Teaching Kids to be Creative

LOS OSOS, CA – Wednesday afternoon – It’s our job to help teach our kids and grandkids the steps to express their creativity!!! I know, I know… we’ve been talking about it for weeks on the Inspired at Home radio show (and for years on the Aleene’s Creative Living television show)  about how important it is to “teach” children to express their creativity.

We often don’t really need to ‘teach’ but to let kids just be who they are and I always find that their creativity just soars. I have found that by simply showing the kids the basics like how to use scissors, how to glue and other simple techniques they just blossom into creative artists.

My grandson Jackson 10, lives close by so he’s often hanging out at our house. Some days he will watch a few TV shows. Sometimes it’s shooting hoops and other times he’ll venture into the studio to be creative.  This past week was the first time he just came into the studio…. looked around and he knew exactly what he wanted to create.

He found a ceramic donkey that was actually from my Mom’s collectible collection (sorry Mom but it went to a great creative cause!). He knew exactly what he wanted …..  put the donkey into a mosaic with grass, a river, a tree, and the sky and ‘”bytw grandma do you have something the donkey can sit on?”

He went about his creative task, gathered up the supplies and went to work gluing tiles into place. At first as he was working on his project he was wanting to use five (or more) different colors of grout.  I didn’t say he couldn’t use that many but simply explained for best results he would have to wait a day for each grout color to set before adding the next. Not wanting to spend that many days on this project (he’s got lots more planned), he finally settled on one color.  He worked on his creation, tile nipping the tiles and then gluing each tile into place, then grouted it. He was SO proud of what he created!!! And for two days no computer and no TV.  Yippeee!!!

Ahhh… the sweet creative life…sharing and teaching kids creativity!! I just love it!!!>>Love Ya! Heidi

PS. Would love to hear any great ‘teaching kids’ to be creative stories!!! Just leave a comment or email me at heidi@inspiredathome.com