Creativity and Imagination in Infants and Toddlers

Children are born with a natural drive to make sense of the world. Right from birth, the infant’s brain is making connections about how things work, cause and effect as well as developing ways to influence their world. It is the role of the important adults in their lives to help foster and facilitate this drive. Creativity and imagination as well as intellectual development are enhanced when, right from birth, parents make eye contact, smile, talk to, sing to, and rock their babies. Infants feel safe when their cues for attention and needs are met in a timely, loving way. When infants have their basic physical and emotional needs met, they will be emotionally secure enough to wonder and make sense of all the vast new experiences they encounter every day.

Child development great, Jean Piaget says that infants (from 0 to around 2 yrs.) are in the Sensorimotor stage of development. During this stage, infants learn through use of their senses and by freedom of movement. Understanding this should help guide parents and care givers to expose young children to materials and activities that tickle their senses and allow them to explore the environment.

At around 3 yrs of age, children are in what Piaget called the Preoperational stage, which continues until around age 7. During this time most children have a good command of language. They are able to walk, climb and use their bodies in ways that allow them to explore the world even more. During this stage, the child can think about things that are out of sight ( schema & object permanence) and uses his/her imagination to make the information he takes in fit his limited knowledge of the world. He has vivid fantasies and often uses dramatic play to act out what she sees, hears and understands in her environment.

The development of creativity and imagination fall right into these developmental stages. So how can this understanding effect the way we interact with infants and toddlers? How do we best create an appropriate environment that enhances the development of creativity and imagination?

Here are some ideas.

From birth to 18 months, infants can be allowed to explore a variety of household items. These items should include a variety of textures, colors and even scents. For example, a plastic container that held cinnamon or vanilla will hold those scents for a long time. Things that make a sound when shaken are always fun. These inexpensive or even free materials are toys to young children. Concentrated juice containers roll, small margarine containers with some rice or beans inside and the top well-secured make great rattles. A clear plastic bottle with some oil, water, glitter and maybe some food coloring (with the lid securely glued on) can fascinate a baby and spark those brain cells controlling curiosity and wonder. Remember to include safe items from nature. Pine cones and leaves can be safely given to a supervised 9-month old. Remember that the mouth is the number one way that a young infant explores so be sure that the materials you give him are large enough, safe, clean, washable or disposable.

Starting at about 18 months, toddlers have better hand-eye coordination than they did at a younger age. This is a good time to introduce finger paints (or pudding), crayons and chalk. They can develop their creativity by using paste (water and flour), tearing, cutting and manipulating play dough or shaving cream.

Mix familiarity with novelty to keep these materials interesting. Add toy cars or toy people to the shaving cream. Put out small rolling pins, plastic cutlery and cookie cutters along with the play dough. Stretching the activity by adding to the basic material stretches the imagination as children figure out what can be done with the new additions.

Even though at around 12 months, infants will begin to imitate what others do, real fantasy play begins somewhere between 18 & 21 months of age. Fantasy play is linked to creativity and problem-solving which will help them later as they tackle academic and other life challenges. Children who engage in dramatic play tend to have larger vocabularies, are more flexible and adaptable.

Be sure to provide lots of materials for dramatic play: clothes, shoes, hats, accessories, pots, pans, plates, spoons, etc. Include an old cell phone or even a dial phone. Let children “cook” along side you by giving them access to a low cupboard stocked with safe materials such as bowls, plastic containers, plastic wear, empty boxes from oatmeal and other food products. In the dramatic play areas you set up, try to include as many real things as safely possible. The world is not made entirely of hard plastic representations. Make sure there are dolls, tools, stuffed animals and toy cars, trains, and planes.

Be available as children play. You can accept and enjoy their play dough “cake”. You can suggest that their baby needs feeding or the table needs fixing. But be careful not to take over or over-direct their play. Follow the child’s lead. Encourage, praise and participate in their fantasy play.

There is no equipment that enhances creativity and imagination more than blocks. Cloth blocks work for infants. As the child grows, blocks can become more sophisticated. A set of high-quality wooden blocks is a great investment. Block building enhances all areas of development including creativity, imagination and problem-solving. However, blocks, especially for infants and toddlers do not have to be expensive or even high-quality. Boxes and tubes of all shapes and sizes and materials serve as wonderful blocks. You could even cover them in contact paper to make them more interesting and durable.

