fojanga

Children and Creativity:
Preparation for a fast-moving world.
(by Amal Abbass-Saal & Foluke Taylor-Muhammad,
Directors of FoJanga-Foundation for Children & Young People in the Gambia)

‘He who learns, teaches’
African Proverb

As we strive to raise our children, feed them and educate them, the world undergoes radical change. Modern science and technology moves ahead in leaps and bounds; so fast that it can become a challenge for parents and teachers to stay ahead of the latest developments. We are expected to learn quickly, adapt to new circumstances and grapple with a constant stream of new gadgets and ideas. The world, they say, has become a village. Children it seems, whether they live in cities or villages, need to be prepared. An important question may be: How can we, as parents, support our children’s aspirations and encourage their achievement, when we ourselves may struggle to understand what they are now expected to learn? Yes, we can access a lot of information via the internet but not all parents have easy access to computers or internet. Fortunately this article is not about computers but about seven of the simple and effective things that we can do to help children make the most of the opportunities available to them and prepare them to be all they can be in the world that is becoming.
1. Start At the Beginning

“Right from the start, babies are thinking, observing and reasoning, building mental models of their worlds which are then refined in the light of subsequent experience”
BERA Early years SIG (2003) Early Years Research: pedagogy, curriculum and adult roles, professionalism and training (Academic Review Southwell: BERA)

Recent advances in brain research show that babies and young children have powerful learning capacities. It has been shown that early experiences in a child’s life have an enormous impact of the development of the brain. At this stage in their lives children are generally learning about the world through play which means that play itself is very important. Play benefits children in a variety of ways, for instance by:

- Giving them a sense of power and control
- Promoting imagination
- Promoting investigation and repetition
- Helping to diminish stress
- Helping social interaction
- Promoting language and communication

Therefore, access to opportunities for creative and physical play from an early age is one of the essential building blocks of healthy child development.

2. Think ‘Creativity’
“Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual” Arthur Koestler
Creativity fosters mental growth in children by providing opportunities for them to try out new ideas and new ways of thinking. Engaging in creative activities is fun and at the same time, a way of celebrating children's uniqueness and diversity; both vital ingredients for developing confidence and a positive self image. It’s important to see creativity in it’s widest sense. It is much more than ‘art’ and can’t be reduced to simply facilitating art activities. Seeing creativity as ‘just painting and drawing’ misses the point; Creativity is in fact about questioning, making connections, inventing, reinventing and flexing the imaginative muscles. When children are given opportunities to work creatively they may or may not produce great ‘works of art’ but they will develop creative thinking, an essential skill in today’s fast moving world. If we want our children to grow up to bring about positive change for their families, communities and the world at large, let’s start by nurturing their creativity:

“Creativity develops the capacity to imagine the world differently. We all need an ability not just to cope with change, but also to positively thrive on it and engineer it for ourselves. Therefore, young people need the tools to conceptualise how the world could be different and the inner confidence and motivation to make it happen”
Creative Partnerships, national flagship of the UK
3. Joined up Learning: the importance of Cross Curricular Links)

“If you study to remember, you will forget, but if you study to understand, you will remember.”

“Interdisciplinary/cross-curricular teaching provides a meaningful way in which students can use knowledge learned in one context as a knowledge base in other contexts in and out of school.”
(Collins, Brown, & Newman (1989).

At school, children spend most of their time studying subject areas, (Maths, Science, English, History etc) in isolation. Without doubt, focusing attention on ‘subjects’ in this way does have positive benefits but research has also shown that working ‘across the curriculum’; i.e. connecting and transferring learning between these various subjects and disciplines, can reinforce learning and help children to become more actively engaged in the learning process:

“Interdisciplinary/cross-curricular teaching can increase students' motivation for learning and their level of engagement. In contrast to learning skills in isolation, when students participate in interdisciplinary experiences they see the value of what they are learning.”
(Resnick, 1989)

“Many of the important concepts, strategies, and skills taught in the language arts are "portable" (Perkins, 1986). They transfer readily to other content areas. The concept of perseverance, for example, may be found in literature and science. Strategies for monitoring comprehension can be directed to reading material in any content area. Cause-and-effect relationships exist in literature, science, and social studies. Interdisciplinary/cross-curricular teaching supports and promotes this transfer. Critical thinking can be applied in any discipline”.
(National Assessment of Educational Progress, 1997 Houghton Mifflin Company)

4. Get Physical

“Do Biye sa yiffi golo!?”
Mother to child
(Won’t you stop your monkey business!)

