How to Inspire Creativity in Your Kids Los Altos CA

Steps

1. Understand that all children, actually all human beings, can be creative if they are encouraged and taught.
2. If your kids like colouring, have them draw outlines of people or animals on white paper; photocopy and bind those pages to offer them their own colouring books
3. Whenever something's lacking (i.e. you need to reach something but you don't have a ladder) have your kids think about ways they could solve the problem.
4. Get involved with your kids in a daily or weekly family activity to get together to talk and discuss.
5. In those meetings read a short story until the climax then stop. Now ask your kids what they think happens next and how they would solve the problem.
6. Teach them how to brainstorm and encourage them to produce the wildest ideas imaginable. Tell them that there is no one solution to any problem. This will teach them to think of creative solutions when they get stuck on a problem.
7. If you don't have the time to meet with your kids on a regular basis, encourage your kids to ask questions, like 'where does the wind come from?', 'what would they do to stop a war?'. You will be surprised by their answers!
8. Make sure to never falsify your kids' theories unless it's absolutely necessary. If they tell you that the wind is made by the trees' movement, tell them that it could be true. By allowing them to develop their own theories they might turn out to be the next Einstein! However, be careful not to make them think that their outlandish(and incorrect) theory is veritable fact.
9. You could also give your child a small spiral notebook.
10. Require them to provide improvement on one item/product on the first day.
11. Have them write down an idea each day/week.
12. At the end of the month, go over their ideas and provide feedback on the positive aspects of what was written. Draw up plans on paper or in electronic form with the child and send the ideas to one or more local businesses that are in that particular field to give the child a sense of her or his worth.
13. Encourage all ideas and keep all comments positive.

Tips

• Conversation and dialogue are good ways to get the creative juices flowing.
• Always tell your kids that every problem has more than one solution
• Stay positive!
• Necessity is the mother of invention; always keep that in mind.
• Children need the necessary help of others (peers and friends) to stimulate them. Make sure you provide them with the right stimulation. The more stimulus the child encounters to activate his patterns of learning, the greater will the capacity of his brain to function intelligently be.

Warnings

• Don't discourage your kids by telling them that their ideas aren't practical.

Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Inspire Creativity in Your Kids. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.