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Home › Articles › Your Toddlers › Imaginations Gone Wild

Imaginations Gone Wild

Fostering Your Toddler's Creative Side

By Laura Cone

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Making Music
It does not require a great deal of money to enrich your child's world of imagination. Charlene A. Ulichny of Elm Grove, Wis., the music education coordinator for Cardinal Stritch University in Wisconsin, suggests looking in your kitchen for percussion instruments for toddlers, as music may light their imagination fires.

"Pots and pan lids make great symbols," says Ulichny. "The cardboard oatmeal can and plastic lid makes a good drum. It's a lot of stuff you find around the house."

Ulichny started encouraging imagination in her own child by playing classical music while she was pregnant. "[My daughter] listens to my husband play woodwind instruments and she listens to my stepson, Alex, play the cello," she says. "I sing to her all the time, and later she will probably make up her own songs."

Ulichny says she plans to limit the amount of time her daughter watches television. "I think being in that creative environment will foster her imagination," she says. "By not having the television and computer games toddlers become very creative. I think it's also important to have that interaction with parents. Every child has a passion. Once you discover that, it can foster their imagination."

Playing Pretend

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