No matter how young your child is, it’s important to begin thinking about creativity education ideas for children. However, these type of activities don’t need to be complicated or very structured to be helpful in stimulating the creativity of your child.
In fact here are a couple of ideas for activities that will help stimulate even your youngest children, while enhancing your ability to meet their creativity education developmental needs.
Rattle Time – For ages 0 to 3 months
Newborns have the ability to see even at birth, although they can’t focus both eyes on a single object yet. Their distance vision is blurred so that it’s approximately 10 to 30 times worse than the average adult’s vision. An infant’s visual system won’t develop fully unless it’s exercised. Focusing distance for young babies is at about 8 to 10 inches.
Developmental Goals
– Practice grasping reflexes
– Refine hand-eye coordination
– Develop muscle coordination
Materials Needed
– At least 3 kinds and colors of rattles
Steps
– Rattles are a must-have for babies. Using more than one color, shape, and size provides variety for your child. Catch the baby’s attention by shaking one rattle from about 8 to 10 inches away. This encourages her to move her eyes in that direction, and attempt to grab it from you.
– Call out the child’s name and let her see your facial expression as you talk to her.
– Move the rattle closer and further away as you shake so that her eyes will have to work at following the rattle and her hands will have to develop the ability to reach out and grasp for it from different distances and angles.
– After a while, hold a different rattle up and shake it again.
Tips
– Provide positive reinforcement when the child successfully grasps a rattle. Say things like, “Wow, you did it! You’re playing with the rattle. Listen to the rattle!”, “Do it again.”, or “Now touch this one.”
– To capture the infant’s attention, use high-pitched, sing-song styles and short utterances. Speak slowly and carefully as you enunciate every word clearly. It’s important to not use baby talk.
– When speaking to your infant, place your face very close to his face so that he is able to see you. Remember 8 to 10 inches is the idea spot for babies to see you.
Caution
– Check the rattles for sharp edges or construction defects and normal wear and tear. Dispose of defective rattles immediately.
Rockin’ the Day Away – For ages 0 to 12 months
Infants have a lot to tell people even if they can’t communicate to us with words. They begin by communicating with cries, grunts and facial expressions. Moreover, they love hearing human voices especially those of their parents. Their first cry signifies the beginning of language development. The first responses of their parents and caregivers form their earliest social exchanges and their first encounters with learning language.
Development goals
– Develop receptive language skills
– Practice communication skills
Materials
– Rocker near an outside window
Steps
– Sit in the rocker facing a window holding your baby on your lap so that both of you are facing the same direction looking out the window into your back or front yard.
– While rocking, talk about what you see outside. Use as many descriptive words as possible: “Look at the green leaves on the tree. See the leaves blowing in the wind. I can see your toy train. It’s red with yellow on it.”
– Reinforce any vocalizations the infant makes.
– To illustrate, say: “Yes, the dog is walking away.” Doing this will encourage your infant to continue to take part in the conversation.
Tips
– You can do this before nap time to help your baby relax.
– Variation: Singing about what you see rather than talking to the infant is just as enjoyable.
Play time is the very best time to teach your children to develop their creative faculties and the best time to use creativity education ideas for children. The above examples are just some of things you can do to prepare your child as he or she grows. The purpose is to illustrate that a child is never too young for you to begin creativity education.
Yes, even at very early ages, kids are already equipped to benefit from these activities, no matter how simple. And please don’t under estimate the power of these ideas even though they seem so simple. These developmental stages are very important to your babies future development.
Some parents think that play is just a waste of time. However, play should never be misconstrued as a useless activity, because in the child’s early development stage, it is probably one of the best ways for you to be able to communicate with your child.