Generally, children are creative through their own structure. Sometimes, however, their creativity can be inhibited by too authoritative or counter-hyperactive behavior of the adults they come into contact with.
Creativity is an essential coordinate of personality. Intelligence, various special skills, some motivational and character traits are the main factors of creativity and can be seen in particular by how the child is confronted with new situations.
The orientation towards personal, independent, self-directed approach is the first step towards creative behavior, because in this way the child is obliged to observe, to grasp the problem, to make hypotheses, to compare, to make decisions, to communicate, etc.
Another important factor in the development of creativity is the game. Through the game, children develop a lot of thinking and language, while creating different situations (real or imaginary), life scenarios, borrowing and playing different roles depending on the newly created context, depending on the state of mind in which they are.
The development of children's creativity and especially the manifestation of this creativity is correlated with the development of other cognitive processes, especially thinking and attention.
There will, therefore, be some particularities of the development of creativity depending on the age of the child or adolescent.
Children between 3 and 6 years old
From 3-6 years, hearing is best developed, the child easily identifying any sound or noise and reporting them correctly at source. Preschooler learns to sing and can reproduce simple melodic lines. Generally, he likes to play a lot and this stage is favorable to the development of musical hearing. The word can also act on the reshaping of representations.
For example, if children were suggested to draw an animal, and at the same time something was told about that animal's life, the resulting image was greatly improved, and if epithets were used in the animal's description, it was rendered more expressively .
This particularity, among others, is also expressed in the free drawings of preschoolers characterized by the following:
- does not organize the elements of the drawing on a given theme, and there may appear others that have nothing to do with what he intended to do,
- what drawings are placed next to each other on a horizontal line, and there are situations in which the child draws the elements of a structure separately (the hat placed far above the head)
- does not respect proportions so people can be as big or big as houses,
- they do not respect the perspective, they are all on the same plane.
Children between 7 and 9 years old
In the 7-9 years, there are some transformations in the perception and thinking, which will also be seen in the creative plan. Thus, if a preschool child is still completely open to all that is happening around him and impregnated by imitation, the expression of a 7-year-old child is sensitively different.
The mouth is closed, between the inner world and the outer world there is now a wall, a threshold between the child's inner space and the surrounding world. His personal world is a closed area, surrounded by walls, where he feels at home, a sort of "base of operations" from where he goes into recognition in the world and where he solves the shocks he is producing.
In the first years of the second seven-year period, life in "thought-images" is very intense; the images assemble to form a closed world that will not be questioned, expressed only at puberty.
The world of childhood is a strange "very real unrealism." All the elements that came from the outside, incorporated in the previous stage, find here a place, but they are ranked, combined and especially evaluated in a new age-specific way.
Inner activity takes place through the formation of images, representations. These images are not yet accurate; they are changeable, mobile and active as actors in a play.
Everything could give rise to a poetic sensibility, which allows a deeper experience than that which can be achieved through ordinary reason. The child can be encouraged to write, compose poems, songs, or short stories.
Or, for example, one can also say that after learning history / geography to draw the events or landscapes that impressed him more.
This will avoid the reproduction of the seen and heard by heart, and a connection is made between the respective subject matter of education and the soul.
Thus the creative forces of sentiment, thought, and will are intertwined. As an adult, she will be able to do more than meet the points of view she is proposing.
Children between 9 and 12 years old
From 9 to 12 years, an important affective transformation takes place. It seems that there has been a complete transformation of her affective life as if the world of imagery outside the child had been lost, as if, suddenly seeing its worst and darkest side, felt the outside world as a hostile environment.
The long period of free imagination, which had enveloped him with so much heat, is really about to end. Feeling becomes more objective; at first in the beginning, then more and more often, the child makes the experience of his loneliness.
The contrast between me and the world, between the inside and the outside, becomes a reality of life, which is why the creations of the child can bear a certain depressing impression.
It is good to be encouraged to keep a diary, to arrange a small garden, to create different patterns on cardboard, cloth or glass, coloring or using leaves, stones, stickers ... etc. In this way, the note of sadness will be replaced by the beautiful, colorful exposition, will be attenuated by the joy of creation. It is necessary to do something now and "with the hands", physically, not to remain only in the plane of imagination or feelings.
Children over 13 years of age
After the age of 13, the artistic element becomes more important than the story telling and the effusion of feelings. It is possible to conceive, short poems, a rhythmic prose and essays describing nature, vague religious feelings and loved ones / loved ones in the distance.
Creativity development now embraces many aspects, in many ways, including those that respect career, personal development.
Regardless of age, leave him free, involve him in solving problems, but also play with him, encourage him to draw, sing, write poems or ... Romanes. Children have these native impulses, but sometimes they have no one to show them, because we adults have become ... very busy.