Nurturing Creativity in Children: Our Grade 5 Educator’s Article Featured

We are so happy to announce that an expert article by our Grade 5 Homeroom Teacher and NAE-MIT Lead, Ms. Thangalakshmi got featured on the Nord Anglia Education website. The article titled: Creativity- the key to success.

She writes:

From painting to drawing, singing, coding, or playing an instrument, being creative is a term that covers a wide range of abilities and interests. But what is creativity? In my view, it’s the ability to develop ideas by making new connections using knowledge acquired through critical thinking and reflection. Creativity is all about free-willed thinking and unique ideas put into action.

We can all agree that creativity is an important life skill to have, and an attribute that we all want to inculcate in children from a young age. Why, exactly? Because we believe creativity helps unlock a child’s potential across all their subjects and teaches them how to best express themselves.

In words of Sir Ken Robinson, an education expert who I admire, “We don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it or rather we get educated out of it”.

His conclusion was based on an experiment he conducted to understand how creativity is enhanced as learners get older. He studied a group of Early Years students who showed incredible creativity, monitoring them at five-year intervals. Sadly, he noticed those signs of creativity diminishing as the children climbed up in grades, and the experiment suggested that growing older and academically smarter doesn’t necessarily ensure one will be more creative as well.

So, what can we do to ensure a child’s creative spark isn’t extinguished as they get older? What can be done to nurture creativity and make it really stick? This can’t be done simply through giving students precise instructions through a lectures, so here are a few easy-to-follow tips to nurture creativity in your child: