By: Nika Tay Hui Min
Looking at your child play, you would have marveled at the little ingenious ways and imaginative world a child creates and plays in. As Einstein once said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world.” In other words, imagination creates possibilities that are endless.
Every child is born with imagination and creativity. For a child, there’s just something special about their imagination, something infinitely boundless in their world-view. The sky is the limit! And Art takes this a step further.
Through art, creativity and imagination can be further nurtured and developed. As a matter of fact, parents play an extremely vital role in fostering and pushing new frontiers in their child’s creativity. Here are some ways that you as a parent can explore to create a more conducive and holistic art environment at home.
Create an Art Corner
Children thrive when they have a space, materials and time to be creative! Hence, just by creating a small corner at home where your child can express spontaneously and be limitless in his/her imagination goes a long way. In fact, making an art ‘studio’ need not be expensive at all! Stock it up with simple drawing materials, recyclable items and a variety of craft materials in different shapes, sizes and textures, a corner sure to enliven your child’s artistic endeavors!
Some ideas and materials to fill up your art corner with:
- Crayons
- Color Pencils
- Fabrics such as felts, cloths, clothes
- Plastic Bottles
- Rolls from paper towels
- Shoe boxes
- Paper plates
- Egg cartons
- Washable paints
- Playdough or clay
Fun Tip: Be prepared for a mess! Use vinyl cloths or newspaper for an easier clean-up.
Allow freedom of expression
As parents, the tendency and urge to guide, draw for your child is strongly present. However, such assistance or directions may back-fire. It is important to allow your child to think and experiment freely for themselves with no pre-existing structures or notions of what their art should be like.
Doing so, taps into their infinite creativity to think outside-of-the-box, explore, discover, imagine and manifest their abstract ideas into visual images on paper. When a child finishes his/her piece, another key pointer is to not suggest any further additions, changes or criticisms.
What we are advocating here, and at Artpazionate, is creative self-expression, unique incorporation of one’s personality and the joy of creating an art piece. Not perfection or a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ artwork.
Explore your child’s creative process
With intentional navigation and exploration of art with your child, it encourages innovation and critical-thinking skills by exposing them to rich creative experiences.
Therefore, as a parent, it is so important to be open-minded in asking open-ended questions while exploring your child’s creative work. For instance, asking questions like Tell me more about your drawing? I see that you’ve used blue in your painting, why is that so?
Never make immediate assumptions about your child’s painting but let them do the honors of opening up and communicating/presenting their thoughts while thinking critically and evaluating through their own creative processes.
A parent’s role in nurturing and fostering a child’s imagination, creativity, self-esteem, critical-thinking amongst other developmental skills through art is absolutely paramount and cannot be understated. One of the most precious gifts a parent can give to their child is the power of empowerment! To empower them by gifting them the opportunity to explore the infinite possibilities of their untapped minds and unleash the innate creative potential already within them!
According to the International Child Art Foundation, “A child who is exposed to the arts acquires a special ability to think creatively, be original, discover, innovate, and create intellectual property—key attributes for individual success and social prosperity in the twenty-first century.”
Whether you are looking to simply nurture your child’s artistic talent or simply have fun, our diverse offerings of children art classes from drawing, painting to craft-making will be sure to discover their inner artist and enrich their world holistically.
At Artpazionate, we fully believe our art classes for your kids is another window of opportunity to tap into their boundless curiosities, stimulating their imagination and empowering them to see and create the world in a different light!