Creativity will flourish best in the youngest children without a lot of adult planning and purpose-built resources, says Jennie Lindon
Creative development for children is only partly about exploration with arts and crafts. As enjoyable as those activities can be, we also want our under-threes to develop the flair of creativity in how they approach play resources and experiences. The sense of 'what will happen if...?', 'Will it happen again?' and 'How come that happened?' are building blocks for confident young children. We want them to be keen to find out for themselves, as much from when something does not go as planned as when it has gone smoothly.
Children can develop as creative thinkers when they are allowed to make decisions in their play. For young children to exercise choice, they need a learning environment with plenty of accessible materials on open shelves and containers. Mobile toddlers will often bring together unlikely play resources. I was recently told of one young child who had happily chosen a container of dinosaurs and one full of large cotton reels and carefully made an enclosure for the dinosaurs with the cotton reels.
Support for creative development requires space for young children to spread out, and enough materials for individual children to create what they want.
Young children make the move from imitative play towards use of their imagination in pretending. They know enough of how the world works to pretend that things are otherwise. Creativity does not require full dressing-up outfits. All young children need is a good supply of hats, handbags and some scarves and then they can be anyone they want.
The idea of schemas can be useful to help us track the flow of a child's play, rather than impose our own reservations about 'proper play'. We need to focus on what actually interests this young child today and not get bogged down in the over-planning that is making life difficult in some nurseries.
- Young children will spend ages, from their point of view, playing with making faces in a mirror, or bobbing to and fro as their image comes in and out of view.
- One afternoon I watched a toddler of 17 months who had gained the physical balance to stand steady and look through her legs back to a world that was upside-down. She found this experience a wonder, and it added to her delight that her mother and key worker clearly enjoyed watching her discovery.
- There is a lovely sequence in the video from the Birth to Three Matters pack, in which an older baby explores what he can do with two balls, including rolling them down the back of a second baby, conveniently sitting close by.
- Because the world is new to young children, their questions and comments show creativity. They are trying to find out what, why and how, without having a long list of assumptions based on experience. Under- threes need supportive adults who know the value of listening and 'just having a chat'.
Exploring and making
Older babies, toddlers and young children relish getting connected with arts and crafts materials. They need to be able to use all their senses and to be able to explore what they can do with materials. Serious barriers to creative development can arise when practitioners are pressured to get even babies to make something linked with a topic followed by three- to five-year-olds.
The Birth to Three Matters video has another excellent sequence that sums up appropriate baby and toddler art. A young toddler is sitting up to a perspex room divider and using hands to swirl paint around on the surface. Genuine creativity develops when children are enabled to explore and supported by adults who value the process.
Other resources:
- Nursery World features by Jennie Lindon, Kevin Kelman and Alice Sharp: 'Young expressionists', 9 August 2001, 'A fine mess', 8 February 2001
- Tina Bruce, 'All about schemas', Nursery World, 6 June 2002
- DfES/Sure Start, Birth to Three Matters: A framework to support children in their earliest years, 2002 (tel: 0845 6022 260)
