Of all the things that you should work on with your child, it’s their imagination. It promotes creative thought and can help children in a multitude of ways, like their problem solving and critical thinking. Childhood is also thought to be the best time to work on it. Here are a few ways that you can nurture your child’s imagination according to a nursery in North London.
Take a Break
Funnily enough, taking a step back can help. When we think too much, we often stifle our own creativity and we’re stuck thinking of the same possibilities. Instead, take a break. You may choose to spend that in the lush outdoors soaking up sun and the beauty of nature. They will find or see things that inspire them, and they will be able to go back to what they’re working on refreshed.
Inspire Them
Creative thoughts don’t just come to us. Sometimes we need a little inspiration to get them going. To help boost their imagination, look at things that will excite and amaze them. For this you can explore new inventions, magic tricks, or cool pieces of artwork.
What If Questions
Another tip is to question their thinking. Ask them what if questions to stimulate their imagination and encourage them to formulate their own ideas on what may happen. Having this level of awareness and thought will add to the quality of their ideas and help them in becoming better thinkers.
Unstructured Play
If you really want to help them explore their imagination, let them have fun and just be themselves. Setting specific play activities and instructions limits a child’s creativity to those set guidelines. Instead create “unstructured play” opportunities where they themselves can decide and create what they like. A good resource for this is Lego. It’s so flexible and the opportunities are endless.
Reading
Reading can also surprisingly help. It teaches children about the wider world and also serves ideas to explore. Another thing about reading is that they’re encouraged to think for themselves and paint a picture of what’s going on and will happen next. Even if your child’s not quite there with their reading, you can read to them and get them to use their creative thinking ability.
Although we’ve only stuck to five ideas here, there are so many more activities that you can explore with your child to grow their imagination, like crafting. We hope that this was a helpful read. For more posts like this, feel free to have a look at my other blog posts.
