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Children and Creativity ....


How lucky am I !! 

When the grandchildren come to visit they love getting up into my Hanji (Craft) room and making things.  I usually have some small kits they can put together and they love creating in a room especially designed for craft with everything on hand.

           

Last week I received a lovely surprise from Isaac, my six year old grandson. He loves drawing and doing craft with me so he drew a picture of us both working together in my Hanji room. 

I'm sitting on a chair next to a green table and he's sitting next to me doing his craft work. When he and his sister visited us in the UAE last year they made a small Hanji pot each and he  decorated his with cut out soccer balls. He loves it and keeps it on his desk at home to keep his pens and pencils in one place. 

      

His picture is precious and it just goes to show how special it is to encourage our children  and grandchildren to be creative. I think we all believe that creativity needs to be nurtured, especially in the young. and from research that I've done, it's said that it declines when they start kindergarten and peaks again at puberty.

'Creativity is a phenomenon whereby something new and in some way valuable, is created.'

According to the experts, it's possible to encourage or inhibit the development and expression of creativity in young children. Children generally respond well to encouragement and therefore ' ..... it's important to provide an environment that allows the child to explore and play without undue restraints. The atmosphere should reflect the sdults' encouragement and acceptance of mistakes, risk-taking, innovation, and uniqueness, along with an amount of mess and noise'. Those last few words, '...mess and noise' tend to put a lot of adults off.
 
If you'd like more information check this out:


How to Foster Creativity in All Children is designed for those dedicated to helping young children reach their full potential. This book has also been written for people who want to know more about creativity, creative children, creative teaching and creative activities in all areas of the curriculum.

I'm sure there are plenty of other books around that are just as good but Mary is a well known author and expert on this topic.
I wish I'd had all this information when my children were growing up but they haven't done too badly in adult life, especially my daughter who has a wonderful talent for sewing. I was fortunate enough to always be around my mother who was extremely creative in so many different fields but it's only been in later life that I've had the time and the energy to discover my own  creative Hanji self.
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