Discover Creativity with Babies

Louise Day

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000219661
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Didattica per la prima infanzia

This book explores creative development in babies and shows how practitioners can support even the youngest child's natural curiosity and help them to develop their ideas, thoughts and feelings. It provides engaging, cost-effective and achievable activity ideas to support the developing creative mind, covering the outdoors; communication and language; and personal, social, emotional and physical development.

Including discussion boxes, case studies and reflective points in every chapter, Day offers guidance and insight into key topics and well-known theories, including

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• how and why to facilitate creativity,

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• adult-baby relationships and attachment,

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• the environment and resources that enable creativity and

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• outdoor exploration and play.

Discover Creativity with Babies is a wonderful guide for early years practitioners looking to support and cultivate the curious and creative side to every child, however they may choose to express it.

Part 1

1 What is creativity?

The fundamental purpose of this book is to explore important aspects of baby development – more specifically, creativity and whether we can, in fact, nurture it into being. In doing so, we first must determine what we believe creativity is. This chapter will explore some of the definitions of creativity that have been used over the years and then, using these, determine which combination of them will act as the basis for the discussions throughout the book.

‘Creativity’ has a vast number of connotations throughout early year's pedagogy, and the pioneers of early years all have their own view of what it is and how it is developed. It is something that many aspire to have, and as adults we often hear statements such as ‘I’m not a creative person’ or ‘she's the creative one’, but what do we mean when we make these statements? Are we putting ourselves down as we consider ourselves not to possess this ability, or are we born with a particular set of traits that allow us to develop the ability to be creative? It is difficult to define creativity, and if we knew what it was, we would readily apply it in our nurseries, schools and communities, and society would benefit greatly from the creative thinkers we would have nurtured.

Defining creativity

We touched briefly in the introduction on the complexity of defining creativity. It has, throughout the ages, been difficult to determine exactly what it is or is not, whether it is a character trait, an ability or a skill and how important it is to our lives. There are so many questions in relation to this broad subject matter, and there are many that have cast theory and opinion into the debate. It is necessary, then, especially when writing on the subject, to explore some of the common themes and beliefs around what creativity is and how it manifests itself in babies and young children.

From all the definitions of creativity that are available, it is clear that there are many aspects that are interlinked and when taken together can account for what we know about creativity. The following characteristics of creativity are taken from Creative Learning in the Early Years, described by Mohammed (2018: 28–29) as ‘Imaginative, Purposeful, Original, Novel, Problem-Solving, Product and of Value’. The inclusion of Product within these themes is important as it makes clear that creativity is not always about the ‘concrete result’ (2018:29), but it is about valuing the product in whatever form that takes, something we will explore later. It is well known that children are able to paint when provided with the right materials and ample time to explore, but how can we expect them as they get older to know about all of the different techniques that are available? We know they can construct with bricks, but that doesn’t mean they know how to use Modroc or plaster of Paris to create a structure; these things need to be ‘learned, practised, experimented with and tried another way in order to be mastered’ (2018: 31).

A more recent definition that can be applied to early years is that of Pascal and Bertram (cited in Mohammed, 2018:31) and refers to creativity as ‘imaginative activity fashioned as to produce something (process or outcome) which is both original and of value’. It is this that practitioners should take and use when planning and organising activities for young children that will support their creative development, as it values both the process and the product if there is one.

Creativity and curiosity

Babies are born curious; they have a strong, almost intrinsic motivation to explore their world, the objects within it and most importantly the people they spend time with. It is ‘from this innate curiosity creativity develops’ (Duffy, 2010: 125). For those of us who have had children ourselves, or those working within baby rooms with the youngest children in early years settings, we can see simply by observing babies their need for freedom and the innate curiosity they display. Duffy (2010:126) suggests that this is a predisposed curiosity that is present in all babies from birth but argues that whether or not this develops ‘is largely the result of the environment and interactions we experience’. She goes on to note the impact of an environment that does not value curiosity, autonomy and freedom for children and suggests that, subsequently, children who do not have access to an environment that promotes agency and expression, find it very difficult to think creatively.

