Nurturing Creative Thinkers

Since the death of Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Inc., much has been written about how to educate children to become future inventors and innovators. If you aren't familiar with his personal story, Jobs was a college dropout who spent 18 months dropping in on creative college classes. He stated that Mac computers were designed with such a wide variety of fonts because he once sat in on a calligraphy class. 

Does our current educational system encourage learning that will produce future inventors like Jobs? Or do children lose a vital part of their education when schools concentrate too heavily on tests and not enough on art, creativity and imagination?

Northampton Christian Preschool believes it is essential to nurture imagination skills in children. Our teachers prepare the classrooms to allow for long periods of pretend play, block construction and creative art activities. Crayons, markers, colored pencils, scissors, paper in different colors and textures, feathers, tape dispensers, and toilet paper tubes are some of the items routinely found in the Art Center.

The role of the teacher is to order the environment so that it is organized and inviting. Like this:

 

 These simple materials enabled this little Buzz Lightyear to create this:

If you look carefully you can see he's added "buzz wings" to his "buzz helmet." This young man worked all morning adding new details to his costume. The idea was his and the teachers provided encouragement and help when needed.


Due to the strong emphasis on standardized testing beginning in early elementary school, these experiences are often eliminated in preschools to concentrate on activities deemed more academic. We falsely believe that children who are just playing or using an entire roll of scotch tape on some silly project are wasting time they could be using to learn something important. But it is precisely during these times that children develop much-needed skills. Not only are they becoming proficient at using scissors and glue and pencils, but they are learning how to experiment and create and take chances. We want to encourage children to come up with an idea and act on it, even if it doesn't turn out the way they planned. As adults we know the best lessons are learned from mistakes and when we don't succeed we need to try again. We want to empower our children with this same sense of confidence.

But don't children need to know the alphabet and shapes and counting before entering Kindergarten? Absolutely, and those skills are taught in a developmentally appropriate fashion every day. But we also need to teach that joy comes from creating something all your own and there is great satisfaction in working hard to bring an idea to fruition.

I'll leave you with this link about a little boy who had a good idea that morphed into something completely unexpected. Thank you to Nora Davis who shared this gem with me. The joyful guy depicted in the video may be a future inventor. Northampton Christian Preschool hopes to raise a few of our own as well!



Cheryl Hoover works with future inventors each day at Northampton Christian Preschool.