'Creativity is fundamental to successful learning' is the bold claim of the QCA's 'Curriculum Guidance for the Foundation Stage'. This means that practitioners need to encourage children to develop and communicate their own ideas. Children's desire to communicate these ideas can then motivate them to learn new ways of doing things.
I was recently outside with a child who was transfixed by the tiny patterns of snowflakes dropping on to a climbing frame. She was then highly motivated to be taught how to select and use the smallest brush size on a computer drawing programme, so she could represent the patterns.
To support children's creative development, it is important to emphasise the process more than the product. It is sometimes tempting to want a small group of children to produce something nice to put on the walls for a display. The children might be encouraged to look closely at a sunflower or shown a picture that an adult has done, and then given only yellow and black paint for their own pictures. The message being given to the children is very clear - they are expected to come up with the same kind of product, with perhaps a few individual differences. But if we are trying to recognise children's creativity, we need to tune into what they are doing, rather than what we would like the result to be.
Children's creative development is enhanced when they have rich first-hand experiences, whether it is taking the lift to the top of a shopping centre, studying the grid patterns of the drains or going to the Tate Modern and seeing the huge sculptures.
Children also need to have access to high-quality materials to give them good first-hand experiences. In other words, a small number of good paintbrushes of different shapes and sizes will give children much more direct experience of how paint goes on to paper than a huge jumbled up pot of old and worn brushes. A few music-shop instruments that make rich and beautiful sounds will similarly be more useful to children than a lot of plastic tambourines and shakers.
Another important part of organising resources is to consider time and space. If children are going to develop dynamic dances to music, they will need plenty of space in which to do this. Similarly, small tables crowded with chairs can make it difficult for children to have enough space to paint or build their models.
The Foundation Stage also states that children should have access to 'resources from a variety of cultures to stimulate different ways of thinking'. Children need time to explore resources if they are unfamiliar with them and they also need first-hand experiences. In other words, allowing children to experiment with using Indian tabla is important, but it is also important for them to see how a skilled musician uses them. Then they can incorporate some of the techniques the musician uses into their play and experimentation.
All children are creative. Each child's drawing of a person is unique, yet children aged three around the world draw people in remarkably similar ways. This suggests development takes the lead, rather than teaching. As children get older, they become more aware of their culture and how to create places for themselves in it. They need to experience other people's creations, in the forms of music, painting and dance, to feed and extend their own thinking. Crucially, children also need practitioners who will respond to their creations with interest and respect. NW