15 Activities To Help Children Develop Their Creativity

Although I’ve already written about creativity-boosting tips, this article focuses on how to stimulate creativity in children specifically.

Most children are, of course, naturally creative, but there are activities they can enjoy that will draw this talent out further, and maybe even help them identify what gives them the most pleasure or what they are best at.

There are some overall recommendations, such as minimizing their screen time (computer or TV), getting them outdoors as much as you can, and making sure they get enough sleep.

What follows are a few more specific activities that can help develop divergent thinking, which is at the heart of creativity.

Create A Superhero

Ask your child to:

1. Tell you which single superpower they would love to have that would benefit mankind. (Ideally, this should not be one that an existing superhero has.)
2. Create a name for this superhero version of themselves.
3. Draw or sketch this new superhero (e.g. what sort of costume would they wear, what colours would it be), and even include what vehicle(s) they may use.

If it’s practical, they could even help you make this costume for Halloween.

Encourage Failure

As I’ve said elsewhere, creativity takes courage, and if children grow up being afraid of failure or being judged for their creative efforts, then they will be too scared to try anything new.

While many children view their parents as being always right (well, until they are teenagers, at least), this is clearly not the case, and sharing mistakes you have made, and even laughing about them, with your children demonstrates that nobody is perfect, everybody makes mistakes, and providing the results are not harmful, you might as well laugh about it.

Encourage them to share what they have got wrong too, without fear of judgement or punishment, and try to use this as a lesson (e.g. ask them what they would do differently next time), so they don’t make the same mistake again.

Engage All Their Senses

The more your children can participate in activities that involve all of their different senses, the better. When you use all of your senses, your appreciation and understanding of the world around you expands, and this opens the door for all sorts of creative activities.

You might want to devise a variety of games, each of which focuses on one specific sense (e.g. identifying sounds, smells, textures).

Focus On The Process

While it’s tempting to want to discuss the results of their creative efforts, it’s more effective to ask them questions about the process itself, such as:

• What did they enjoy during the process, and why.
• What didn’t they enjoy, and why.
• Would they do anything differently next time, and why.

Talking about the finished product can end up causing them to dwell too much on external approval, which can, in time, stifle creativity.

Form A Children’s Book Club

There is no reason why children can not have their own book club, just like adults do.

The books will, of course, be very different, but the activities can be very similar, such as describing what they enjoyed about the book, what they didn’t enjoy, who their favourite and least favourite characters were, and why.

And reading stimulates creative thinking and imagination far more than television does. When you see a movie, say, on TV, you are seeing the director’s version of how things should be, but when you read a book, you can build your own interpretation of the characters and settings.

One way to make use of this is to ask children to draw how they see one of the main characters in a book, and then compare the different versions. You can ask them why they drew the characters that way, and help them understand that different people have different perceptions and interpretations of the world around them, and that doesn’t necessarily mean that any particular view is right or wrong.

Learn Another Language

Speaking more than one language is, of course, a benefit no matter how old you are, but for children, it can be a great way to stimulate their brain.

The key here though is to make it fun – you don’t want it to end up being like another school lesson.

There is a good choice of phone apps these days that can help here, as well as flash card systems.

And start small, of course. For example, if they learn to count in Spanish, then you can switch to that language when counting things they can see (e.g. cows in a field when you’re driving somewhere).

Leave Time For Unstructured Play

The fewer the rules and guidelines and objectives set by adults, the freer the children will feel to let their imaginations run wild.

Let Them Build

Any building system will work here (e.g. Lego), but the key is not to use items where the components are used to build one specific item (e.g. a truck).

It is better to give them a bunch of building blocks, say, and let them create something themselves. This is because it encourages divergent thinking, whereas following a set of instructions is more convergent, which is less helpful when it comes to stimulating creativity.

As they grow older, you could let them start using actual building materials, such as pieces of wood and metal connectors – provided they are adequately supervised of course.

Look For Improvements

Whether your child is at the playground or park, or just playing with their toys, ask them to describe what it is they most like about it, what they don’t like about it, and what they think would make it even better (e.g. new features, or improved features).

At this stage, it doesn’t necessarily matter whether their improvements are realistic or not – you just want them to come up with the ideas.

Offer As Many Creative Opportunities As You Can

We are all different, and many of us are creative in very specific ways. As a broad example, some prefer art while others prefer music.

And although many people claim not to be creative, it’s often just a case of discovering where their creative talent lies.

I grew up thinking I wasn’t creative at all, and it was only in my 40s that I found out I really enjoyed writing (e.g. poems and short stories), even though I’d really disliked those activities at school. (Of course, at school, you mainly get told what to write about, whereas outside of that environment, it’s entirely up to you.)

So by exposing your children to different forms of creativity (e.g. art, music, sculpture, writing, flower arranging, performance arts like dancing, magic / conjuring, acting), you increase the chances of them finding the thing that excites them.

Provide A Designated Space For Art

This could be an entire room, or maybe just a white board, but you should encourage your children to use this space to draw whatever they want.

Maybe in the morning you can write on the board the name of something they should draw, and if they do that before dinner time, they get a reward.

The items you name can be anything you want (e.g. a dog, a book, a dragon, a flower), and as time goes on and they grow older and more skilled, you can make them more intricate.

Story Cards

For this, you will need a set of cards that have different items on them – preferably pictures, but words would do. And the more cards, the better.

The idea is that a child selects a card at random, and starts a story based on what’s on that card.

The next child draws a card, and continues the story in a way that makes at least some sense, and so on, until you or they run out of cards, time, energy, or interest.

Transformation Machines

This is something we used to do at junior school, and the idea is that you draw a machine that converts one item into another.

For example, your machine might transform a teddy bear into a desk.

Once your child has decided what the machine will do, they should then draw this machine.

It goes without saying that none of this needs to be viable or realistic, but in this example, the machine may:

1. Separate the component parts of the bear (e.g. fur, stuffing, joints).
2. Turn the joints into the desk supports by rolling them into tube shapes.
3. Flatten and harden the fur so it becomes the top surface of the desk.
4. Create a mouse pad out of the stuffing.

Each of these steps would be represented by boxes and cogs, etc., with conveyor belts moving the component parts between the different stages until the final step, where everything is assembled.

The more steps in this machine, the better, and each stage should be labelled so that they can explain to you what happens in that component.

What If…

You can play a game of “What if…” with your children to get them to use their imagination to envision how things would be different.

For example, asking them, “What if there were no cars?” might generate a whole bunch of ideas about how life would differ from what they know.

Not only will this get them to think creatively, but it can also help them to understand consequences.

Write A Comic Strip

Explore, with your child, what he or she finds funny, and then try to create a comic strip that allows them to express their sense of humour.

The comic strip, which should be complete with characters and speech bubbles, can be hand drawn – it doesn’t need to be of professional quality, of course – or you can find websites and/or software to help you here.

Once you have a template, your child can fill in the speech bubbles themselves.

And if the characters and scenes are just line drawings, they can also colour them in.

Conclusion

I hope you find a few ideas to get you going, and once you get the hang of what works with your children, you’ll be able to come up with tons more ideas too.

And don’t forget to have a good supply of craft materials on hand, then they’ll never be stuck for something to do.