With all the texting and time spent on electronic devices, many of our youth are not having opportunities to express their imaginations. Because schools have to have so much focus on test results, children are often immersed into a sea of worksheets which also stunts creativity and imagination.
Albert Einstein said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world and all there will ever be to know and understand." If we think about it, this was the philosophy of our great leaders, philosophers, inventors, and artists. For example:
• Always have a vivid imagination, for you never know when you might need it. -J.K. Rowling
• Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.-John Dewey
• America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand. -Harry S. Truman.
• You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.-Mark Twain
I believe that learning how to express ones imagination is really the key that unlocks the soul. It is what helps our children to become all that they were created to be.
Ways to exercise imagination:
• Make sure that children have playtime WITHOUT electronic devices. It is so easy for us as parents to give in to TV watching, computer time, and video games. These are fine in moderation, but our children need more than this to dream, imagine, and create.
• Give children opportunities to express their imaginations through art, music, writing, building, acting singing, dancing, photography, designing, etc. Play games like, "Show me what you are imagining." Have children picture something in their mind, such as a tiger, and then express what is in their mind. If they can't draw it or write about it, have them make a collage of tigers from pictures in magazines or from the internet. Getting children to express what is in their minds, will also help them with their communication skills.
• Help children to understand that rejection is a friend to creativity. If your child tries to publish a story, enter an art contest, or create an invention and they are turned down. Explain to them that "No" simply means, "Not right now." A rejection is simply an opportunity to make improvements on what we create and to keep learning.
• Finally, gathering information adds to creativity. As children begin to use their imaginations, they can get even more ideas from books and other reading materials. Reading after all, fuels the imagination!
