Creativity for children is actually a complicated, rather elegant set of skills. But one simple skill lies at the heart of children’s creativity—divergent thinking. Divergent thinking allows us to explore all of the possibilities in a given situation and generate the greatest number of ideas. At Tinkergarten one of our favorite ways to help kids practice divergent thinking is with “Not A…” play! With just a few everyday objects and simple prompts, kids can explore all of the ways they can play, move, imagine and create.
The Guide
Step 1: Watch the Tinkergarten Home It’s Not A… video lesson.
Hop into your My Tinkergarten dashboard to watch the It’s Not A… video lesson. Kids can watch how Meghan and other explorers play and imagine with everyday objects, then get inspired to do their own Not A… play!
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Step 2: Gather some everyday objects.
Gather a few objects from nature and/or your home, such as a stick, leaf, bowl, box, egg carton or bed sheet. (Optional: to add an extra bit of whimsy, hide your everyday objects in different parts of your outdoor space for kids to discover.)
Step 3: Introduce “Not A..” play.
Show your child (or discover together) one of the everyday objects. Ask, "Do you know what this is?" Expect the obvious and accept all answers. Then, share, "This is NOT a {sheet, stick, bowl, etc.}! Can you guess what it is?” Model one or two ways to imagine and play with the object. For example, play two sticks like a violin, turn a sock into an elephant trunk or pretend a bowl is a hat. Invite kids to guess what you are imagining the object could be.
Step 4: Explore infinite possibilities!
Welcome kids to try out their own ideas with the objects you gathered. To spark play, you can say things like, “I wonder what you can make your {object} do?” or “I wonder what you can imagine your {object} could be?” Challenge kids to come up with as many ideas for each object as they can by asking “What else could you do with that {sheet, stick, bowl, etc.}? I wonder what we could turn it into if we….}”
Need inspiration? You can use the prompts on our printable Not A… cards for more ideas on how to move, play and imagine with everyday objects.
Step 5: Extend Play.
Keep the Not A… play going with these ideas:
Combine Not A... objects—Welcome kids to gather all of objects together. What can they do and imagine when they use the objects together?
Find more Not A... objects—How can kids play and imagine with the nature treasures they find in their outdoor space?
Not A... guessing game—Turn an object into something else, then invite your child to guess. Then, switch roles!
Why is this activity great for kids?
This activity helps us strengthen kids' divergent thinking—the kind of thinking that we do when we open our minds and explore all possibilities in a given situation. Kids are wonderful at it, but we often lose it as we grow. Simply giving kids continuous opportunities to practice divergent thinking can help them boost their creativity for the long haul. As kids play and imagine with everyday objects, they also activate problem solving skills, curiosity and wonder and communication skills.
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By creativity, we mean the ability to both imagine original ideas or solutions to problems and actually do what needs to be done to make them happen. So, to help kids develop creativity, we parents need to nurture kids' imaginations and give them lots of chances to design, test, redesign and implement their ideas.
"Creativity is as important now in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.”
Why, you ask? For one, it is through being creative that a person is able to get senses, sensibility and spirit working together. Simply put, without creativity, we don't think our kids will live a full life.
On a more practical level, it's also the means by which humans of all ages make an impact on the world and other people around them. A lot of heavy stuff is going to go down in our kids' lifetime, and their generation will need to imagine and implement solutions to big and very complicated problems. Although our kids are still far from public office or the boardroom, today's political and business leaders worldwide are already pointing to creativity as the most important leadership quality for the future.
Although years from the art studio or design lab, little kids can learn to think and act creatively if you give them time and the right practice.
Imagination
Category:
Thinking Skills
What is Imagination?
Imagination is defined in many ways, but one we like is, "the act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or never before wholly perceived in reality." This is no small task to little kids, and yet young childhood is a time in which imagination is developed more than any other. How does imagination develop in childhood? Through an increasingly sophisticated life of make believe.
We all likely have a sense of what we mean by make believe or good old "pretend play." How do experts define it, though? To some, there are different types of make believe that vary in sophistication and make pretend play different than other types of play. For example, kids may use objects to represent something else (e.g. a block becomes a cell phone). Or, they may start to give an object certain properties (e.g. a doll is asleep or a tree is on fire!). Still yet, they may themselves take on the properties of someone or something else.
From there, pretend play evolves into acting out scenarios or stories, those getting increasingly intricate as imagination develops. As kids' pretend play grows more sophisticated, these stories come to involve not only the creative use of objects, but multiple perspectives (e.g. good and bad guys in the same story), and/or the playful manipulation of ideas and emotions (e.g. I am sad, but then become happy after I save the village from certain doom).
Why does it matter?
An ever growing body of research substantiates the many benefits of pretend play including the enhanced development of: language and communication skills; self-control and empathy; flexible and abstract thinking; and creativity. These are the skills that will help kids balance emotions, form healthy relationships, work effectively on teams, stay focused in school, be successful at various jobs and solve the problems of an increasingly complicated world. An individual's creativity in particular, both requires and is limited by her imagination.
Problem Solving
Category:
Thinking Skills
What are Problem Solving Skills?
When we talk about problem solving, we mean the ability to solve a problem in which the solution is not obvious and in which the possible paths to solution are many. To solve such problems, kids will need two things. First, they’ll need the self confidence and comfort to both attempt to find and persist in finding a solution. The only way to develop this is to be given the chance to struggle with ambiguous situations or open-ended problems. We parents are all guilty, from time to time, of helping kids avoid struggle or swooping in to alleviate frustration when our kid encounters challenge. The goal is actually to do the opposite whenever possible. As long as the problem is not too difficult to understand or challenging to solve, even young kids can get comfortable with the feeling of not knowing the solution and fall in love with the joy of finding a solution to a problem.
Kids also need strategies to attack problems with which they are faced. If adults are able to work with kids to solve problems “as a team” but in such a way that the children feel and act “in charge” of the decisions, adults can actually teach foundation problem solving skills and strategies through modeling. For example, when you solve a problem together, kids get practice with key parts of the process like brainstorming, testing ideas, revision and solution. It’s also pretty easy to model how to use simple strategies like trial and error or breaking a problem down into smaller parts. Although children age 1 to 7 should not be expected to name, catalog or identify when to use a particular problem solving strategy, they are able to form habits and repeat approaches once those habits or approaches have become familiar. The more problems they solve, the better they know and can use these methods.
Why does it matter?
“The highest ranked skills for students entering the workforce were not facts and basic skills; they were applied skills that enable workers to use the knowledge and basic skills they have acquired” (Source: Are They Really Ready for Work? Conference Board 2006).
Although it seems a long way to go before our young children are hitting the job market, the ability to solve challenging, ambiguous problems has already been identified as a critical skill for success in the 21st Century. With advances in technology, finding information has never been easier. However, knowing how to interpret a problem and use available information to devise a solution still needs to be learned. And, we fear that the classrooms of today are neither designed nor incentivized to teach these skills effectively. In most schools, so much time is spent learning discrete skills, that applied skills like problem solving are wildly underemphasized. In a world that demands it, it is increasingly necessary that children learn and practice these skills outside of school.
Age: 0 to 8+
Time: 1 hour+
Materials: various household objects; printable resource