Creativity and imagination

As Duffy (cited in Moyles, 2011: 124) tells us, the difficulty in creating a definition is that the term itself ‘is applied to individuals, to a process and to products’. For Vygotsky, ‘creative activity, based on the ability of our brain to combine elements, is called imagination’ (Sharpe, 2004: 9), whereas in contrast, Winnicot argues that ‘everything that happens is creative’ (1971: 91). It has been shown that creativity and imagination are very closely linked and that you cannot have one without the other. In their book Young Children's Creative Thinking, Fumoto et al. (2012: 16) try to define creativity by using a number of ‘leading contemporary theoreticians and educators’, such as Robert Sternberg, Margaret Boden and Ken Robinson, who all believe that it is the process, person or product that makes up creativity. Even the Early Years Foundation Stage, which has attempted to encompass creativity into its Expressive Art and Design area of learning, recognises how complex creativity can be. The current development matters framework takes Vygotsky's idea of combining elements and imagination and has defined two aspects of learning as exploring media and materials and being imaginative, but even these are set to be removed in the updated 2020 guidance. Craft (2002) suggests two distinct types of creativity, which she calls Big C Creativity and little c creativity. In her book Creativity and Early Years Education (Craft, 2002), she suggests that ‘in identifying and making choices a person is inevitably self-shaping; shaping one's identity and route finding by making choices’ is little c creativity. It is little c creativity that is most relevant to early years children and ‘involves intelligence, imagination and aspects of self-creation and self-expression…combined together into…possibility thinking’ (2002: 180).

Creativity and free choice

One major facet that appears in almost all discussions regarding the development of creativity in such young children, and one that Craft (2002) echoes, is the need for free play and free choice. O’Connor (2014:4) suggests that free play is ‘the essence of early learning’ and that the more time children are given to choose their own play, create their own ideas and test their own theories, the more learning that stimulates creativity will happen. Children need to be given time and quality engagement with others in order to develop their cognitive and creative abilities. Broadhead (cited in O’Connor, 2014:5) theorises that ‘what distinguishes early creative developmental learning from other types of play is the child's freedom to choose and control their activities without undue interference from adults’.

This statement leaves questions for those working with young children about exactly how and when to intervene and when to sit back and observe. It also raises an important point that we will explore later about the resources and ‘toys’ we provide for babies at such a crucial time in their development. If what babies and young children need are open-ended resources, sticks that can be dolls or rockets, pinecones that can be apples, then why do nurseries insist on throwing money at catalogue pages? Whilst a balance of resources and experiences are important, we need to understand more about why we choose the activities and set-ups we provide for babies and whether they are helping to immerse them in creative experiences that allow them the freedom to choose how to engage with them. For babies and young children, ‘the process of creativity – which includes curiosity, exploration, play and creativity – is as important (if not more so) as any product they may create’ (Duffy, 2010: 125).

Can we cultivate creativity?

Aynsley-Green (2019:1) suggests that the ‘government is ignoring new science about brain development in very young children which shows that the brains of babies can make thousands of new connections every minute if they are intellectually and emotionally stimulated’, something which is a vital component of supporting early creative development.

Practitioners in baby rooms across the UK are vitally important in the promotion of creativity in young children, so it goes without saying that their attitudes towards art and creativity and how they believe it should be carried out will impact the types of provision they set up for young children to explore. There are an increasing number of practitioners working with babies who know the value and benefit of what is known as process art, particularly with such young children but still there are those who are continuing to use pre-drawn templates or worse, taking artwork created by the children and making it into something else. Finding the joy in art and exploring with babies is one of the most magical things we can do in our day, and the best bit is that there is no right or wrong way to do art, especially working with babies.

Vygotsky is useful here and provides an explanation for why adults may think in this way when he writes that particular skills should be ‘cultivated not imposed’ (Vygotsky, 1978: 118). This suggests that the ability to be creative is not a gift or talent but that it can be ‘cultivated’, and without that cultivation it simply does not develop. Perhaps adults who believe they lack creativity in fact never had it cultivated in childhood, therefore showing that the failure to ‘cultivate’ may have a large impact on their future ability for the development of creativity and creative thinking.

Caroline Sharp (2004), in her article ‘Developing young children's creativity’, agrees with Vygotsky and his idea of ‘cultivation’. She notes that ‘it is possible to encourage or indeed inhibit the development of creativity in young children’ (2004:7). This supports the notion that practitioners and, in fact, all adults have a crucial role to play in supporting children if they want them to develop creativity. Sharp develops this idea further, proposing that ‘adults can act as…models of creativity for children’ (2004: 8). There is evidence to suggest, therefore that it is possible to encourage creativity through a wide range of media, introducing children to a variety of experiences and engaging in open-ended play that is led by the child but supported by an adult in a sensitive way. However, she goes on to say that ‘adults also have the potential to stifle opportunities for creativity by being overly didactic’ (Sharp, 2004: 8). The mere notion that adults can ‘inhibit’ or ‘stifle’ children's creative...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• About the Author
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART 1
• PART 2
• References
• Index