Imagination in Early Childhood
Famous operas, musicals, compositions, paintings, sculptures, architectural works, magnificent and uninhibited inventions, books that have been read for centuries, who are still the people who made a name for themselves with respect even after their death, and who created these works, what are their common features? they are obviously people with high imagination, creativity and genius.
Don’t you want your child to be a Picasso, Mozart, Einstein or Da Vinci? Do you want to create brand new products, create great works, express your ideas freely, find creative and effective solutions to problems, most importantly enjoy life and be happy? I guess every parent would want that. If you want to have children like this, you need to raise children with imagination.
What are the dreams of early childhood children?
Every child is born with imagination. They reflect their dreams to their games the most and especially children in early childhood are experts in dreaming and creating a different world of their own.
Children in this period can talk with their toys or any object as if they were alive, they could have imaginary friends, they could tell an event by believing as if it were real. They can use colors differently from nature in their paintings. For example, we cannot say to a child who paints clouds pink, “No, you cannot paint clouds pink.. Because in his dream world, maybe the clouds are pink …
Here are a few suggestions to support your child’s imagination:
• Provide opportunities for children to solve problems with their own solutions.
• We should make them feel that we respect their ideas by supporting their different ideas instead of instilling them.
• Instead of structured toys, we need to make sure that they spend time with materials that can produce a new product.
• Feelings and thoughts of painting, dancing, animation, etc. We must make them express in ways.
• We need to increase their ability to observe and discover by spending time in nature.
• We should ask your child open-ended, imaginative questions and give them feedback that will make them feel good, no matter what their answers.
• We may ask him to complete the story, the song, and the picture.
We must remember that the imagination is unlimited.
Do we create an appropriate environment to support children’s imagination?
Our priority should be to create a suitable environment to develop children’s imagination. Maalefes has structured some nursery, school, classroom, park and playgrounds and limits children. Research shows that children’s imagination gradually decreases and I think that environmental factors are the biggest factor.
