Albert Einstein - “Imagination is
better than knowledge.”
But if it's so important why does it
get so little air time in our halls of learning?
Could it be that imagination is hard to
teach and even harder to measure? How does one learn imagination?
Must imagination be self taught?
I can tell you that as a teacher, one of the most beautiful benefits I can give my children by homeschooling them is time : time to be bored, time to pass through boredom to the other side, time to use their imagination and be creative, time to know themselves and figure out who they are.
Unfortunately, many children can not
get past the boredom stage. Children are often school worked or
activity-ed to death. And some children with time to get bored either
lack self control and therefore misbehave or they are allowed to
drown themselves in entertainment
and so never pass through boredom to
creativity.
Don't get me wrong, I advocate
activities, sports and some entertainment, but more importantly I
advocate teaching children to control their own bodies, minds and
words early and teaching them to appreciate the value of stories
earlier. As soon as they can sit up they are old enough to look at
picture books with others. Board books, cloth books and plastic books
for the bath tub are all great tools for those early years.
Parents and care givers, please spend
large quantities of time, as much as children will put up with,
reading to your young child. I know that is more easily said than
done, especially with some children. Not all children have the same
tolerance and receptivity to stories and learning self control. Not
all parents and care givers have the same ability and desire to share
stories and teach self control. But make it a priority to get some
time everyday attempting to enjoy books together. The attention from
loved ones in a calm activity is always beneficial. Even if the
stories are very short or just part of a story, it will pull at the
child's imaging processes in their brain and start the “muscles”
of imagination developing.
If you are trying to help your child to
discover creativity, be warned: sometimes creativity and inspiration
is mistaken for misbehavior. Creativity is generally messy: kitchen
tables taken apart to discover how they work, curtains painted in
response to a creative impulse, holes dug to discover a route to an
under ground city or to support the structure of a tower, etc. Be
prepared for surprises from the creative child that are not always
pleasant, even when they are successful.
Just remember, all of these adventures make for great stories to tell your grandchildren.
Story telling! There's another great
way to foster creativity even without books and without sitting down.
Tell children stories about you, them, relatives, childhood pets,
friends of the family, local history, any history, fictional stories
from around the world and especially stories you've created.
And let them, even encourage them to
ask questions. Interaction is a huge tool in learning.
Did you have someone who told you stories? What was one of your favorites?
2 comments:
A fun game I play with my kids is tag-team story telling. I start a new story, and each person has a turn at adding something. They love to say "dot, dot, dot!" at the end of their parts (a verbal ellipsis). I usually make up the end of the story too if it still seems in need of an ending. For Christmas we got Rory's Story Cubes that have pictures on dice to provide a randomized story framework. I find that restrictive but it adds a challenge to the creative process. We have also done a verbal version of this where only one person makes up a story, but everyone else picks one thing to be in the story. The stories are seldom amazing, but the fun part is solving the puzzle of fitting everything together.
Chris, those are wonderful games. The kids and I do the taking turns story game, too. I was excited when I saw the story cubes, because I had tried to create my own game of making stories by using cubes to randomize, but failed. We have a story card game called Once Upon a Time. Sometimes it's great, sometimes we adults end up disagreeing too much, too many chiefs. But I really like the last one. Sometimes my daughter does something like that with her friends through email, but I never thought to do it with the family. It solves the too many chiefs problem. I'll have to give that one a go.
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