Collaborate for Creativity: Tips to Encourage Kids to Work Together
Creativity is an essential skill that children can develop throughout their lives. A study by the University of Plymouth found that creativity lies in not only creativity-based skills but also intellectual expertise and intrinsic motivation. This lines up with the study’s results: older children are more creative than younger children, especially when placed in group settings. […]
Five Easy Ways to Ignite the Love of Learning
We are all born very curious—we need it for our survival. Our curiosity leads us to explore the world around us and make sense of it. This curiosity helps us learn what might be dangerous and what brings us joy. Soon after we learn how to talk, we start bombarding our parents and carers with […]
Your Final Creativity Mission: Recolor Your World
Header image created by Iris Lawson, Age 12 We have one final family-fun creative activity for you! In case you missed our first five missions, you can access them here: “Create Your Own Family Camp,” “Family Game Night With a Creative Twist,” “A Colorful Scavenger Hunt in Nature,” “Summer of Surprises,” and Going Beyond Your […]
A Colorful Scavenger Hunt in Nature
Activity Three: A Scavenger Hunt in Nature Our third activity centers on the skill, Visualize it Richly and Colorfully. This skill is all about identifying vivid, rich, and colorful imagery in your surroundings. It is essential to be able to use vivid, rich imagery to convey ideas in any domain- whether you’re a scientist aiming […]
Creativity Blooms Best in Summer
By the time summer rolls around, students are done learning and want nothing more than to spend the next three months doing as little learning as possible. However, when it comes to creativity, summer is actually the best time to be learning. After all, it’s the most sunny of the seasons, and sunnier days support […]
Family Game Night With A Creative Twist
The first mission “Create Your Own Family Camp”, was released last week, and today we are releasing the second mission: “Family Game Night”. Games are a wonderful way to bring people together. There is a joy to be found in playing long-standing family favorites, and also in discovering completely new games. But what if you […]
Revisit, Repurpose, Reinvent: Reenergize Your Creative Practice
Does your classroom need a creative reboot? Teachers, are you looking for ways to energize your own creative capacities? Parents, have you considered sharing creativity with your children? Find new creative energy as you unlock possibilities using everyday objects. By revisiting an ordinary object and expanding its possibilities with your imagination, you open opportunity spaces […]
Let’s play! Ideas to Engage your Children in Creative Play
Play energizes us and enlivens us. It eases our burdens. It renews our natural sense of optimism and opens us up to new possibilities. – Stuart Brown, MD The following are excerpts from the book, My Sandwich is a Spaceship: Creative Thinking Activities for Parents with Young Children. You can learn more about the book […]
Intentional Creative Thinking at Home: Lessons from a Visual Arts Teacher
As indicated in the 2018 Future of Jobs Report, creativity continues to be a desirable skill that is emerging as necessary in the workforce worldwide. Creative thinking, defined as intentionally using our minds to solve complex problems with new solutions, is at the heart of creativity. There are identifiable and teachable creative thinking skills that […]
Animal Crossing: The “New Horizon” in Distance Learning
What is Animal Crossing? Animal Crossing is a social simulation video game series developed by Nintendo and created by Katsuya Eguchi and Hisashi Nogami. This is an open map type game that doesn’t have an end goal. It is designed for continuous play; there is no way to “win” or “complete” it. You are a […]
Let’s Play!
A List of Children’s Books to Spark Creativity
When my children were young, I became enamored with children’s books. In just five minutes, I could have a cuddle with my little one as we journeyed through a delightful story full of fun and visually captivating characters. I would sneak off to garage sales on the weekends, where I could easily find used children’s […]
Creating Space
Click here for tickets for Wednesday, December 9th from 5-6:30pm EST Click here for tickets for Saturday, December 12th from 9-10:30am EST Dr. Cyndi Burnett My Bio Dr. Cyndi Burnett is the Director of Possibilities for Creativity and Education. Like her creativity-focused curriculum for students and teachers, Cyndi embraces the creative lifestyle that she […]
Creating Space When You Don’t Have Space
Take me someplace where we can be silent together. – Elizabeth Gilbert, The Signature of All Things While time seems to have multiplied as the pandemic rages on, for many, space at home has vanished. Prior to the pandemic, my husband traveled a lot for work. Now we are together all the time, attempting to […]
Parenting During a Pandemic Webinar
Are you a parent who is juggling work, child care, and the possibility of online schooling for your children, in a world where we cannot predict what lies ahead?
No Punishment
Part three of our Creative Parenting Series. Read the full series – links within article.
Collaborative Parenting
This blog is part two of our Creative Parenting Series. To read part one, click this link: Show, Don’t Tell. Ismet: When I was 10 years old, I started writing about parenting. I felt that there was plenty of room for improvement in how I was being raised. I wanted to make sure that when I […]
Show, don’t tell
Ismet: When I was 10 years old, I started writing about parenting. I felt that there was plenty of room for improvement in how I was being raised. I wanted to make sure that when I was a parent, I wouldn’t repeat the mistakes my own parents made. When I became a parent, I discovered […]
Call To Action! What Worked for You?
We recognize that the upcoming academic year will be filled with both new opportunities and perplexing challenges for both educators and parents. At Creativity and Education, where we are educators, parents, and creativity experts, we want to help. Throughout this pandemic we have all been trying different things – some of them have been heroic […]
The Cool Guy Game: Boredom, Free Play, and Creativity
My 6- and 8-year-olds play this game called “The Cool Guy Game.” They play All. The. Time. And it’s not in the way that many kids obsessively play with new toys and then quickly forget about them. They’ve been playing this game for years. Sometimes they play for hours at a time, multiple days per […]