Creative thinking is a fundamental skill for the stages of child development. In this post, we will be talking about creative thinking, why it is so important, and how to build creative thinking skills in kids.
What is Creative Thinking?
Creative thinking is the ability to develop new and different approaches to a problem or a concept. Essentially, creative thought involves processing existing information and experiences, adopting various perspectives, and figuring out new patterns. The experts establish five types of creative thinking.
Convergent thinking requires considering facts and deciding the most common solution to a problem. Meanwhile, divergent thinking can be best explained as brainstorming: you come up with as many ideas as possible. Similarly, inspirational thinking lets you imagine the best-case scenarios to create a new approach to a problem. Finally, lateral thinking takes a more systematical approach, focusing on the flow of ideas in a step by step format. On the other hand, aesthetic thinking has a whole different viewpoint: it urges you to take a look at the problem from a different frame to see its value and beauty, like a painting.
Creative thinking helps children connect ideas and reach new concepts by processing them. It improves children’s imaginative powers and concentration while developing the sense of looking at the world from different views. There are some essential critical and creative thinking skills for students:
- Imagination
- Brainstorming
- Adaptability
- Imagery
- Questioning
Why is Creative Thinking Important for Kids?
Creative thinking skills help children in so many ways. Through them, children learn how to look at something from different perspectives, recognise new patterns, and go out of the way to find alternative solutions. Also, creative thinking skills for students are crucial in improving analytical thinking because critical and creative thinking encourages children to take a different look, question, and examine the world around them.
Creative thinking promotes problem-solving skills for kids. It allows them to explore their ideas and imaginative powers. When children face a problem, the first thing they apply is their creative thinking skills. For example, if two kids want to play with cars but don’t have any toys, they can easily imagine a pair of slippers as cars.
Not only that, but creative thinking also helps children in expressing themselves. Identifying feelings or finding the right words may be quite hard, especially for little children. However, your child can learn to find new ways to express their emotions or ideas in unconventional ways with creative thinking skills. Moreover, creative thinking exercises flourish children’s curiosity. Smashing all the walls that confine your child’s free-thinking abilities, those exercises let your children’s creative ideas flow. They eventually sparkle new ideas, which opens the way to curiosity for other concepts.
Tips to Build Creative Thinking Skills in Kids
- Get your child to adopt reading habits
Reading enhances kids’ vocabulary, which means they learn new concepts that can connect. Those connections form many new ideas. So, getting children on a track in reading boosts their ability to think creatively.
- Give your child time to solve problems on their own
To find a solution to a problem, children should take their time thinking about them. That way, they can examine the issue from different perspectives and come up with creative ideas. No matter how much you want to solve a situation, your child’s tackling it themselves helps build their creative thinking skills.
- Encourage questions
You may be tired of your child’s never-ending questions, but don’t forget that those questions open many creative thoughts in their mind. So try redirecting questions to them to advance their creative thinking abilities.
- Urge your child to develop hypotheses
As much as questioning, coming up with hypotheses level up children’s creative thinking skills. They think about the question, find alternative reasons and consequences, evaluate them, and finally structure the main premises. This process involves lots of creativity because they have to think about many things all at once. So, when they ask you a question, you can urge your child to build hypotheses themselves.
- Give your child responsibility
You can’t think how much a typical day at home requires so much creative thinking. Give your child something to do, a little responsibility to keep their mind occupied. They would immediately come up with creative ideas to find an easier way to accomplish their duties.
Games and Activities that Improve Creative Thinking Skills in Kids
- Modelling/Sculpting
Play doughs, modelling clay, and any other sculpting medium lays a vast space where your child can bring models of existing or non-existing things into life. As there is no limit to what kind of a sculpture they can create, kids can explore their imagination to the fullest. That enables them to improve their creative thinking abilities.
- Playing Instruments and Singing
Any form of musical expression develops children’s creative thinking because through musical notes, playing instruments, and singing, they can channel their emotions, whether sadness, anger, or happiness. It is a way of interpretation, and as it lifts the language barrier, it gives children the freedom to use their creativity.
- Puppetting
Children love puppets! Puppetting may be more complicated than you think because the person who directs the puppets must create a plot, a character, and dialogues for their show. So, giving your kids a chance to be puppet masters can boost their thinking skills and creativity. Also, you can urge your kids to make their own puppets out of the materials at home. You can stitch some pieces of cloth in whatever shape you want your puppet, fill it, draw a face and add hair or other accessories. This way, you can improve their ability to think creatively as they have to use something unconventionally.
- Guess/Memory Games and Puzzles
Guess games require a lot of concentration and creative thinking as they are mostly built upon drawing connections between several topics and objects. Finding ways to convey what the person is trying to make the others guess also develops creative thinking skills. It pushes one to come up with creative ways to express themselves.
- Pretend Play
As pretend play puts children in various imaginary situations, it boosts their creativity about real-life scenarios and how they can react to them. Some problems in real life need lots of thinking and creativity to find a solution. Pretend play makes it easier to develop creative thinking and problem-solving.
- Drawing
Creative thinking exercises like drawing can be quite fun to urge your child to explore their creative and imaginative powers. They can experiment with different drawing techniques such as chalk, watercolour, gouache, etc. Especially with watercolour, they can mix various colours to create their own colour. Drawing enables children to imagine a whole new universe on paper. Drawing on old t-shirts or objects that you don’t use anymore can also be a fun idea because that way, you can urge your child to think creatively according to differing objects.
- Mixed Media Plays
Children are usually given unrelated objects such as cardboard, buttons, and cotton reels in mixed media activities without any instructions. And, when left with their creativity, children eventually manage to create items out of these unrelated objects. This kind of play may be one of the best techniques for developing creative thinking as children work independently and solely use their imagination.
- Science Activities
Teaching children about certain topics isn’t the only aim of science activities, but also urging them to be curious about the world around them. Essentially, those science skills for kids help them acquire and advance creative thinking skills. For example, to create hypotheses or find a solution to a problem during an experiment, those children effectively use creative thinking and problem-solving skills.
How Twin Helps to Develop Creative Thinking Skills in Kids
We aim to advance children’s thinking skills and creativity and educate them on several different science topics. Twin Kits include a Robotic Art Kit, Coding Kit, Curiosity Kit, and many more! These kits help your child grow creative thinking skills as they experiment with hands-on projects. You can learn more about all the kits here at this link: Twin Shop.Twin App also presents many interactive videos and games that help them learn science and improve their creative thinking skills. With a Digital subscription, you can access those videos, games, live shows, DIY projects, and monthly skill reports. On the other hand, Premium subscription means you get 6 science kits sent bi-monthly and unlimited access to Twin App.
