How to nurture kid's creativity through play.

There are two types of play time: play with you and play without and play with you. Play with you will be their most favourite type of play at all. Here are a couple of ways to inspire creativity in your little people when you are with them. Perhaps you do these things already, in which case it’s always good to hear that you’re on the right track. (I, for one, will take that kind of feedback from anywhere it’s being offered!):

• Build a story where you, your child and anyone else who is with you takes turns to add a line. ‘Once upon a time there was a library. It was full of dusty books on dusty shelves, but on the very top floor was something magnificent. It looked like an ordinary box – but oh my goodness …’ Okay. Your turn.

• Take them away from the here and now by asking open-ended, left-field questions.
  ♥  If you were invisible/ magic/ a grown up/ could fly, what would you do?
  ♥  If we could go for a holiday to the moon, what should we take?
  ♥  If you were in charge of the whole entire universe, what rules would you make for yourself? What rules would you make for everyone else if you didn’t have to follow those rules? Would they be different rules if you did have to follow them? What would they be?
  Then ask them to ask you some questions.

• Make up different endings to the stories they’re familiar with. ‘What could be a different ending for ‘Frozen’?’ ‘What might have happened if one of the stepsisters fitted the glass slipper?’

• Try an imagination game that requires them to call up things from their memory and make connections between different pieces of information. ‘Imagine that you are walking on the ceiling in your bedroom. What can you see? What’s your favourite thing to look at from up there? What can you hear? What does it feel like? How are you staying up there!’

• Play ‘Give one back’ to provide children with insight into themselves – what they prefer, how they react. ‘Suppose I gave you an ice cream, a (favourite toy), or an astronaut’s suit that could take you to the moon, but you had to give one back. Which one would you give back? Why? What would you do with the things you kept?

• Nurture their abstract thinking by inviting them to list unusual uses for everyday objects. You might need to get them started, but when they get the idea, sit back and watch them go. ‘What are all the things you could use a spoon for? Maybe a little shovel, a thing to paint a fence with, a nose shield so falling stars don’t land on it, a way to flick cooked carrot into outer space where it belongs’

And finally …

In every way, play is practice for being an adult.

Years ago, I was having trouble deciding to whether to send my son to school at 5, which would make him one of the youngest in the class, or wait another year, making him one of the oldest. I’d poured over the literature and the research and still had no idea. Would he get bored if I kept him back? If I sent him now, how would that impact him  in senior, if he was one of the youngest?

I spoke to the school principal about my dilemma and in one sentence, she brought to me a clarity that all of the research and all of the pondering couldn’t. 

She said, with a wisdom and grace that the ‘nice’ school principals seem to have patented, ‘Think of it as giving him another year of play.’

And that, right there, is the essence. Our children have such a limited time to explore, experiment, grow and be enriched in the way that only free play can do. It isn’t long before responsibilities and schedules set in.

But if, as the adults in their lives, we can foster a love of play, not just because ‘that’s what kids do’, but because of its inherent importance, we will be giving them something that will hold them well in relationships, in work and in life.

Even as adults, play is important in ensuring our lives will be a beautiful success. There is a richness that lies in wait for us to move responsibility and caution aside and play.