The preschool years of your child can be an incredibly imaginative phase in their life. The more you encourage their creativity and experimentation, the better they will be able to understand the world around them. Children are intuitive, curious, and smart. They pick up concepts and learn things by looking at people around them.
Learning in Children Comes From Various Avenues
But most have the innate capacity to create unique ideas and games and keep themselves entertained when left to their own devices. Many things motivate, encourage, and support learning in children. While your children’s creative mind is still developing, dramatisation, music, movement, expressions, and specialties can:
- Cultivate innovativeness
- Build confidence in your child
- Help your toddler express emotions and develop relational abilities
- Help your children create as well as practice and improve their motor skills and coordination
- Allow children to practice dynamic, critical thinking and basic reasoning
- Catalyse children to find better approaches to looking at things
Let’s take a detailed look at how these different avenues impact creative learning and development for children and how it can help your child learn about and understand the world around them in a fun way that doesn’t strictly seem like learning.
How Storytelling Helps Build Creativity in children
Drama and stories also allow your child to develop and practice vocabulary, use creativity, and learn story structure. Your child may enjoy telling stories alone sometimes. Sometimes, if you participate, they might enjoy it more. You should take the time to decide what mood your child is in and join in their activity accordingly.
When you give your child the freedom to create and think flexibly, they can look at things from someone else’s viewpoint. It helps them develop a better understanding of the world around them while expressing their feelings.
For example, if you read a story to your toddler, you might notice him waving his hands, moving his face, legs and mimicking the story. This enactment shows that their mind can pick up the nuances of the story, and they can turn that understanding into movements.
Arts And Crafts Have a Role to Play In A Child’s Learning And Development
Preschoolers want to articulate themselves and their thoughts through art using paints, crayons, colours, clay, play dough, glue, and paper. Your child may still need assistance using scissors, sticky tape or thin pencils. They will generally start creating simple shapes and enjoy experimenting with form, space and colours in artworks.
For example, preschoolers frequently draw houses and gardens with the sun shining brightly in the sky. This is because the picture consists of simple shapes like circles, squares and triangles. Craft projects also help your child make choices for themselves. For example, should the sky be blue or white etc?
The Music and Learning and Development Connection
Preschoolers like to experiment with musical instruments, along with their voices, to convey emotions and thoughts. Your child will love to sing and may do so for the sake of it, and they love predictable music, simple melodies and tunes.
They may listen to popular music, voice their lines, and phrases and words will generally come from things and people around them. Your preschooler will typically remember, identify and sing favourite songs. Singing children children understand the distinctions between quick, medium, long, short, noisy and quiet tunes and melodies.
How Dance Lets Children Learn and Develop
Music and dance teach your toddler physical and communication skills. Your preschooler will run rapidly or gradually or make up acts and dance movements while listening to their favourite music and tunes. They may also convey sorrow, pleasure, joy, or anticipation by action. E.g., your child may angrily stomp around the room or leap in joy.
You may see your child soaring like a butterfly, creeping around like a caterpillar, leaping like a frog. Such gestures make them understand the world better. You could encourage this by giving them various props. They could wave around a sheet to pretend they are sailing etc.
As you can see, there is a strong link between creative mediums and learning in children. If you want to know more about creativity and the arts for preschoolers at Clovel Childcare and Early Learning Centres, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us. Just give us a call at 02 9199 0294 or via this contact us form.
Thanks for reading,
Clovel Childcare
1300 863 986