It is fine if children use a piece of equipment in ways other than those for which they were designed. This is part of the creative, imaginative process. Resist the temptation to say things like, “That isn’t a bunny, it’s a spoon”. That spoon is a bunny if that how the child is imagining it.

ENVIRONMENT

Infants and toddlers must be able to explore in a safe and stable (predictable) environment. Avoid rearranging the room or rotating a lot of the toys while they are gone. This can be unnerving to small children who rely on consistency to feel safe. If you want to change the room around, do it in the children’s presence. You can even engage older toddlers in doing the work and asking for their suggestions.

The environment should lend itself to personal choice and self-direction by offering a variety of materials that are easily accessed by the children. Toys should not require adult assistance for the child to successfully use them.

The social-environment is also important. Again, be available and participate in the child-led play without taking over. However, you can ask questions, label objects and be there to smile, admire and encourage the child’s play. However, try not to talk too much. Infants and toddlers need to be able to think their own thoughts in order to process and problem-solve. Feel free to ask open-ended questions as a child creates. Avoid questions like, “What is it?” or “What color is that?” as these are questions with a specific answer and do not enhance creative thought. Open-ended questions encourage children to think. Open-ended questions rarely have one right answer. Ask questions such as, “Why did you put that there?” or “What do you think will happen if…?”

A word about process versus product in the enhancement of creativity and imagination.

As young children learn about the world by manipulating the things they encounter, their goal is rarely to make a specific thing. To have a goal to work toward, a child has to have a greater sense of time than typical toddlers have. Infants and toddlers deal with the materials and opportunities available in the moment. What is important to infants and toddlers is to figure out how things work and what they can make them do. Be prepared! This process is often a messy one. Here is an example from my work with toddlers. One day, I offered a group of four toddlers some finger paint. I watched as they explored this cool, colorful, scented and squishy stuff for the first time. They each explored the paint in different ways. One started with dabbing one finger into the paint and wiping it off on the paper. As she became more comfortable with the paint she used more fingers. Another little boy dove into the paint with both hands immediately, squishing the paint between his fingers and delighting in different designs he could make by using his palms, fingers and fists. Another child would have nothing to do with getting his hands “dirty” by touching the paint. I gave this child a familiar object, a paintbrush, with which to comfortably explore the paint. The fourth child also found joy in using the paint in a multitude of ways, including testing the boundaries of the paper (I said it could get messy!) and mixing together colors. She used her fingertips and whole hands. She even used her elbows! By the time she was done, her paper was completely brown, wrinkled and had a hole in the center from using so much paint and experimenting with mixing so many colors.

I decided to write a short article to send home with the paintings, explaining what the children learned from the experience of exploring the paint. I explained that what they made was of no concern to me or the children. The important thing was how they made it. The imagination, the exploration, the problem-solving and what they learned that day about the properties of paint was critical. I asked the parent of the brown, wrinkled paper with the hole in the middle to imagine the layers of learning that lay beneath the layers of paint.

Now suppose I had given these children a ditto with an outline of a duck, a glob of yellow paint and told them, by using one finger only, to paint the duck within the lines. What would the children have learned? Would an activity such as this enhance or inhibit creativity and imagination?

The daily schedule can also effect the development of creativity and imagination. A typical day for an infant and toddler should consist of caregiving routines (feeding, diapering, napping, etc.) and free exploration of the environment. There is no need for circle time or any other activity that requires all of the children to be doing the same thing at the same time. Creativity and imagination is enhanced when infants and toddlers make their own decisions about how materials are to be used and when. They also need adequate time for their exploration which is limited when they are over-scheduled.

We cannot teach creativity. We can only foster it by providing appropriate materials in a safe and nurturing environment. Creativity is the production of novel thoughts and solutions based on experience. Take delight in this as children use an item clearly designed for one purpose in a totally imaginative and alternative way.

Children have to touch, smell, see, hear and yes, taste in order to be imaginative. It isn’t always easy to just sit back. We are tempted to want to teach children the “right” way to do something. But it is in the best interest of even the youngest children to figure things out for themselves.

Relax. Delight and enjoy watching the process as we trust infants and toddlers to do what comes naturally to learn about their world.

Robin Willner, M.A., IMH-E III

Early Childhood Consultant,

Great Start Central Regional Resource Center

Lansing, MI