The ability to create has one of the highest values in our society. Having the room and opportunity to be creative can be one of lifes most satisfying experiences. Children are born to be creative and ingenious. Unfortunately, as they grow, more and more rules are imposed on them, and some students gradually loose their creative edge, or they channel their creativity in to non-learning activities.

When you know how to nurture your childs creativity, their learning will flourish. One of my daughters doesnt enjoy math as much as other subjects, but she enjoys making up stories. So I began to encourage her to make up stories that involve numbers. She started to write word problem. I would then ask her if the problem in her story made sense. In order to prove that her problem made sense, shed have to solve the problem herself.

She happily and willingly went through the routine of adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing to solve her word problem.

This same daughter is not so confident in her ability to draw, but she likes to write stories. So I encouraged her to illustrate the characters in her stories, which gave her ample opportunities to practice her drawing skills. She now illustrates many of the characters she creates and her drawing skills have improved drastically.

My older daughter is not as interested in current affairs as Id like her to be. However, she loves to design her newspapers. I use her excitement for making newspaper to introduce her to whats happening in our world today. For both national and world news, I invite her to read news from the internet with me and explain and discuss whats happening. She has become more and more interested in current events and she is writing news items in her newspaper to reflect what she has read online with me.

When your child expresses enthusiasm in creating a small item like a bookmark, making a little purse with quilt patches, making up some quiz kit, or creating a workbook for their younger siblings, please encourage, appreciate and praise their creativity.

I have always encouraged my children to use their creativity to learn new things, to reflect what they have acquired, and to discover and explore new territory in this vast sea of knowledge.

When your childs creativity is nurtured and encouraged, they associate the positive and powerful experience of learning with being creative, and it will benefit them for rest of their lives.