Kids are naturally creative and curious! These are important lifelong skills that sometimes get lost if not encouraged, but there are many different and fun ways to develop them.
Often, with free-form creative exploration, a child finds his or her passion that eventually leads to a career or lifelong hobby. Challenge children to invent their own activities, games and toys by showing them how to find materials and use them in different ways to invent, create and explore.
For example, a grocery bag of pine cones and some lines drawn in the dirt with a stick can be used to play a new game that is a kind of cross between checkers and marbles.
Some old wood scraps from a building project become the building blocks for a sculpture or a robot. Leaves arranged and piled high in different ways provide the setting for a type of tag and/or baseball and/or king of the mountain.
The choices are endless and it encourages the mind to create and to think up something new. The best materials for this are free because you can use anything. That is all part of the fun. A few examples are some rocks and sticks found outside, an old broken tool in the garage, a small engine such as a vacuum cleaner that no longer works or plastic containers and cardboard you own. With a group of kids you can invent and decide on your own rules. This type of play also encourages cooperation and brainstorming.
Below is a template of circles, triangles and squares. It can be used to invent a game or used for an art project. It can be used as is, or cut up. It can be added to or changed in any way, and if you have a bunch of ideas, feel free to copy it!
Kelly Dupre of Grand Marais is an artist, children’s author, and educator with over 20 years teaching experience with all age groups in a variety of settings. The activities in this once-a-month column are spin-offs and combinations of ideas she has used and learned from teachers, parents, kids, books, and workshops. Only some of the activities has she actually thought of herself! Do you have a project or an idea you would like to see on the Whirligigs page? Let us know! Send your suggestion to starnews@boreal.org.
Leave a Reply