Why Being A Creative Mum Can Help Your Children Grow And Learn

“Why being a creative mum can help your children grow and learn” is a guest post from Nicole – owner and founder of Creative Mum Life. This is a resource of inspiration for kids’ activities with budget-friendly ideas that busy parents can explore with their kids. 

Using What You Have To Create Your Kids’ Best Life

Some parents find it easy to get down and creative with their kids, but most of us struggle with this task a little. We might not have time, might lack the imagination we think is needed, or (let’s be honest now), don’t really enjoy kids activities all that much.

But it’s a lot easier and much more fun than you realise – you just need a little help finding activities that you and your kids BOTH enjoy.

Why is being creative important for your children and how can it help? Here’s why.

Fosters Communication

Asking your kids in the car or at dinner, ‘How was your day?’ seems to be a guaranteed method to get them to clam up. Even littlies as young as 4 can tend to go all shy when prompted like this and forget everything that happened.

Communication can’t be forced with children; you need to encourage it by opening up opportunities for them to talk to you. When you play with them or do activities like crafts or cooking you are giving them an open door to share details about themselves, and you will be surprised by just how much they share.

Having light-hearted activities with your kids also gives you more opportunities to speak positively to them. You get the chance to laugh and talk together focusing on positive discussions rather than having the need to yell and give negative feedback all the time. Let’s face it, sometimes that does feel like that is all us parents do!

Enhances Social and Emotional Skills

This kind of interaction teaches all sorts of lovely social skills including sharing and taking turns, complimenting other people’s work and making gifts for other people.

You can also include informal lessons about recycling and using old household items, and not buying new toys whenever a child asks for something to do.

You can also help them to get in touch with emotions they are having difficulty expressing, by getting them to make abstract collages or paintings of how they are feeling.

Encourages Practice and Resilience

Children can commonly expect to be instantly great at everything new they try, and they may also give up rather quickly once they realise that they aren’t. Introducing activities with your kids and exposing them to the same types of structured play regularly can teach them skills like practicing and patience in learning.

They will see how the accumulative effect of their practice and effort will pay off; skills that are enormously useful when they go to school and later in life. They also discover the feeling of pride in themselves for what they have achieved.

Enhancing Literacy and Numeracy

Activities like games, craft, and cooking can improve your child’s ability to grasp traditional learning concepts like literacy and numeracy. Practical applications of measuring, addition, and scoring can help kids who are more active learners and would benefit from a different approach.

This kind of activity also encourages other skills in those who may not be traditionally high learners, because Maths, Science, and Computers aren’t everything! Your child might be strong at school, but can find new skills and build confidence when they are good at other things such as art, music, drama, cooking or sport.

Embracing the Spectrum

All children benefit from extra opportunities to communicate, socially interact and learn. This certainly extends to children with special needs, disabilities or learning disorders.

Structured play is excellent for children with autism, for example, allowing them to copy actions, explore outside their comfort zones, put themselves into other people’s shoes, share and take turns, and respond to other people. This does so gently and in a way that earns trust and crafts confidence at the same time.

Art is wonderful for children to open up and express themselves in different ways and contexts. It offers the chance for self-expression and for them to determine their own narrative.

Being A Creative Mum And Parent

Finding fun things to do with kids is really awesome for everyone involved, and when you spend even a little time doing this, you may feel less rushed in the rest of your life. Being a creative mum is therapeutic, helpful for the kids and just plain fun! If you’re looking for ways to tap into your creativity as a mum, you may want to also investigate how to become a blogger! 

When’s the last time you were creative with your kids? Let us know!