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You may have heard of (or even experienced yourself) the surprise of the parent who buys an expensive toy for a child—and the child spends more time playing with the box! Unfortunately, that kind of imaginative play has lessened over the years as children have gotten used to more passive or limited roles with their toys and entertainments.
Imaginative play is a form of creative fluency. “Creative Quotient” tests will often give the test taker an object or simple shape and ask them to imagine all the things they could do with it. With teachers, I usually present pairs or groups with bandannas and ask them to demonstrate and then write down all the ways they can think of to use them. When a child plays with a box, he is engaging in the same process: imagining the box to be a car, boat, rocket ship, fort, stair, pet bed, doll house, desk, and so on. Decades of research support the importance of imaginative play for developing, not only of creativity, but for enhancing other cognitive skills and even social/emotional intelligences.
With the holidays approaching, think of gifts to support creativity. Here’s one that was popular with kids of all ages in my extended family:
My special box:
1. Provide a wooden or paper box for each child. Consider a small recycled cardboard box, box for school supplies, oatmeal box, papier mache box from the craft store, or tissue box. (Add a lid if it doesn’t have one to make it even more special.)
2. Provide glue, scissors and materials to glue to the box. These might include words and pictures from favorite magazines, clip art, cartoons, recycled “junk” mail, and stick-on alphabet letters.
3. Cover the work surface with plastic or newspaper.
4. Decorate the boxes outside and/or inside as well. Parents will need to help children too young to use scissors. For 4 or 5 year olds, let them use glue sticks or put a tiny amount of school glue into a plastic bottlecap and let them use a cotton swab or finger to apply.
5. Continue as long as it is fun.
I have done this activity with great success at a Thanksgiving gathering. Then I took the boxes home with me, brushed them with a wash of water and school glue all over and let them dry. As a gift for the holidays, I then filled the boxes with markers, small pieces of colored paper, modeling material and other supplies for creative play and gave them back to the kids.