How to Boost Your Child’s Imagination

Imagination is possibly one of the most important things for your child to develop. Other essential thinking skills such as problem-solving, and critical thinking rely upon it. It’s also best developed in childhood, so you will want to create plenty of opportunities for your child to explore their imagination and creative thinking. Aside from the obvious being arts and crafts, there are a whole range of learning activities that you can do to help your child. We’ve teamed up with an independent day school to share some of these tips below.

Ask Questions

Questions get us to think differently, consider new perspectives and create even better ideas. To help your child with their creative thinking and imagination, ask them questions that test their way of thinking and open their eyes to new ideas.

Unstructured Play

If you hadn’t already guessed, unstructured play is playtime without a clear structure or guidelines. Children are free to play as they wish and create their own games. This allows them to formulate and explore their own ideas and thus become more creative. Materials that do a good job of facilitating unstructured play include Lego and craft supplies as children have complete control over what they can create.

Upcycling Projects

While a form of crafting, upcycling encourages children to think outside of the box. Although their ideas are more limited, they must really apply themselves to see what they can make using the materials they have available. In addition to being a good creative thinking exercise, it also encourages children to be resourceful, produce less waste and protect the environment.

Pretend Play

There’s a skill to acting and it partly involves creativity. In pretend play children must create their own story and put on a show, so they will need to think carefully about their actions and what to do next. Whether you do this with puppets or as yourselves is entirely up to you. 

Broaden Their Horizons 

If you have the means, chase new experiences and broaden their horizons. It will open your child to new possibilities, and ideas and give them what it needs to grow.

Practise Creative Writing

If your child’s at the stage where they are able to read and write, creative writing is an excellent way for them to put their imagination to work. They could write their own stories, poems, or scripts even and take their ideas in whichever direction they feel fit.

This is a collaborative post.