Nursery World - Nursery Equipment: Creativity

Getting children to work creatively with messy materials can assist with the development of descriptive language, explains Anne O'Connor.

In Loris Malaguzzi's famous poem describing the work of the pre-schools of Reggio Emilio in Italy, he wrote, 'The child has a hundred languages, a hundred hands' - and that seems a good place to start when thinking about the role of creativity in language development.

We know that talk often comes easily when the hands are occupied. Sometimes this talk is about the task in hand - the process, materials, ideas and challenges involved. But it can also be about seemingly unrelated topics. It is as though the hands - and the sensory experiences of painting, manipulating messy materials, cutting and sticking - are triggering the kinds of activity in the language centres of the brain that promote talk and conversation.

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