First-hand experiences are essential to a child's learning and creative development. Julian Grenier explains why
'Creativity is fundamental to successful learning' is the bold claim of the QCA's 'Curriculum Guidance for the Foundation Stage'. This means that practitioners need to encourage children to develop and communicate their own ideas. Children's desire to communicate these ideas can then motivate them to learn new ways of doing things.
I was recently outside with a child who was transfixed by the tiny patterns of snowflakes dropping on to a climbing frame. She was then highly motivated to be taught how to select and use the smallest brush size on a computer drawing programme, so she could represent the patterns.
To support children's creative development, it is important to emphasise the process more than the product. It is sometimes tempting to want a small group of children to produce something nice to put on the walls for a display. The children might be encouraged to look closely at a sunflower or shown a picture that an adult has done, and then given only yellow and black paint for their own pictures. The message being given to the children is very clear - they are expected to come up with the same kind of product, with perhaps a few individual differences. But if we are trying to recognise children's creativity, we need to tune into what they are doing, rather than what we would like the result to be.
Children's creative development is enhanced when they have rich first-hand experiences, whether it is taking the lift to the top of a shopping centre, studying the grid patterns of the drains or going to the Tate Modern and seeing the huge sculptures.
Children also need to have access to high-quality materials to give them good first-hand experiences. In other words, a small number of good paintbrushes of different shapes and sizes will give children much more direct experience of how paint goes on to paper than a huge jumbled up pot of old and worn brushes.
A few music-shop instruments that make rich and beautiful sounds will similarly be more useful to children than a lot of plastic tambourines and shakers.
Another important part of organising resources is to consider time and space.
If children are going to develop dynamic dances to music, they will need plenty of space in which to do this. Similarly, small tables crowded with chairs can make it difficult for children to have enough space to paint or build their models.
The Foundation Stage also states that children should have access to 'resources from a variety of cultures to stimulate different ways of thinking'. Children need time to explore resources if they are unfamiliar with them and they also need first-hand experiences. In other words, allowing children to experiment with using Indian tabla is important, but it is also important for them to see how a skilled musician uses them. Then they can incorporate some of the techniques the musician uses into their play and experimentation.
All children are creative. Each child's drawing of a person is unique, yet children aged three around the world draw people in remarkably similar ways.
This suggests development takes the lead, rather than teaching. As children get older, they become more aware of their culture and how to create places for themselves in it. They need to experience other people's creations, in the forms of music, painting and dance, to feed and extend their own thinking.
Crucially, children also need practitioners who will respond to their creations with interest and respect.
Case study: Adina
Adina, a three-year-old girl at Woodlands Park Nursery Centre, loves music, dance and painting. Her mother, Claire, says that Adina particularly loves spinning around, and that her paintings have recently included a lot of circles and vertical lines. She loves dressing up, wrapping herself in capes and sarongs, and creating little dens out of draped materials where she has picnics with her baby sister and her teddies. Adina likes watching medical dramas on television and this has stimulated some elaborate play with her doctor's set.
Adina's key person, Jenny, plans a series of experiences in nursery to support Adina's creative development. She also ensures that these plans will be appropriate for Francesca, another child in her key group who has profound and multiple learning difficulties.
The children are given large pieces of light-coloured paper and dark paints so they can create patterns. Adina creates large swirling spirals and Francesca, who has impaired vision, can see them because of the strong contrast between paint and paper. Jenny and her key group act out Mr Gumpy's Outing by John Burningham (Puffin Books, 4.99), and Adina loves singing 'Row the boat' and pretending to fall into the water with all the other children. Francesca can row the boat when Jenny holds her and loves being toppled gently on to the floor. She is able to flap her arms like a chicken to join in with pretending to be an animal.
Jenny plans for Adina to take part in singing the 'Lonely Girl', which involves her in reaching out to another child and dancing round in circles with her. The children involve Francesca by holding her hands and waving them up and down.
Ten key points
Use these ten points as possible lead-ins for discussion at a staff meeting or with parents and carers.
1. Are children expected to create identical types of pictures for displays? Such an approach involves little creativity. There is an important distinction between encouraging children to observe a flower closely and expecting them all to represent it in a particular way.
2. Is your planning for creative development appropriate for all the children with special educational needs?
3. Are art forms from different cultures available in the setting? These will stimulate children to think and work in different ways.
4. Do you ask parents and carers about the creative experiences and expressions of their children at home? This can be used as a starting point for your planning.
5. Do your displays include information about the processes children went through and the decisions they made?
6. Are children encouraged to experiment and take risks? If you emphasise the process more than the product, children will be more willing to try more ambitious ways of working.
7. Is your practice culturally aware? For example, Islamic art emphasises intricate patterns, while displays in nurseries generally emphasise representational pictures.
8. Can children save their work in progress and come back to it another day?
9. Are children given space to work on a large scale? Huge pieces of paper on the floor or a large space for dancing will give children special opportunities to be creative.
10. Does your planning for creative development include using information and communication technology? This could involve using painting programmes on the computer or cameras and tape recorders.
