What is creativity?
Creativity is a way of thinking and expressing ourselves. It is intelligence having fun. It is about discovering and inventing new things, which motivates us to be imaginative and inventive. From a very early age, children demonstrate their ability to challenge, question, and discover. Children have the ability to see things from a new perspective. They may see a problem that nobody had thought existed and come up with a unique but effective solution through creative thinking.
How do SimplySmart Childcare and Montessori programs foster creativity?
At SimplySmart, educators establish a learning environment that supports creative thinking. Teachers provide opportunities and materials throughout the day for the children to enhance and further develop their imagination. The more experiences children have, the wider range of creative expression they gain in their formative early infant, toddler, or preschool years. Everything children experience, explore or learn about themselves or the world around them influences their development.
Physical Development
Participating in arts and crafts enhances fine motor skills, control, and coordination. As children manipulate artistic tools they are determining hand preference and strengthening the muscles in the hand that will be used for future writing skills. At SimplySmart Child Care, children explore constructing and assembling which allows them to use physical interactions to learn and make connections with the world around them. It is important for daycare centers to focus on physical development.
Emotional Development
Younger children may share their thoughts and feelings through creative expression that they are unable to share verbally. It is also an opportunity to raise confidence in their capabilities and raising self-esteem. At SimplySmart childcare we use visual cues to help children express their feelings. With the peace table in Montessori children also learn how to express their feelings.
Cognitive Development
Creative thinking helps young children begin to make sense of the world around them. They can make choices, consider alternatives, innovate, and make decisions on how to move forward. The cognitive area in childcare is full of materials like connectors, blocks, etc. This inspires children to make innovative structures and forms, and then communicate their ideas to each other and to the teachers.
Social Development
Being part of a group in a creative environment children learn how to share space and resources as well as develop important social skills such as communication, sympathy, empathy, and respect. Every parent is aware of how childcare plays such a large role in the social development of children.
Language and Literacy Development
Teachers at SimplySmart are engaged with children and this helps expand children’s vocabulary as they learn the name of new art materials, tools, and concepts. Literacy development is also supported as children verbally share their ideas that they are expressing through the arts. Childcare needs to be able to focus on engaging with children during art and craft time to develop language skills.
Childcare educators, by intentionally connecting educational goals with open-ended inspiring approaches, encourage children to express and develop their creativity as part of the learning process. SimplySmart Childcare and Montessori focuses on supporting creativity, innovativeness, and imaginative thinking in children. True creativity emerges from the combination of knowledge, skill, inspiration, and persistence and often provides the spark for new explorations, and in turn, their new knowledge inspires yet even more innovation!