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Here are some fun ways you can encourage creativity in your kiddo:
Have craft supplies available
My boys almost always have craft supplies available. This doesn’t mean they get free reign of any and all craft supplies we have -that stresses me out just thinking about it!
But, I keep out a certain amount of supplies that they can do whatever they want with, including scissors, glue, construction paper, and crayons and colored pencils. They often come up with really interesting things to create and play with.
I put together a list of our favorite craft supplies to buy from Amazon here.
Open ended toys
Giving your kids open-ended toys is a great way to encourage creativity and imagination. Legos are my particular favorite open-ended toy (even as an adult!). My favorite memories growing up are building elaborate Lego cities and spaceships with my brother.
Legos are so versatile and fun. We really enjoy big Lego sets like these
If you have kids that really love building with Legos, I’d highly recommend a book like The Lego Ideas Book
Limit the Toys
Having a dozen (or more!) open ended toys available doesn’t do much good if it just overwhelms your kiddo. Since our kids were really little, we intentionally limited the number of toys they have available to play with. At first, it was out of necessity. We’ve lived in some tiny spaces! But even when we moved into a bigger space, we’ve tried to keep the toys from taking over.
Give Them Opportunities to Explore
Part of encouraging creativity in kids is just letting them explore the world around them. Be willing to slow down and let them examine things. Step back and let them figure things out on their own. From finding neat things on walks outside to letting them take apart old electronics, there’s a whole bunch of amazing things that can inspire kids to think and learn.
For us, part of this means letting our boys use technology for creative things. They love to build things in Minecraft. And while back, I introduced our kids to a 3-D modeling program called TinkerCad. It’s a very basic 3-D program, and is a great place to start learning 3-D modeling. They had so much fun exploring how it worked.
Being Willing to Create with Them
For those of you who are creative, it might be easy to sit along side your kids and do crafts. You might love digging up fun projects to do on Pinterest.
But, there are some who get stressed out at the idea of even doing crafts. You envision glitter everywhere, and the big stress of a mess.
Crafts don’t have to be elaborate. Being creative with your kids doesn’t have to mean 20 different supplies and complex crafts. Sometimes just sitting down and doing a watercolor picture with them would brighten their day. Maybe you cut out some random shapes out of construction paper and glue it down to make a picture. Maybe you just scribble with crayon. Maybe you just print out a simple printable craft and do that for 10 minutes.
If you’re looking for easy printable crafts, check out my printable craft pack in my Etsy shop. It’s full of 25 easy crafts you can do with your kiddo.
I’m a huge fan of Kumon books. I can’t tell you how much my boys loved this Kumon Book Of Easy Crafts
Being creative doesn’t have to be elaborate. And it doesn’t have to be stressful. Doodling on some silly pages like this can be all it takes to be creative with your kids.
So don’t stress. Enjoy yourself a little. Glue can get scrubbed off. Crayon can be wiped off the walls (trust me…I’ve done it!). Scraps can be swept or vacuumed. Encourage your kids to explore and be creative, and have some fun doing the same yourself.
Looking for easy, printable crafts to do with your kiddos? Check out my printable craft pack. It has 25 awesome print-n-go crafts and activities for hours of entertainment.
