Research has proven that creativity helps kids be more confident, develop social skills, and learn better. Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Because it is a key to success in nearly everything we do, creativity is a key component of health and happiness and a core skill to practice with kids. Creativity is not limited to artistic and musical expression—it’s also essential for science, math and even social and emotional intelligence. Creative people are more flexible and better problem solvers, which makes them more able to adapt to technological advances and deal with change—as well as take advantage of new opportunities.

The Children’s Museum of the Lowcountry offers a wide range of programs, exhibits and activities that foster creativity through play-based learning. Although we remain closed until it’s safe to open, we have great activities to do at home and our Facebook page is a good place to check for updates. Here are a few ideas (some of which may surprise you) on ways you can encourage creativity at home:

Questions Without Answers

Asking open-ended questions are a great way to get a child’s creative juices flowing. These questions help a child distance himself from the here and now. Choices, comparisons, entertaining new ideas and formulating personal responses to these questions are all important ingredients in creative thinking. Keep in mind that you will need to tailor your questions to a child’s experiences and exposure to things.

Here are some open-ended questions to ask children to inspire their creativity:

• What could happen if it always rained on Saturdays?
• What if cars never wore out?
• If you saw a mouse in your backyard chewing your mother’s favorite flowers, what would you do?
• Why don’t we wake up with our hair neat and combed?
• What would happen if a cow, a bee, and a clover got together?
• What could happen if cats could bark?
• What could happen if all the shoes in the world were the same size?

Designate a space for creating. Carving out a space where your child can be creative is important, but it doesn’t have to be a fancy playroom. It could be a tiny corner with a sack of LEGOs or a box of your old clothes for playing dress-up. 

Keep things simple. Just like you don’t need to create an elaborate play area, you don’t need the latest and greatest toys either. Provide simple games and activities. If your kids do play with toys, instead of following the rules, let the wheels of their imagination spin and create what they want.

Allow for “free time.” It’s also important to give your child unstructured time. Spend a few hours at home without activities scheduled, so your child can just putter around and play.

Activate their senses. Expose your kids to the world so they can use all of their senses. Again, this doesn’t mean costly or complicated trips. Take them to the library, museum and outdoor spaces. Ask them to imagine what traveling to faraway places for an adventure, such as an African safari, might be like. What animals would they encounter? What noises would the animals make?

Help your kids pursue their passions. Pay attention to your child’s interests and make these materials and activities available to them. 

Encourage critical thinking. Ask your child to solve a family problem—i.e. “The living room is constantly messy. What should we do about it?” This makes them feel important, creates space for their own creative problem solving, and allows an opportunity for them to contribute to the family.

Support (some) rule-breaking. Play your child’s favorite game together but encourage him or her to come up with new rules. It will feel like a brand new game again!

Stir the imagination with open-ended questions. Here’s a good open-ended question to get your child thinking creatively about other people: “If you could give one gift to every single child in the world, what gift would you give?” Ask your child to imagine what it would be like to have a superpower: “If you could be invisible for a day, what would you do?

Suggest a drawing prompt. “If you could invent something that would make life easier for people, what would you invent? What would it look like, and what would it do?”

Creativity — using our imagination to come up with ideas or make something new — is one of the most valuable qualities human beings can have. Innovative thinking will serve our kids well in whatever endeavors they choose, and the more we encourage creative activity during their formative years, the more comfortable and confident they’ll feel in sharing their ideas with others.

We hope these ideas are helpful and we look forward to encouraging your child’s creativity in person as soon as it’s safe.

That box your new television was in is now a castle for your daughter and her friends (she’s the queen, of course). The hammock in your backyard is a ship sailing the high seas with your son as its captain, using an empty paper towel roll as a periscope. 

Research has shown that when children pretend to cook, reenact a doctor’s visit, fight wild bears, or put out an imaginary fire, they are using imaginative play to help them make sense of the world. During pretend play, kids use words to interact and move plots along, plan and carry out sequences of events, solve problems for their real and imaginary friends, process information, predict the things that will happen next and cooperate with others. These factors encourage language development, empathy, concentration, problem-solving abilities, logical thinking, creativity, comprehension, and social skills in young children.

