Switch on your creative mind

6th March 2018

By Alison L R Davies – Author, Columnist, Creative Practitioner

Creativity in teaching and learning, starts with you. Whilst you might want your early learners to engage their imagination, the first step is always your responsibility. But what happens when the ideas run dry, and you find yourself repeating the same tired tasks with a little less gusto than normal? Then it’s time to challenge yourself.

Take an activity that you love and do it differently. It doesn’t have to be rocket science. Start with something small and keep practicing.  For example, play a game of make believe with yourself!

Try this

Choose an object from the room and give it a new purpose. Pretend you’re an expert on the Antiques Roadshow, and it’s your job to explain what this artefact is, what’s it does and what it’s back story is. It may look like a piece of play dough any other day, but today it’s an object of greatness, the prize jewel of an Egyptian Queen, or a piece of pirate’s treasure.

Get carried away and enjoy the process, and as you look at it with fresh eyes you’ll see the potential.

Repeat this daily until you can look at any object in the room and think of a number of inventive uses and stories for it.

When you make this approach a part of your everyday thinking, you’ll see creative opportunities in everything you do and the ideas will flow. Routine practice becomes a thing of the past. More importantly play becomes something you do naturally and with a re-newed sense of fun and ingenuity.