one that begins with the families (or favorite), reviews some other related activities, and then moves on to introduce the new and different.
Ex: to introduce the letter ‘B’, the teacher may begin with a favorite song about “buttons or biscuits”. Then he has the children identify picture cards of foods that begin with “B”. An activity pattern for young children also must take into account their physical characteristics. Activities planned to include both types of activities in one session also help increase attention span since they include favorite large motor activities. Creative activities for young children must also have good balance between active and quiet activities.
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