What are your favorite resources on cultivating creativity in 2-4 year olds?

[charles1014]

What are your favorite resources on cultivating creativity in 2-4 year olds? I've heard of creating invitations to play and process art... I'd love to learn more about the former (like how to do it well), and other things we could do as parents. I'm interested in creativity in the broadest sense; music, visual arts, storytelling, building, world-building, everything! TIA!

 

[michaelv25]

@charles1014 Benign neglect? Allowing kids to get bored and have to entertain themselves?

Access to paper of many sizes & pens & plenty of tape.

 

[follow_the_word]

@charles1014 No screen time and boredom is not my problem to solve.

Open ended toys at an accessible level.

A ton of unstructured outdoor time.

Some amount of modeling (eg doing pretend play together) but also following kiddo’s lead versus correcting (oh , daddy is in the banana coming to school with you? Cool! Does he fly to school or slip?)

Asking him to tell me stories at bed time.

Responding to “I don’t know” with “how could you figure it out?”

 

[ikon]

@charles1014 I like playing this game as a family https://shop.ouisi.co it’s very open ended so you connect the cards however you want you just have to explain why. We model connections so our kids do too. It’s a great insight to see how they think.

Sometimes I send them on a mission. Like I will give my kid an orange and ask them to build a cage to keep it safe. Open ended prompts with no right answer are also great. “What kind of shoes would a unicorn wear in New Zealand?” “Can you draw them?”. Sometimes the whole family does it and we explain our drawings.

 

[simmondsjames]

@charles1014 Outdoor play has had a huge effect on our daughter. Especially a mud kitchen. She can entertain herself for a long time with some mud or some oobleck, vessels to pour muddy water back and forth, etc.

 

[carolny]

@charles1014 In a Reggio Emilia inspired learning environment, the invitations to play are called “provocations.” You might enjoy reading more about Reggio schools & their philosophy. I found this blog post from a Reggio-inspired teacher during a quick search: https://www.myteachingcupboard.com/blog/reggio-emilia-provocations

Using loose parts in play (another staple of Reggio inspired classrooms) is a related way to foster creativity. There are a ton of blog posts, images, etc if you Google “loose parts,” but there’s also an excellent series of books called Loose Parts: https://www.redleafpress.org/Loose-Parts-Inspiring-Play-in-Young-Children-P1128.aspx
I’ve found them at my library.

 

[phada]

@charles1014 My daughter got some Barefoot Books build a story cards as a gift and they’re really amazing, she loves them and we can spend a long time playing with them, combining the different packs and telling stories. She just turned 3 in September and they are appropriate for her.