How to grow a creative child? As parents and educators, I believe that we must actively encourage children’s creativity.
I think most people will agree that creativity is important for life’s success. We all want our kids to be creative. Well,… at least theoretically.
A creative child exploring the world around him and trying new things is not a convenient child. Child creativity often results in a mess, breaking things, and sometimes bruises. That’s why you often hear parents killing any attempt to be creative by saying to kids, “don’t do that”, don’t touch this”, “don’t….” I believe all parents are guilty of this.
The standard educational systems are also creativity killers. Many types of research show that the creativity level drops as a child goes through the standard educational systems, starting from kindergarten. According to the research, college graduates have almost no creativity.
So the question is how to keep kids creative. As parents and educators, I believe that we must actively encourage children’s creativity.
That is why in my FLYoga Kids classes, I allow space and time for kids to be creative. Sometimes after doing an exercise, I ask kids to show their own version. For example, show me your version of a wagging dog with a tail. Or sometimes, I ask kids to invent exercises. I give a subject – for example, as in the video “inversion pose” and allow them to try and invent something. The results are amazing. In my lesson plans, there are a lot of exercises invented by kids that I would never think about myself. A great example of such exercise is “Mother drinks coffee in a café.”
So, my lesson plans have dedicated time for creativity. The hammock allows endless options for child creativity, and they love exploring it. But you can encourage creativity the same way in any interaction with children. This creativity encouragement will help kids to learn that it’s ok to try new things; that there are many ways of doing something; that sometimes you will fail, and it’s ok; that sometimes you will get an amazing outcome.
I invite you to encourage children to be creative by creating space and time for them to explore and express themselves. If you would like to encourage creativity with the hammock in a structured way, then I invite you to join the FLYoga Kids Teacher Training course. You will learn aerial yoga exercises and the tools to encourage creativity and mindfulness and empower children.
