Creative learning is all about helping children develop their imaginative skills through exploration of different materials and ways of expressing themselves, for example this can be methods like dance, ICT, building and also traditional creative methods like painting and drawing. Creativity itself is all about allowing children to express and explore themselves and take risks in doing so. This doesn’t necessarily have to be in a defined method but could simply be their own play, for example their role play is an expression of their creativity.
Most theories about young children view children as highly creative which allows them to explore and experiment with the world around them. Creativity is more about the process than it is about the actual end product as it allows us to learn more about ourselves, like what we’re good and not good at. ‘Creative Partnerships’ was a scheme set up with the term ‘creative learning’ to sum up their programme. They believed working together to try and create new approaches to learning would stimulate the people learning by giving them a new approach and bring the curriculum to life. Another approach the ‘creativity, find it and promote it’ challenged practitioners to be more critical towards the way they think about creativity. It challenged them to try and create connections they wouldn’t normally make and constantly question conventions that they normally wouldn’t.
Creativity and creative learning can be beneficial for children for many different reasons. Creativity can give children a way to express and develop their emotions, an example of this may be if a child is sad they may draw a sad picture and then someone has the opportunity to ask them how they feel about it and express themselves. Creativity is also a good way for children to develop socially, an example of this if a child enjoys creative dance then they may wish to create dance routines with other children