Learning tools: creativity

What about creativity? What about throwing convention to the wind? I don't encourage it as often as I should, in part because I don't feel confident in my own creative abilities and it's not the first thing that comes to my mind when I'm thinking of ways to spend an afternoon. To combat this, we cleared out an extra bedroom in our home and turned it into Calvin's "offce", where he has his own art table and access to a variety of tools and materials. We do create together sometimes, or Calvin will create while I read to him, and we try out suggested crafts pretty often, but some of Calvin's best creative moments happen when he disappears into his office and goes to town with whatever he finds there.

So, what do we keep at his disposal?

glue (of varying types)
pencil sharpner
protractor
Modge Podge
ruler
scissors
staples/stapler
string
tape (of varying types)
hole puncher (single and triple)

boxes
clay
cork
odds and ends (leftover packaging, scraps, etc.)
pipe cleaners
Play doh

cardboard
cardstock
construction paper
fabric
paper bags
poster board
scraps of just about anything
stickers
tissue paper
tracing paper
water color paper

chalk pastels
charcoal pencils
colored pencils
crayons
markers
oil pastels
pastels
stamps
tempera paint
water colors
water color pencils

blocks
Legos
lined music composition paper
sandbox and tools
the whole outside

And creativity occurs elsewhere as well, and need not be confined to the tangible. Improvisation at the piano, building with Lego blocks, designing a garden, building a rock sculpture in the yard, writing a story in a journal, acting out a story, or any make-believe play. It's all creativity. Creativity isn't the creation you end up with, it's what happens in the process of creating.

For more on creativity check out this post at OLM.

Meet the Giba Monster!

Legos

I've heard that all parents are faced at one time or another with a very important decision. The decision between Legos and Playmobil. My understanding is that everyone has to plant themselves firmly in one camp or the other by the time their first born is five. For the past couple of years we've given Playmobil a try, and I find myself really liking the pieces—they're well made and almost realistic—but I also find them constraining in a way that Legos would never be. So we're putting one foot firmly in each camp.

And that's not really what this post is about. Calvin got his first Lego set, an electric truck, for St. Nicholas Day this year and it took him less than half an hour to assemble it by himself. I found great joy in watching him decipher the picture directions, making errors here and there then fixing them, asking for help only a handful of times when he couldn't get a piece to snap down. It was a great moment, and that's what this post is about.