Creativity starts with family and friends

What might you do to encourage your child’s or your friends and other family members’ creativity at home?

Here are some interesting and fun suggestions to engage in new ideas, wonder and play with your family and friends.

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Muck

Everyone likes to make a mess, especially a mushy mess that you can sink your hands into. Throw all rules out the window and make some muck. Whether you are outside and want to make muck with mud and rocks and pebbles, or if you are inside and want to make muck with ingredients that you find in your kitchen, making muck is a fun way to get messy. Children should always be supervised in the kitchen.

Make muck outside with mud and rocks and pebbles.  Add water to make it your preferred consistency. Mush away!

Make muck inside with ingredients that you find in your kitchen. A kitchen is a tidy place to make muck and a place where muck is easily cleaned up. Use water to make flour mucky, add tuna fish, add canned corn, add small pasta noodles, add apple sauce, add whatever you want in your kitchen to make a sloppy stinky mess. Have fun and feel the different textures on your hands. Add new ingredients! Taste the mixture if you are adventurous! Remember to compost afterwards! And remember that children should always be supervised while in the kitchen...

to make a sloppy stinky mess. Have fun and feel the different textures on your hands. Add new ones! Taste the mixture if you are adventurous! And remember to compost after!

Affirmation Pictures

This is Keri Smith's idea. Why not speak to ourselves outside ourselves: pasting affirmations in speech bubbles to photos of those we admire. Use photocopied or printed pictures of:

• you now
• your as a child
• you laughing
• artists, writers and celebrities you hold in high esteem and appreciat
• mportant friends and family members

Place the photos in places where you will see them regularly: on your door, in your washroom, in your closet, inside your cupboard doors, and in your notebooks. Remind yourself that you are imaginative and wonderful, that you are unique and valuable, and that you deserve to be loved and listened to. You may soon see or feel a rise in your spirits!

Picture Collections

Collect pictures of various things. Photos are like making lists in a visual form. Ideas for collections: food I've made, me on rocks, how NOT to be seen, me eating, unflattering pictures, interesting signs, etc. You will need a camera!

Environmental Change

Conduct an experiment in texture and appeal to different senses. Give out smelly markers and you will see that people will use them just so they can smell them. Interesting doodles and thoughts may emerge. Glue interesting and varied fabrics and materials to your mouse and keyboard. Typing just got a lot more interesting, and distracting in a stimulating kind of way. Burn scented oil in your home, and play some new music. Hang decorations from the ceilings that will add to the visual variety of your environment. Bring new plants into view. Changing your environment changes your view!

Secret Gifts

It's fun to give little secret gifts to someone. The joy stems from being sneaky, and watching the reactions of people you like without being bothersome. Your 'presenting' can be done as a series.  The presents can be big or small such as origami creatures with quotes, or even small pocket or drawer surprises. Gifts ideas include candies, notes, quotes, badges, dollar store items, useful objects, silly things, etc. If you are stretching this exercise over a week or so, the final gift can be something special and creative specially geared towards that person.

Show and Tell

Show and tell is a way for the people around us to share aspects of themselves. All you need for this exercise is some good planning and a couple of hours of everyone's time one day each week. Two of your family members, co-workers, or school mates, could make a presentation about something that interests them. Include comfy places to sit. Encourage discussion and laughter. You can tell a story, read one aloud or report about something heart-warming and inspirational. There are as many themes as there are ideas.

Food and drink are optional and fun!

Craft Challenge

Craftster.org is a popular crafting website that features a monthly craft challenge. Log on, and see what they have this month. You can also visit inspiredathome.com for interesting new ideas too!

Connect the "Dots"

An exercise in making connections between things is a scavenger hunt! Try connecting actual dots and colours with string and make a web! You can connect clues, ideas, puzzle pieces, rebus puzzles, etc. This would be an interesting outdoor game which would get everyone out there and energized!

Dinner with a Twist

Did you know chewing helps stimulate brain function? What better time to stimulate creative juices than when everyone is at the dinner table? Imagine the conversation you'll have as you dine on your creations. There are many ways to be creative about your meal. The key thing is to break a habitual pattern that you don't even know you have, such as thought patterns, eating patterns, cooking patterns.

Here are some ideas for your dinner with a twist.
Pot Luck Twist
Host a World Creativity and Innovation Week Pot Luck with a Twist Dinner and make it your most creative dinner ever?

• Ask each guest to bring one ingredient from one of the following categories - vegetable, fruit, protein (meat, fish, poultry, tofu etc.), starch (potatoes, pasta, bread). Once all of your guests and the ingredients arrive create a menu based on the ingredients you have. It’s crazy, enjoyable and you'll be surprised how delicious your creation is.

• Ask each guest to bring a dish based on a theme with some twists.
  

