Draw your conversations

Have you ever played Pictionary, you know that game where you have to communicate a word with your team mate through drawings? Well, it is a personal favourite of mine. Every summer holidays I would badger my family to play with me. I loved it, and it turns out that communicating through drawings is a brilliant way to nurture your children's ability to express themselves. You don't, however, need the board game. All you need is some paper, all sorts of drawing materials and a little bit of imagination.

Activity: Take a large sheet of paper or other material to draw on, some pencils, markers, crayons or chalk and have a “conversation” with your child. The catch: You can’t talk or write words, you have to draw what you want to say. This might even turn into an ongoing visual dialogue or a pictorial story lasting several days. Ask everyone in the family to join in.

Image via pinterest

Creative bodies

My kids are not that interested in exercise. Matter of fact, I'm not that into it myself. So much exercise is boring, repetitive, hard work. Clearly it doesn't have to be that way. Being a bit creative with exercise makes it endless fun rather than endless pain.

To be honest, play is my favourite kind of creativity - I love the crazy games and challenges my kids will set me if I take the time to play at exercise with them.  The walk that turns into a fantasy adventure is my favourite. We ambush each other, we take each other prisoner, we attack forts and trap dangerous beasts. It's all in the mind, but while we are at it we exercise our heads off.

Activity: Take a crazy, themed adventure walk in the bush somewhere.

Image via ABAD Hotels

Gardening Fun

Having fun in the garden goes beyond digging in the ground. I remember getting home from school on many an occasion to find my mum up to her armpits in soil and lawn clippings. She loved, and still does spending time creating in her garden. To encourage me to get involved in the garden, mum made my own little corner where I could plant whatever my heart desired. I personalised this little patch, planted the strangest combinations of flowers, made a painted flag out of an old white sheet to brand my little patch. 'Emma’s Garden' – not the most original of names I confess. Regardless, it was hours of fun for me, and an opportunity to get really imaginative.

Activity: Create a small area in your garden purely for your kids to decorate and plan. 

Image via Pinterest

A more creative happy birthday

Kids birthday parties. We have to do them. And boy do they cost.

Image via Rockscissorpaper

Dance like no one is watching

I still have amazing memories of ballet class. At the end of the lesson our teacher would play a piece of beautiful music. We would leap and dance around, dance anyway we wanted. Anything was possible.

Along with improving children's physical and psychological wellbeing, creative dance for small children approaches many ways of learning. Dance uses rhythm, honing children's aural skills, and giving them a chance to approach conceptual ideas through their bodies. 

Activity idea: Turn the music up loud and dance like no one's watching.

Image via Flickr

Eat creatively

Creativity. It can be an activity for a rainy day or it can be a way of life. 

If you are serious about creativity and the richness it can bring, then bring creativity to every decision, including dinner. 
For me, creativity requires an openness to different. Different ideas, different experiences, different combinations, and yes, different meals.
Meal times provide endless opportunities for experimentation and exploration. Sadly most households rotate around no more than five core dishes. Hardly the foundations of an intrepid culinary explorer...

You don't have to be a master chef, you don't have to cook, you just have to expose kids to variety and to the unexpected. The more they do it, the more they crave it, and the more you have created an open minded, inquisitive little human.

Activity: add a different, new, interesting food to try every week. They don't have to eat it.  But they have to try.

Image via Open Ideo

India and her teddy fly through the sky

The very cute India and her teddy were so inspired by our 'What's in a box' blog from a few weeks ago that they decided to create their very own aeroplane from a cardboard box at home. India I can just imagine you up in the sky flying around with ted!

Special thanks to mum Sophie for sharing.

xx

Spy training

If you spend a few minutes watching your kids play, you'll be reminded that they live in a far more extraordinary world than the rest of us. As I get home from work and race from one chore to the next, I think to myself how amazing it would be to have time to just play.

Research now reveals that there is a link between pretend play and the ability to get along socially in the world. So perhaps we should all drop everything, every now and then, and just play. Maybe the world would be a happier place. Read about The Power of Pretending.

Activity: Set up a crepe paper spy training course in the hallway and watch your kids get into spy character.

Image via Chicken Babies.

Dress Up An Afternoon

It's easy enough to have dress ups for the kids. Ballerina outfits, spiderman outfits, a bit of both. It keeps them going, but does it tap their creativity? I'm not sure. Maybe it does, but I have to tell you that I don't get much out of it.

If, like me, you'd rather not relive Angelina ballerina or have webs fired at you over and over, then give them access to the best dress ups of all. Yours. Your wardrobe is a treasure trove for your kids.

Watching my kids do impersonations of me or my friends, pretending to be adults, has not only been funny it has also been quite insightful. Hear them talk to each other the way you do it, or how you respond to a crisis - it's generally very accurate and sometimes unnerving.

Keep the good stuff to one side and watch your kids go crazy with being you, and maybe return the favor by pretending to be them. It's a good lesson all round, the creative way.

Activity: Give your kids access to some of your old clothes and watch them have fun at playtime!

Image via This Mama Makes Stuff

Superhero For A Day

I am pretty sure that as a child most of us have at one point believed we were some kind of superhero. Well, at least I did.

I remember one afternoon putting on an old blanket from the attic, convincing everyone around me it was the invisible cape, and then jumping off pavements as though I was leaping off buildings.

Make-believe is more than child's play. According to psychologist Susan Linn, it is crucial to the development of creativity, empathy, learning and problem solving. Sadly though, due to the recent developments in technology, it is being squeezed out of the lives of many children. In her book, The Case for Make Believe: Saving Play in a Commercialized World, Linn says parents must limit their children's screen time and instead give them simple tools that encourage creative play. Like children of the past.

Activity: Add a touch of "Superhero" to your kid’s everyday clothing and watch their world transform. 

Image via Etsy