Although schools and other organizations are doing their best to provide programming to keep young children engaged during these unparalleled times of stay-at-home orders and educational and recreational closures, having resources to facilitate play-based learning at home has taken on new importance. 

While The Children’s Museum of the Lowcountry remains closed to slow the spread of COVID-19, stop by our site for activities to do at home and get updates on our Facebook page. In the meantime, here are ideas to help you encourage play-based learning at home:

• Re-enact your child’s favorite books. Make puppets from material scraps and buttons or build a jungle in a box with items found in the garden. It’s not only fun but can help children to focus and improve their listening skills and speech.
• Use the bushes and trees in your yard to create a jungle, where you can be lions, tigers, monkeys, snakes, giraffes and hippos!
• Use cushions and pillows to create “islands” in the living room or family room. Try to jump to each one without getting wet or bitten by a crocodile or try to catch fish or go swimming.

Unstructured play is also an important learning experience for kids. So, while it’s not that you’re not a fun parent, but sometimes, Mom and Dad, you just need to leave playtime to the kids. While parent-child play is crucial to a child’s development—it’s been shown time and again to enhance their vocabulary, school performance, and self-esteem—playing on their own is equally important.

Free, unstructured play happens when your child isn’t following any rules or guidelines, like when he’s busy building forts, pretending to be a superhero, or finger painting. It cultivates independence, imagination, creativity, and problem-solving skills, says Kenneth R. Ginsburg, M.D., a pediatrician at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and author of a special report on play from the American Academy of Pediatrics. Free play also works wonders on stress. Neuroscientists say that play is fundamental to every kind of learning, and it even physically shapes the brain. The more playful an animal is, scientists point out, the bigger its brain is.

Here are some ways you can make free play an organic and exciting part of your child’s world. Here’s how:

• Praise their play. Your child probably already engages in some amount of free play every day. Encourage more of it by regularly telling your little one what a great job she’s doing. “I’m so impressed that you built that tower all by yourself!” or “What a great game you invented!” Resist the urge to give suggestions like “Here, why don’t you use a towel instead of that sheet as a cape?” Your kid’s play is perfect just the way it is.
• Offer open-ended toys. Playthings such as blocks, dolls, and balls that can be used in more than one way encourage imagination better than things like coloring books or board games, which have specific rules to follow.
• Teach by example. Do you have free-play activities of your own? If not, how can you expect your child to? Don’t feel guilty about the time you take to yourself to work out, paint, read, garden or go for a walk. You’re teaching your child an important lesson: Play is a priority, no matter how old you are!

We’ll be back with all kinds of play-based learning experiences as soon as it’s safe. Until then, help your child unlock the power of play!

Hi friends! DooDash here. I asked my friend Ms. Meghan to read one of my favorite books, Dragons Love Tacos, by Adam Rubin. It’s a true story, y’all. I have to be careful with spicy food!

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#FireBurps #ItsAProblem #ScorchMarksOnMyKitchenTable #WorthIt #DooDash #CHSPlays #PlayHasNeverMatteredMore #MuseumAtHome #ChildrensMuseumsAtHome #MuseumFromHome

What a great day to experiment with shelters that can keep us dry!

Get out your at-home STEM kit and join Mr. Kevin in this Brown Bag STEM Challenge.

Don’t forget to share your results with us here on FB or on Instagram!

#chsplays #ChildrensMuseumsatHome #MuseumatHome #STEM #100WaystoPlay

Join CML’s Mr. Kevin for another great Brown Bag STEM challenge – the Tennis Ball Tower!

Can you create a tower strong enough to hold a ball on top? How tall can you make it? Gather some materials from home (with permission of your caregiver, of course!) and share with us your results. #100WaystoPlay #chsPlays #ChildrensMuseumsatHome #MuseumatHome