Lesson 14 : Role of Creativity in over All Development
Creativity and Social and Emotional development
Emotional development
One of the keys to the quality of children’s emotional health is how they feel about themselves. Creative play activities help a child to develop a positive self concept. In play activities there are no right or wrong answers. Children are not forced with the threat of failure. They almost always are successful to one degree or another. They learn to see themselves as capable performers. Children also learn to express and understand their emotions in creative play experiences. They may be observed almost any place in the early childhood setting for eg their feelings about doctors by administering shots but creative play is not necessarily limited to the expression of negative feelings. Another emotional value of creative play is that it offers the child an opportunity to achieve mastery of her environment. When she plays, she is in command. Play is a safe and acceptable way to test out the expression of feelings. Through play a child can recreate experiences that have special meaning. She can relieve anxiety or stress through play activities and feel perfectly safe in doing so.
Social development:
Children learn social skills as they relate to others during play. As a child becomes proficient in his social relation he learns to deal with more than one person at a time. As a group participant, he finds not everyone behaves in the same way and that some forms of behavior are not acceptable.
When children play together, they learn to be together. The development of common interests and goals takes place among children during creative play. Psychologists feel that 3-5 year olds need to do things together and to talk about what they are doing. Children in this age group seem to see the world from only their own view point. They must learn to realize that other people see world differently and that these other people can be correct in their views.
Socio dramatic play also helps the child learn to put herself in another’s place. It is also to define social roles: the child learns by experiment what it is like to be the baby or the mother or the doctor or nurse. And it provides countless opportunities for acquiring social skills how to balance power and bargain with other children so that everyone gets some satisfaction from play.
Participants