Creativity Begins in Preschool

Lois Feibus, a preschool educator at the Wyoming Seminary College Preparatory School, made an interesting point on her Academy for Early Learning blog:

. . . after almost thirty years of teaching Preschool, the most creative children that I have known, have been those who have not been forced to perform academically, but who were allowed to explore the outdoors, whose creativity was allowed to flourish, and who had ample opportunities to be little kids, at home and at school. Academic success and higher level thinking, for both children, in the end, were where the developmental process took them.

This empirical observation rings true to anyone who has observed children outdoors. I still remember investigating every inch of my yard. I can remember what every flower looked like and smelled like, how its seeds looked, how the soil behaved. We used to go outside with no toys of any kind and never be bored. I also had this little memory of my son Mike at age 4 (Thanks Lois.) We had been planting vegetables and he insisted that he was goingto plant a "meat garden." Of course we told him that was not possible, and he argued that he had seen one. Not long after, we passed a marshy area, where he triumphantly showed me the cattails (a.k.a. hot dogs) growing there. Mike was a very creative kid artistically and mechanically, as well as being what I think is a prime example of Gardner's "Naturalist" intelligence. Today, he is a machinist who is responsible for an entire manufacturing set up and uses his ability to visualize and invent in some very practical ways.

I think nature is very important to the development of innovative thinking and have just remembered "No Child Left Indoors." I googled this phrase just now after remembering an article I read this summer and found that this title is now being used by several states passing legislation, as well as programs and initiatives by schools, communities, and environmental groups across the country. These programs and Richard Louv's 2005 book Last Child in the Woods -- Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, as well as Bill McKibben's The End of Nature (1990, 2006), should definitely be part of my discussion on how to develop creative, innovative thinkers.

Thanks, Lois.