Impact of Creativity

Impact of Creativity on Children

What is Creativity?
Creativity can be defined as the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations and so on. It can be characterised by originality, progressiveness, and imagination.

“Creative exercises are designed to help you get absorbed in the process of creating without worrying about the end product. Children do this naturally.”
(http://www.creativity-portal.com/bc/other/children.teach.creativity.html)

Why is it Important?
One of the most important concepts of creativity is self-expression. This allows the children to express their feelings and ideas about and towards the world around them. It is one of the many ways they can communicate their needs to others as it reflects their feelings, emotions and imaginations.
Creative activities allow children to grow intellectually, socially, physically, and mentally and therefore plays an essential role in child development, especially as it comes across all the different areas of development.

What is the difference between formal and informal activity?
Creative play or activity can either be formal or informal. Formal activities involve children interacting with an adult, who usually leads the activity. These types of activities are structured or planned and are observed and recorded as they usually have an objective or aims. For example, a teacher led activity would be an adult encouraging a child to stack building blocks to form a tower. Their performance would have been observed and recorded for that particular activity.
Informal activities, on the other hand, are spontaneous. These activities are led by the child as they play freely in what they perceive as natural to them. They don’t have any objectives and are observed as they occur. An example of this would be if a child hears music and starts dancing or clapping their hands, an adult would then...