Two summers ago, I started thinking about a girl named
Pie. She was 20 feet tall with her big shoes on, and she had a friend, a
giraffe, that was about the same height. My creative exercise to myself was that I would combine Pie art with a rhyming couplet. This let me practice two arts that I love - writing and drawing. I
usually have a little notebook in my purse, so I waited until I had a moment of
waiting - sitting on an airplane or waiting in a long line - and then I would
draw Pie. Sometimes I drew her first, then added the lines. Sometimes I wrote
lines, then drew her. I didn’t think too far ahead, letting the story unfold
like some games I had played when I was younger where a different person tells the
next line of the story - except that I was the only player.
This reminds me of when I was a child, and would cut paper into smaller
sheets, staple the edges, then put black electrical tape that I found in the
house over the edges to make mini books that I wrote and illustrated. In a way,
I’ve been creating in this manner my entire life.
I think about this a lot with the children that I
interact with through various volunteer opportunities and family moments. Even in homes and events where the organizer may not feel all
that creative, there’s so much opportunity for each participant - whether child
or adult - to find ways to be creative, to discover new interests and talents.
Here are some simple suggestions:
Creativity in Classrooms
1. Encourage children to illustrate a concept they’ve
learned.
2. Let children come up with their own version of sign
language to remember a concept they’ve learned. For example, last week, I told
children a story about how Jesus was kind to someone that others were unkind to
- and asked what symbol they could use to represent this. Some of the children
made hearts with their hands, or pointed at themselves. Excellent! It was fun
to go through this a few times until other children started understanding the
concept of the activity and coming up with new ideas.
3. Give children a “blank slate.” It may be “here’s five
rolls of toilet paper, scissors, stickers, and some yarn. Now make
something!
Creativity in the Home
1. I loved making up stories when I was a child. You
could make a game of this - you tell two lines of the story, now another child
has to tell another line of the story. Here’s a few ways to encourage this
activity.
a. Buy Story Cubes. They come with little dice that
have symbols on each side of the dice. I’ve played this game with a nieces and
nephews from five to eight and it was super fun. They took turns rolling the
dice and making up short stories with the images that they saw on the dice. I
took a turn too.
b. Make up your own Story Cubes by finding objects around
the house and placing them in a box.
c. Make up your own Story Cubes by cutting out images or
printing out images to draw from a bag.
