As my twins have become pre-schoolers I’ve become increasingly in awe of their effortless creativity and imagination. I’ve noticed it more now that I’m working from home in a job that requires creativity. I’m carefully creating the right environment to come up with new ideas, meanwhile they’re positively bursting with ideas.
It turns out my 5-year-olds are probably creative geniuses, and yours are too.
In 1968 NASA was thinking about creativity. It’s an important skill for innovation and development — and I dare say important in I’m-in-space-and-something-didn’t-go-as-planned situations. So they got two researchers, Dr George Land and Beth Jarman to develop a creativity test that measured ‘divergent thinking’. The test basically asks how many solutions you can come up with for a particular problem.
As a graphic designer, I’ve been informally subjected to this test in a job interview. The interviewer asked me to pick one of three objects (roll of sticky tape, ball of string, packet of blue-tac) and think of as many uses for that object as possible. For example, the ball of string can be used to tie a parcel, or as replacement shoelaces, or knotted together to make a fishing net, or embedded in concreate to strengthen it. Some of the ideas might not be practical — but the point is the more (and more unusual) uses you can think of, the more creative you are.
Only a very small amount of us adults are highly creative: of the adults tested in the study, only 2% had creativity at the highest level. They went on to test children aged 3–5, and found the opposite — they’re almost all creative geniuses! 98% of the 3- to 5-year-olds had the highest level of creativity. These results confirm my own experience as a mum. I’ve been able to find ways to stay creative, but I envy my kids for their constant effortless state of imaginative play.
They give me daily updates on their imaginary friend ‘girl fox’ (she’s currently working as a vet and lives in our ducted heating, in case you were wondering). A rocket craft project quickly turns into something with googly eyes and seven strands of hair (a rocket man?). And if I bring any new object into the house — can opener, notebook, torch — it is quickly taken by the kids and turned into something else. It becomes a favourite plaything for a couple of weeks before I can take it back for its intended use. No wonder they ace the creativity test!
There’s a lot of discussion about how our education systems can better promote creativity in kids (Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk, for example), but I’ve noticed that even before they get to school, many toys are hampering their creativity.
I had a hunch that some toys were better than others — I could see it in my kids’ behaviour when playing with them. I read about the Montessori philosophy towards toys. It includes things like: toys should be simple, based in reality, made of natural materials, functional/constructive, and that there shouldn’t be too many of them to choose from. This seemed like a good starting point — but to me still didn’t quite capture what makes a ‘good’ creative toy. Why is a wooden toy better than a plastic one? Why is a xylophone better than something with music-making buttons?
Since reading about the NASA study, I think I’ve figured it out: the best toys are the ones with multiple possibilities. The ones that are open to imaginative interpretation instead of having a set use. A remote-control car can only be used as a remote-control car, whereas a cardboard box can be a car, a house, a boat, a zoo cage. So, if you want to promote creativity in your kids, here are my creative-mum-approved playthings…
Playthings with unlimited possibilities:
- Cushions
- Sheets and towel
- Tubs and plastic jars
- Cardboard boxes of all sizes
- Rope (under supervision)
- Sticks (under supervision)
- Rocks
- Bucket and spade (or similar, such as a cup and spoon)
- Water and/or dirt
You’ll notice none of these things are bought from a toy store. That’s not to say all traditional toys are bad, just that household objects tend to have more play possibilities. As far as ‘toys’ go, these are my favourites for promoting creativity…
Toys that are imaginative:
- Building blocks (including lego — but only if the final object isn’t defined)
- Magnetic or other connecting pieces
- Pencils, paper, paint, scissors, glue
- Bottle lids, cardboard tubes, wire, rubber bands
- Instruments: xylophone, harmonica, ukulele, drums, recorder, shakers (some of these can be made from household items)
- Digital camera/video recorder
- Role play (play kitchen, doctor kit, hair dressing, dolls)
- Costumes (but preferably not a ‘set’, eg random jewellery, hats, glasses, shoes)
- Animals (soft or plastic)
- Train tracks (again, as many variations as possible)
- Things that promote physical activities (bikes, dance, balls, hoola hoops)
- And of course, books — kids can never have too many books.
Now that I have this principle to compare toys, it’s much easier to choose ones that promote creativity. I know we can’t go around giving kids rocks for Christmas, and this list will need to change as they get older — but when buying toys for a kid, just give it the ‘how many possibilities does this have’ test first. And maybe, just maybe, it’ll help them hang on to their creative genius a little bit longer.
If you enjoyed reading this, check out some of my other (free) Medium articles here: A little about me and my writing
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Previously Published on medium
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