Choose a theme and then add some twists:

1. Living Like Leonardo. (Go to www.mos.org/leonardo/bio.html to find out more about Leonardo.)
   
   Twists: Dishes that
   - Look better in the mirror than straight on
   - Can only be eaten with the left hand
   - Is Incomplete (many of Da Vinci's works were incomplete)
   
2. Now for Something Completely Different.
   This meal is all about making changes
   - finding new and different ways to prepare your meal and the meal itself.
   
   Twists:
   - Use a different method (bake a cake on the BBQ)
   - Change the order of the meal
   - Try something you've never done before
   - Eat in a different room
   - Put away all of your plates and cutlery and find new ways to eat.
   - Eat blindfolded
   - Have a blindfolded friend feed you.
   - Use the hand you never use.
   - Change the colour of the meal (Mash up some herbs to make your mashed potatoes green, black pasta, cook your pasta in beet juice)
   - Tie one hand behind your back.

Click a Pic

Click a Pic Taking a picture is as creative as you want to make it. What’s your perspective? Here are some ideas:

1. A Creative Day in the Life Scrapbook.
   Give each member of your family (or friends) one half hour each with a camera. Ask them to take pictures according to one of the following
   themes:
   
   
   1. Our family. How might our family be defined? Who are we? What are our interests? How do we live? How do we play? How do we interact? How do we use our feet?
   2. Our home. What is the most interesting place in our home? Which room, piece of furniture or object makes a statement about us? Which space is our most creative?
      

   Once all of the pictures have been taken, ask each person to tell their story
   about their perspectives and put the photos in the scrapbook.

2. Inspiring Faces
   Ask each person to take pics of faces that inspire them. The faces could be of people, animals or buildings. After each person shares why they find the face inspiring, create a collage for the kitchen wall for inspiration everyday.
   
   For really inspiring faces take a trip to the Zoo!

Gratitude Latitude

If you want to encourage a person to change their behaviour you are best to praise them and thank them eight times more frequently than you normally do.

Think of all of the ways to give a compliment, say, “Thank you” and express gratitude. Make the longest list you possibly can. Let your thoughts percolate for a few hours and then go back to the list and add more. So far, we’ve identified 108 different ways to give praise. How many different ways have you found?

Wish

Encourage everyone to dream about the greatest, biggest, most far reaching wish they can think of; then encourage them to express it, draw it, write about it and share it with the rest of the family or group.

Once everyone has expressed their wish, then ask “In what ways might we make this wish possible? What might be the first step to make this wish possible? What is stopping us from making this wish possible? How might we overcome the obstacles to making the wish possible?

Create a Creative Space

How does an environment that encourages your creativity look and feel like? What textures and colours would support you being at your creative best? What does an environment that encourages your creativity sound like? Taste like? What's the mood of the environment?

Pick at least one of your responses and make that happen today.

Dish Dance

When you move your feet, your brain gets revitalized. Why not take every opportunity to move your feet while doing mundane tasks? Clean up the dishes with some music on and start shakin’ shoe!

Creative Walk

People all over the Netherlands celebrate World Creativity and Innovation Week by taking creativity strolls with their families and friends. Some feel it’s best to go in whichever direction pleases them in the moment. Others plan a route, yet stretch their observation skills by opening their minds to noticing new things.

Why not do as our friends overseas do and take a walk just like they do? No matter what you discover, you’ll be moving your feet, opening new pathways in your brain and talking in some fresh oxygen to help stimulate your brain.

Yes and No

Set the timer on the stove and encourage everyone to say “NO” to everything suggested until the timer runs out. Once you’ve exhausted “No”, set the timer again, this time with the instruction for everyone to say “Yes” to whatever is suggested.

Discuss what it felt like to constantly hear “No” and then what it felt like to constantly hear “Yes”. What are the implications of always hearing one or the other? How might you create an environment where the entire household feels like everyone is saying “Yes” yet everyone takes responsibility for safety and reasonable requests?

Say What?

A big part of creativity is doing new things, doing different things or doing things differently. If you and your family and friends generally use words to communicate try communicating differently.

For the entire day choose one method of communication and stick to it.

Here are some examples for alternative communication:

• use the lyrics from your favourite songs.
• Draw pictures
• Sign
• Make sounds
• Use facial expressions
• Put all mobile phones away for the day

Help Make the World a Better Place

Discuss one way, big or small, you and your family could help make your place in the world better or the world a better place. Then do it!

Share your ideas!

Would  you like to tell us about an event you or your community are hosting? Send us a note. If you want to share your event details with others we’ll post it in our newsroom. You can do-it-yourself too by posting your details and pictures on our Creativiki site.  We’ve got a YouTube page too, for your videos