Imagination is at the centre of building many fundamental life skills from lingual skills to problem solving that can hugely improve your child’s development. We have teamed up with an alternative school in London to share 5 ways that you can help your child to develop their imagination.
Read Books Together
Books leave us guessing and wondering about what will happen to our favourite characters which promotes imaginative thinking. Also, as you get deeper into a story and pick up details of how characters and scenes look, the mind begins to put the pieces together to create mental images using the imagination. Overall, reading is an exercise that we can’t recommend enough!
Outdoor Play
The outdoors is great when wanting to refresh your creativity and imagination. There is so much to be inspired by as the mind just wanders. It’s also great for mental health which can have a huge impact on the brain’s ability to produce high quality ideas.
Arts and Crafts
When crafting, your child has free reign to experiment and create art that’s new and never see before. It promotes innovative thinking to think differently and outside of the box. Nurturing your child’s imagination in this way from a young age can foster creativity and strengthen core thinking skills such as forward thinking and planning.
Creative Writing
In a similar way, creative writing can help children to explore their creativity by allowing them to create their own narratives and plots. This can also help to strengthen their writing skills and handwriting.
Ask Questions
Stretch your child’s imagination by getting them to think beyond what they already know and formulate their own ideas and opinions. Asking questions like ‘why are clouds white?’ and ‘why does the sky go dark at night?’ can help them to do this.
Laura x