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

Dragon Tales

We all have moments of weakness. No matter how creatively motivated we might be there are times where we just don't have the energy to engage our kids in creative pursuits and we turn to the plug-in drug to help us through. And fair enough too. But maybe we can turn our moments of weakness into triumphs of creativity.

I am amazed at the creativity to which our kids have access. It is truly inspiring stuff. So why not use it as inspiration?
Instead of letting our kids consume movies passively, why not engage them in consuming actively?

The last movie I watched with my kids was about dragons. So afterward I set them a challenge to create the most awesome dragon they could. Draw it. Act it out. Make one out of cardboard. Just show me a dragon.

Activity:  Turn something you feel guilty about doing into a creative inspiration

Image via pinterest

What's in a box?

My very good friend Dahlas, from Brisbane, emailed me through some photos this week of her kids playing with the cardboard box that their new washing machine came in. Will and Eddie made a cubby with windows and decorated it inside and out with stickers and drawings. It went from hours to weeks of fun.

This story from Dahlas has inspired this weeks activity. Kids love making things out of an empty cardboard box. The box provides a way for endless imagination and fun, it is an open canvas.

Activity: Collect old cardboard boxes of all shapes and sizes. Hand them over to the kids with some masking tape and instructions to make anything they like.

First image via Dahlas from Brisbane

Second image via iKatbag

Create a 'fun box'

Creativity is a funny thing. Sometimes it needs all kinds of accoutrements to get the juices flowing, and sometimes it is the absence of creative aids that releases kid's potential.

Truth be said, I am a bit of a fan of mixing it up. So sometimes my kids and I go overboard, organizing things like our own master chef challenges, but sometimes it's stimulus cold turkey and we have to create games out of nothing.

A friend of mine goes half way, she gets regular household items and puts them in a box for her kids - things like spoons, colanders and chess pieces - she leaves them with her kids for a week then changes what is in there. Sure as eggs is eggs she always finds her kids have used the items to make up a game or scenario she could never have anticipated. Oddly her kids love it.

Activity: Have a 'fun box' with unexpected items in it. Leave it for a week and see what happens.

Image via Rotherham Children's Project

Magical Spaces

I remember being in year 4, home from school recovering from the chicken pox and bored out of my brains. So I set about turning the family living room into my own little palace. I pulled as many sheets and blankets out of the linen cupboard as I could muster. I grabbed all the pillows from my bed, the pegs from the washing basket, the deck chairs and clothes horse from the laundry and then created the most magnificent castle. The living room was covered from wall to wall with a roof of sheets and blankets, and underneath this lay a maze of tunnels created with the furniture, chairs and clothes horse, all held together by pegs! I made a flag for the highest point of the roof and allocated different hidey-holes for my beloved teddy bears. I was in heaven. And was entertained for hours, playing games in my palace.

Until Dad came home and tried to open the living room door, only to discover that it was jammed shut by a cluster of furniture and linen (my palace wall). I was in lots of trouble for making such a mess, and so my imaginary world quickly disappeared into thin air.

Many studies now conclude that to foster creative minds in children they need to be given the space to be imaginative, and unfortunately sometimes this means making mess.

Activity: Create a space in your home that is allowed to get messy. Put lots of craft material, paper, crayons, dress up clothes in the space and give your children time to be imaginative.

Read: The Importance of Creativity

Image via pinterest

Capture their stories

Kids are endlessly interested in their own stories. But all too often we forget the things they said and the things they used to do. We are so busy with the day to day we lose their stories and the joy they get from hearing them.

I remember my daughter Sasha was in tears one day because her sister Chloe stole her imaginary duck. She was devastated. So much so I called Chloe down to give it back. She turned up with a dr evil face stroking the duck that wasn't there. I love telling them the tale as much as they enjoy hearing it.

Activity: So when your kids do something cute, don't trust the moment to your memory; write it down, take a diary note, take a picture, record a voice memo - do it on your phone - then make a point of telling them their own stories.

Image via pinterest

Wear what you like Wednesday

The creative spirit is a delicate thing. It can easily be stifled and wounded. There are things we do (often without even realising it) that can crush the creative spirit we are trying to nurture in our kids. Having too much structure all the time does not allow for the creative process to happen naturally. Sometimes it is just easier and faster to show a child exactly how to do something, or to just do it for them. This doesn’t give them any opportunity for creative exploration.

Activity idea:  Once a week let your kids choose what they would like to wear. 

Image via houseoflovelock

My favourite little surprises

Kids love surprises; giving surprises, receiving surprises and being there when someone gets surprised. So sprinkling a few creative ideas into the minutiae of their daily lives pays back a hundred-fold for the effort that is required.

Some of my favourite little surprises are also the simplest:

• Draw on their lunch-bags
• Leave a little love note under their pillows
• Add a little surprise to a meal (I always served ice-cream with a little plastic penguin on it)
• Text each other when you are in the same room, just for fun

Your children are unlikely to remember all the things practical and useful things you do for them every day because it’s all so expected; but they will remember the things that made their lives feel special.

Activity: Leave a surprise for them tonight and see what happens.

Image via www.katiaslunch.com