Playful Parenting: Bringing Play to Every Day

Playful Parenting: Bringing Play to Every Day

Creative Thinking

At Minnesota Children’s Museum , we believe in the power of play. Play is how children explore the world around them, navigate relationships, nurture curiosity, and find joy. This post is part of a series showcasing seven powers of play: confidence, creative thinking, critical thinking, self-control, collaboration, communication, and coordination.

kid playing

Creative play is like a spring that bubbles up from deep within a child.
-Joan Almon, Educator and Author

What it is:

Creative thinking is a kid’s ability to imagine, improvise, reinvent, innovate, and approach challenges from fresh perspectives.

What it looks like in action:

Kids who are thinking creatively are generating ideas, challenging assumptions, and seeing past limitations. They’re charting new paths to navigate challenges. They’re dreaming up scenarios and situations where they can try out new roles and imagine fresh outcomes.

Why it matters:

Creative thinking is a critical tool for solving our toughest problems. Creative thinking allows kids to see an obstacle and imagine new ways around it, or new ways to manage it. It supports positive social dynamics by ensuring a steady flow of energizing ideas and opportunities for connection and collaboration. It supports empathy by allowing kids to try on new perspectives and imagine new circumstances. With creative thinking, challenges are not fixed in place, but approachable and solvable.

kid playing

How play helps:

Kids at play are free to dream, imagine, and pretend. Using creative thinking, they can solve made-upimaginary problems, like slaying a fire-breathing dragon at the park, or real problems, like how to include a third friend in a game designed for two. At play, constraints are fewer, allowing them room to identify new patterns and make new connections.

At home or on the go, caregivers can enhance children’s creative thinking by:

  • Giving kids time and space to pursue wild ideas
  • Delighting in kids’ creative processes and asking them questions about the journey
  • Talking through your own creative process for anything from planning a meal to solving a challenge at work
  • Recognizing creative problem-solving, creative movement, creative ideas, and other creative endeavors beyond traditional arts and crafts

Play prompts & activities to support creative thinking:

  • Build a gnome home
  • Make simple machines
  • Read a favorite book and come up with an alternate ending
  • Build a paper skyscraper or other design challenge

Powers of Play

Powers of Play

Coordination

Power of Play: Coordination is a child’s awareness and control of their body and their ability to display strength, balance, precision and endurance.

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Communication

Power of Play: Communication is how a child expresses thoughts and ideas, listens and responds to others, and engages in discussion.

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(Self) Control

Power of Play: Self-control is a child’s ability to control how they express their feelings, desires and actions in ways that are safe and productive, particularly when faced with a temptation or a challenge.

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Collaboration

Power of Play: Collaboration is how kids connect with others, cooperate, empathize and engage in teamwork.

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Critical Thinking

Power of Play: Critical thinking is a child’s ability to be curious and analytical, to evaluate different options, to make plans and to reflect.

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Confidence

Power of Play: Confidence is a kid’s belief that they can accomplish something, or attempt something, based on their own abilities and mindset.

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