Kids have some of the most entertaining ideas imaginable. If you spend enough time around children, you know that they have the potential for endless creativity.

Sometimes maybe even exhaustingly so, but creativity is crucial to kids’ wellbeing, can help them express themselves, and improve mental health.

So, what are some ways you can support your child’s creativity? The following are ideas that fit with our purpose, but that you also can use at home with your children.

Ideas to Support Your Child’s Creativity

There are countless ways to engage your child’s creativity, but here are our best suggestions.

Allow for Unstructured Time

It can be very tempting to try to organize every moment of the day for your kids. The structure is often good, but so is leaving good chunks of time unstructured. Having time is really the start of the creative process for kids or adults.

This allows kids to have the opportunity to think and be creative with ways to fill their time. Of course, they need direction in plenty of areas of life, but leave some time up to them. You might be surprised and impressed with what they come up with.

Provide Space and Materials

Children have a great ability to play with whatever’s handy, but it’s still a good idea to provide some basics for them to use creatively.

Set up a room, or even just a little part of a room, for them to use however they’d like. Maybe some art supplies, books, and building blocks. Then, let them choose what to do. Just make sure you provide the needed space and materials.

The set-up doesn’t have to be huge or expensive. Just enough to get them started!

Guide Gently

Making sure kids have plenty of autonomy works really well, but there is still a role for you to play as an adult.

Prompt creativity by asking good, open-ended questions. Ask lots of how and why questions and listen to the responses.

Lead by example, as well. If you read or listen to music or paint in front of them, they will likely be inspired to try it out.

The idea here isn’t to manage or direct their creativity, but to nudge it to ever greater levels.

Provide Encouragement and Celebration

Give your child praise and encouragement for being creative. Celebrate when they have drawn an excellent picture or made up a catchy song.

The encouragement goes a long way toward kids continuing the behavior and not being scared to try new things.

You can also encourage kids to try to find new and different ways to accomplish something. Celebrate when they do.

Show Off Their Work

There is nothing better than to have someone else excited about the art, dance, music, or book have you created.

Show that your kids’ creative work is worthwhile by showing it off to other kids or adults. Have a concert or art exhibit and show off each child’s best work. This doesn’t have to include everything. Pick the best for the show.

Creative Setting

We support your child’s creativity and value creative thinking and play.  We know that kids have tremendous potential for creativity that just needs a little guidance to really shine.

Following the above tips at home will help unleash your kids’ creative ideas. We will do the same at our facility, and working together, the result will be amazing.

We are happy to answer any questions you may have. Please contact us for more information about kids’ creativity or to enroll today.