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Home › Articles › Development › Imaginations Gone Wild

Imaginations Gone Wild

Fostering Your Toddler's Creative Side

By Laura Cone

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  • Move! Too much of our culture is centered around sedentary activities, even for small children. Television, videos and computer games are all passive activities that eat up precious amounts of time in a child's day. For any child under 5, the kinesthetic experience should predominate the day. Activities might include running, walking, playing, gardening, biking, swimming, hopping, skipping and dancing.

  • A little room to explore! Kids have a lot going on in their lives these days but children also need some time to themselves to explore without being directed. Set up some safe spaces in your home and let your child play a little bit on his own each day. It may only be five minutes, but they'll develop inner riches from these moments of self-reflection.

  • If you are doing an activity with your youngster, siblings or a group, it can be fun to introduce a moment for reflection. Ask your little one's opinion. Let her share with you – even in her limited language – what's on her mind.

    • 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 playng 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."


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