Anyway back to this evening's chat about creativity
I think very often when we talk about creativity there is an automatic connection with the arts... but creativity is so much more than this...
I have written several times about creativity and if you are interested and have the time then please check them out... there are in fact 181 posts (this will make 182) with a creativity connection... but the below posts are some of those that explore WHAT is creativity a little more
Listen with dance - yes there is art and dancing involved in this... but for me this is about the creativity of the teacher... about looking for ways to support children's learning and development in new and interesting ways.
Light Play - using the overhead - but more importantly time for me to play with the materials... if I am to be a creative teacher then I too need to have time to play.
Empty Spaces - explores how the third teacher/the setting can be a support to creativity... do we have too many things available, does that hinder creativity, does too few have the same effect?
Children learning together - this is another post from my trip to Iceland (like Empty Spaces) - and show's how children are creativ in their play... how they learn through testing things out - BY THEMSELVES - and that this is creativity as it is original thinking for them... even though as adults we know it has been discovered before. I think sometimes we forget just how much original thinking children have.
Light and Play Installation - another post that shows that we as teachers need time to be creative - and to dare to test this creativity. I had no idea whether or not this light installation would work... it was an experiment... which turned out not only beautiful, but there was so much learning.. for the children and myself.
The many hops of hopscotch - creativity can be as simple as children working out many different ways of hopping
Rainbow power - creativity is also having the confidence as a teacher to not plan everything... to listen and to respond to the children. In this sense creativty does require that you have a knowledge/idea bank filled with possibilities, waiting and ready - and to equally be able to pull these ideas apart and reassemble them in a way that is suitable to your own group of children.
Traditions - reflections on them - creativity on the part of the teacher is also required in questioning traditions and why you do the things that you do. To find the right questions, to be open to all kinds of answers... to discover new ways of exploring traditions in order to make them more relevant and meaningful.
Does Boredom give birth to creativity? - and important question... what is creativity, what is boredom...
Paper Exploration - using materials in different ways from expected... allowing the children to explore mediums... giving children the potential to get creative in ways that we cannot imagine.
The Competent Child - by stepping back and giving children time, and believing in them allows them to be creative in their problem solving.
The importance of rest time on creativity - a post exploring how rest time is important for children/adults to be creative (rest and sleep will always be important for me as my husband is a sleep researcher and I have had the chance to learn a great deal from him on how the brain works and develops and the importance of sleep and rest in this process)
construction - there is always a great deal of creativity in construction... not only in the constructing process but also in the choice of materials presented and how they are presented.
Creativity and the artist - explring that creativity is so much more than art
What is creativity? a post written on my reflections of participating in Boulder Journey School summer conference in 2013
Sometimes I think we really do gives ourselves as educators far too little time to excerise our creative muscles... to play to "mess about" as David Hawkins recommended we do. I also think that sometimes we are so busy trying to encourage people to think outside the box that maybe we have missed the point... that young children have not yet been put in a box to need to think outside of... as my daughter said "I don't think outside of the box, because my box is bigger on the inside and travels through space and time". Of course my daughter loves Dr Who and this is a reference to that... but it got me thinking... we are so pre-occupied thing that everyone has the same box that we have not even considered the fact that all these boxes could be radically different from each other and also contribute to a collective creativity.
Of course I do understand what the phrase is referring to... but I am begiining to think more and more that this refers to us adults and to children conditioned by schooling to think in a specific way. As Loris Malaguzzi talked about the hundred languages (hundred meaning many, rather than specifically just a hundred) - may there are a hundred boxes of creativity to explore too... and that thinking outside the box means we might just be missing a whole load of creative potential that young children have in their unique boxes... before they are formed to the "one box" (one language) of school.
As teachers we are obviously adults that have been conditioned into the one box thinking - but maybe we should not be just thinking outside this box... but maybe rediscovering our own original box. A place of unique creative safety - and then start communicating with each other and sharing the contents from our creative boxes so that we can expand and grow.
How can we support educators (and I will write that rather than teachers... as we are many working in early childhood that are not official trained teachers, but are still part of the educational process)
How can we find our hundred languages, our hundred boxes of creativity, our hundred ways of listening ?
How are we given the time and play/messing about opportunity to reconnect with the creativity of our childhood?
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