How to cultivate children's creativity and imagination?

Every child has creativity and the development of human creativity begins in early childhood. Early childhood and school-age are important periods to cultivate and develop children's creativity because this is the period when children are eager to actively create and discover.

The foundation laid at this time may affect the whole process of life development. This is not only an important period of intellectual development but also an important period of personality formation and development.

To cultivate and develop children's creativity, parents or teachers should pay attention to the following aspects:

1. Create a sensitive environment for children. 

The sensitive environment refers to the environment in which children can easily be influenced by various imperceptible influences. In such an environment, children can have a variety of opportunities to be stimulated, as well as various forms of opportunities to explore and try. For a family, parents should prepare a variety of materials for their children, that do not have to be expensive. 

Now many parents don't know what kind of psychology they are in. They like to buy many high-end things (including high-end toys and learning tools) for their children. It seems that only in this way can parents show their love for their children. 

In fact, this is not necessarily good for the development of children, nor conducive to the healthy development of children. In fact, some old magazines, books, old things, old clocks and watches, old appliances, and old furniture may be more conducive to children's creativity.

Parents should also pay attention to providing their children with the necessary space for activities. Provide a space for children to read and explore freely. We should also pay attention to providing children with opportunities for performance so that children's labor achievements can be displayed. 

Children's thoughts and behaviors should always be positively reflected by their parents. Encouragement, support, and appreciation from parents, or Parents' useful suggestions and help are essential for children to actively engage in creative activities.

For school, we should create a more relaxed and active atmosphere. In such a relaxed environment, teachers are ready to answer all kinds of questions from children at any time. 

Children have all kinds of opportunities for creative activities, emphasize the acceptance of knowledge, and pay attention to the application and practice of knowledge, and test results are not the only criteria for evaluating learning effects.

2. Encourage children to operate independently. 

Try to let children do what they can and achieve certain results. It's very important for children to experience that it's important to complete the activity independently. A person without a sense of responsibility can't do anything well, let alone create and invent.

Things are neither big nor small, nor good or bad so children can do it, and gradually cultivate their sense of responsibility. Responsibility is the basic component of children's maturity and creative orientation. It is found that with the development of children's abilities, their creative ability is more active and spontaneous.

In order to encourage and develop children's ability to operate independently, parents or teachers can establish an integrated "achievement register" for children, recording all the things completed by children themselves in a certain period of time. Don't think too much about whether your child is doing well, that is, don't put too much emphasis on quality. 

Even things that are not well done or even badly done should be recorded, but no criticism should be made. This record will become a complete record of children's creative attempts. It can not only help parents and teachers to check and identify the active period and conditions of children's creative activities but also enable parents and teachers to better understand children and help them to better play with their creativity.

3. Pay attention to emotional support for children. 

We stress that children should be emotionally involved. The emotional engagement here doesn't mean loving children. It can be said that there are no parents who do not love their children and no teachers who do not love their students. As parents and teachers, if they want to train their children to be highly creative talents, they should have such a sense that they can "waste" precious time on seemingly meaningless or so-called "little play".

Sometimes children have some good ideas, and sometimes these ideas are often unexpected to our adults. Therefore, some ideas or practices of children cannot be denied or opposed because they do not meet their own ideas for a while. Parents or parents should spend more time thinking about children's ideas and try to find unique and ingenious points in children's ideas or practices. We should pay more attention to and evaluate any unique and ingenious idea of children. 

When parents don't always impose their will on their children, don't always want their children to listen to their own words, and ignore their children's words. Children should be given the opportunity to express their opinions. They should listen carefully to their ideas, make positive comments on their creative ideas, show interest in their creative results, praise them or give their own suggestions, and often pay attention to their unique features in daily behaviors.

In order to get timely feedback, educators need to prepare a recording book for themselves, recording the situation of listening to children express their ideas or activities with children or participating in children's creative activities at any time, and recording their reactions to children's narration at that time, such as expressing approval, opposition or suggestions. 

The continuous increase in listening records shows that you are really concerned about the growth of your children, on the other hand, it also helps you to accumulate first-hand information about the growth of your children.

4. Children should be expected and allowed to regress as they grow up. 

Encourage children to admit mistakes rather than hide them. Of course, let children learn from mistakes or failures. Life is not always calm, and the road to life is not smooth.

We must remind children that there will be setbacks and failures in life, work, and study. If possible, we should let children experience setbacks and failures. Children should realize the fact that failure and frustration are common. With such mental preparation, when encountering setbacks or failures, you won't be overwhelmed by anxiety or mental pressure.

As educators, we should fully understand children, just like we hope others can understand ourselves, we should allow children to have a "hundred-day dream" and allow children to have a "lost soul" phenomenon. In fact, when you find that children are daydreaming, or in a trance, they may be actively using their imaginations and thinking about important issues.

American psychologist Avino once said that the educator must be able to accept and be alert to the plateau phenomenon in the process of children's growth, that is, the so-called pause phenomenon. During this period, children sometimes look tired, or there will be a variety of complaints or show regular boredom. You know, it's natural. There is no need for parents or teachers to worry about this, let alone blame their children for their lack of progress.

In fact, we can't expect all the actions of a child to be logical or desirable, let alone creative. Developing children's creative potential does not mean that children are not allowed to have shortcomings, but also should be allowed to have mistakes or shortcomings. Educators should not resent children's shortcomings or mistakes, but should Often discuss these shortcomings and mistakes with children. Try to make them realize the truth, and then give them the opportunity to correct or overcome them.

5. Help children deal with relationships with others and their own independence. 

Independence doesn't mean no contact with people. Good independence doesn't mean no need for friendship. In children's life-long development, social development is always very important. The independence of a person is important, but even for very young children, it is very necessary to communicate with others. Moreover, judging from the trend of social development, it is almost impossible to accomplish anything without cooperation.

From the perspective of individual development, in communication, children can not only communicate, influence, and promote each other at the same or similar cognitive level, but also for each child, this is a very rare opportunity to express themselves, and it is also an opportunity for people to evaluate. 

The research shows that whether there is an opportunity for their products to be recognized by society is an important aspect of the development of creativity. Many people with high creative ability are not recognized at last, and their talents are buried at last, just because there is no opportunity to perform and social evaluation. Therefore, many theorists emphasize that the social value of creative products is the last link that products show to society.

6. Help children to establish clear training and behavior standards.

Children should have no doubt about the right and wrong standards of parents or teachers. In other words, for children, educators should have absolute qualifications to judge. 

However, many of our adults make the wrong use of their absolute rights and make the wrong mistakes in the process of cultivating children. Educators with absolute authority should not change the right and wrong standards in their behaviors. This requires teachers or parents to be ready to admit and correct their shortcomings in an appropriate way.

The rules in the training must be clear and implemented firmly. Too many rules will make children too disciplined and restrain their creativity. This requires attention to the necessary principled content when establishing rules. For example, there should be no harmful behavior, no destructive behavior, etc. as for specific details such as how to play games, the educators cannot stipulate at all.

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