Making Creativity Part of Every Day
Make creativity a part of every day in your classroom. Try some of these ideas to get things rolling:
• Read stories.
• Laugh together.
• Use voices for the characters in the books you read out loud.
• Join in the tea parties in the housekeeping corner during imaginative play.
• Modify the housekeeping/dress-up corner into the home of the three bears, with threes of everything from chairs, to bowls, to beds. Transform that same housekeeping corner into a rocket ship or a veterinarian's office.
• Build towers and bridges with wooden blocks. Add cardboard tubes or scraps to change the possibilities.
• Invite puppets to talk with children and help them learn new songs and finger plays.
• Change the classroom furniture arrangement to encourage spaces with new purposes and functions.
• Have a picnic-style snack on the floor instead of at the usual table.
• Move books into a private reading corner made from an appliance box.
• Use common everyday objects for new uses. For example, paint with a rubber ball dipped in paint, change a book into a talking puppet, or turn a table over and make it a boat.