The Joy of a Child's Creativity and Imagination

By Carol Woolum Roberts

What an incredible experience Paul and I are experiencing this week with four delightful 6-9 year-old campers in our Grow Your Creativity Camp.  We are truly seeing the joy of a child’s creativity and imagination.

Each day we are focusing on one of the things God created.  Day one we focused on The Land.  Tuesday was Space.  Wednesday was The Ocean.  Thursday we will focus on The Animals.  And Friday, we will look at all of Creation.

Each day I am amazed at these children’s creativity and imagination.  I am amazed at their compassion for one another, and helpful attitude.

I am amazed at their musical ability, their ability to draw and paint, the way they can become characters when we do our theater games, and their ability to tell stories.

“Creativity is a central source of meaning in our lives…most of the things that are interesting, important, and human are the results of creativity…when we are involved in it, we feel that we are living more fully than during the rest of life”

--Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

We have four campers this week.  We had briefly met two of them and had not met two of them.  We were starting with a clean slate.,

Joe, who is going into first grade this coming school year, was the last of four campers to come up with the name of a land.  We had already used Island, Desert, Mountain and Farm.  To our delight, his answer was, “The African Savannah!!”  What a precious moment in creative thinking and a great setting for the game we were playing.

Vito is a really good artist, who likes to take his time getting things just right.  On Wednesday he created a Fire Shark and, on his own, created what this animal looked like.

Reese goes beyond our ideas for the art projects by taking different textures to add to her space rocks, by using the flowers and plants she collected to add patterns to the rocks she painted.

Thayer has such a good heart, and has so much, (as he likes to say, drawing the word out)…I—M—A—G—I—N—A—T—I—O—N!!  He painted a beautiful ocean scene and has also enjoyed learning how to play the ukulele, something he has wanted to try for a while.

Pokemon seems to be a common interest in our campers, and today they created their own song called “I Love Pokemon”, and marched around the room using rhythm instruments to keep the beat while Paul played the ukulele.

They also love to put costumes on and use props to tell stories.  Today, since it was an ocean theme, they each chose to put something on their head and they each held something in their hand, and we all told a story about why they brought these items on the submarine.

I look forward to what the next two days bring as these campers continue to show me how much creativity, imagination and talent they have.  Often they just need to be provided the place and time to create, and they can do it.

As we talk to people in our creative communities, we often refer to the child artist that needs to be pampered and allowed to have fun.  This whole week is an example of how much can be produced when you allow children to have fun and give them the freedom to be creative.

“Creativeness often consists of merely turning up what is already there.”

--Bernice Fitz-Gibbon

That is what we are doing this week with our campers.  We are just helping them turn up what is already there.

Appeal to your inner artist child, and give your artist time to play, to have fun, and to get lost in… I—M—A—G—I—N—A—T—I—O—N!!

_______________________________________________________________

When was the last time you gave yourself permission to have some fun, and do something with your Imagination?  If it has been a while, I encourage you to take some time this week, have a Creative Rendezvous, and explore your imagination.

To leave a comment on our blog, you can use Disqus.  It is easy to sign up.  You can use Google, Facebook, Twitter or your email.  There is no cost.  Just put in your name and email address and create a password.  Then confirm your account with the email they send you.  Then you can use Disqus to comment on the blog.  We would love to hear your thoughts.