Welcome to the PBS Parents Guide to Creativity! It's time to play! The collection of activities on this site is designed to help you and your child explore and develop creative thinking. The following resources will help you get started:
How To Use This Site
The activities on this site are grouped into three venues, according to the nature of creative development they promote.
- Sensory Stuff
Children's creative ideas often spring from their play with open-ended materials, such as blocks, silk scarves, Ellos, play dough, or beach sand, just to name a few. Activities here mimic some ways children might play with such items.
- Ideas & Exploration
Imagination and self-expression allow children's creative ideas to sprout. The activities in this venue relate to the expression of thoughts, feelings, and wonderings inherent in the human spirit and include activities such as music, pretend play and drama, poetry, art, science and myths.
- Creativity Challenges
Solving problems helps children move beyond their current ways of thinking and playing, and promotes even more creativity. This section's activities simulate real-world problem solving and offer recommendations for puzzles and other problem-solving activities.
Supporting Your Child
For each activity, we have included several ways to approach and nurture aspects of children's creativity. On the screen next to each activity, buttons link to the following kinds of information:
- Interact, where you'll find suggested open-ended questions, actions and ideas for making the most of the activity for you and your child. When appropriate, suggestions are tailored for children of different ages.
- Understand, where you'll see how the activity supports key components of creative development as well as development in other academic areas (for example, math, science or literacy).
- Expand, where you'll find links to related activities and resources you can use to build on your child's interests and curiosity. The Expand ideas cannot be exhaustive. Let them inspire you to use your own creativity to follow your child's curiosity and experiment with new ideas.
In addition, descriptions of offline activities listed in the Expand sections can be accessed directly from the Try At Home page.
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