Most parents (us included!) will have said this or something very like this to their child at some point. As adults it’s hard for us to understand the need to climb and clamber, swing and jump, especially when these activities threaten to take place anywhere near our best furniture! For children though, climbing is exciting and fun and another great stimulant to creativity. FoJanga-Foundation for Children & Young People in the Gambia commissioned wood sculptor Tom Abbass-Saal to design climbing structures that combine challenging options with safety. In this kind of environment children can be allowed the imaginative freedom to hike up imaginary trees and mountains and take rope bridges over fast-flowing rivers to their hearts content. We probably all appreciate that physical exercise is important for all children. It’s also good to know that the physical coordination required for climbing actually helps in the development of the left side of the brain, which supports our ability to apply logic, make judgments and analyse situations. So here’s to monkey business!


5. Let’s Pretend

“Make-believe is more than child's play. It's crucial to the development of creativity, empathy, learning and problem-solving”
Susan Linn. ‘The Case for Make Believe: Saving Play in a Commercialized World’ (The New Press)

We have probably all watched a child transform an everyday object, a spoon perhaps or a broom, into a drumstick or a microphone or even a playmate! It may seem unimportant but in fact, through role play and imaginative games, children are learning valuable skills for life. In a child’s make-believe world, his or her own roles transform alongside the objects he or she is playing with. He or she will change roles, moving from superhero to mummy or daddy to police officer, doctor, scientist or teacher with great fluidity. By experimenting with diverse jobs and identities, children are able to explore a variety of scenarios and outcomes. Sometimes the stories they act out reflect issues they are struggling to understand.

“Imaginative play gives your child a sense of control as he interprets the dramas of everyday life and practices the rules of social behavior.”
Patty Wipfler, founder and director of the Parent’s Leadership Institute in Palo Alto, California.

“When children disagree about who gets to be the daddy or who will wear
the purple dress, they're actually developing important social skills.”
Sara Wilford, director of the Early Childhood Program at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York.

If we want our children to succeed in the real world, we need to let them create and spend time in their imaginary worlds too.


6. Encourage Speaking and Listening

"Reading and writing float on a sea of talk."
James Britton, educationalist

Let’s spend time listening to and speaking with our children, confident that, in doing this we are also teaching them to read and write. The words they are hearing and using will be the words they learn to recognise and write. Though it is possible to teach language and grammar at any stage in life, nothing can compare to the speed and intensity of early language learning – children learn to recognize correct sentence structure because it ‘sounds’ right, rather than having to think about the present perfect tense and whether the subject and verb agree! A child who can speak, listen, read and write is well on the road to being an effective communicator. Effective communication skills help children within their families, at school and within their future education and careers. Sometimes things are difficult to communicate and here, creativity too has its part to play. When children are truly creative and experience the freedom to make whatever activity they are engaged in, their own, they are expressing themselves. This kind of self-expression is a form of communication, often more powerful than trying to find the words to describe a thought, feeling or experience. Working with children in this way, parents, teachers and child carers are offered opportunities to better understand what children and young people may be thinking and feeling.
7. Failure versus Feedback
“I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”Thomas Alva Edison (inventor of the light bulb)
Nobody wants to fail and yet the biggest block to creativity that exists is probably the feeling of needing to ‘get it right’. Research into the type of people most likely to become millionaires found that they weren’t that much different from the general population except that they took more risks and tended to experience more failure! Instead of taking these failures as signs that they should give up, they saw them as signs to continue, only in a different way. Babies understand this perfectly. When we watch a baby as he or she learns to walk we enjoy their efforts and accept that they will fail a good many times (though possibly not 10,000), before they eventually learn to walk unaided. They keep trying until they succeed.
Unfortunately, children usually learn very quickly after that, that failure is something to be ashamed of and to be avoided if at all possible. Children (and adults come to think of it), avoid the risk of failure in two significant ways, firstly by imitation – reproducing exactly what they have been asked to in a prescribed way and secondly by not trying in the first place. Again, research shows that different approaches are needed – approaches that support children to take risks and experiment, safe in the knowledge that ‘mistakes’ are an essential element of the learning process and that even things that look ‘wrong’ can be right.
“They (children & young people) need to be able to take risks and fail confidently. To do this young people need to enjoy learning, know how to seek out relevant information, apply knowledge and skills in new and imaginative ways and try out ideas in real world situations where they can observe real outcomes and receive generative critical feedback.”Creative Partnerships, national flagship of the UK
“There is no failure. Only feedback”
NLP Presupposition

FoJanga – Foundation for Children and Young People in the Gambia
At the Fajara based centre of FoJanga Foundation for Children & Young People, the curriculum has been developed around creative play. High value has been placed on the design of the environment and the purpose built play structures including multipurpose climbing frames, giant swings, sea saws and monkey bars, all safely built from recycled and locally sourced wood. FoJanga offers ‘Play Care’ throughout the year in flexible After school and Day care programmes for children aged 2 ½ to 13 from 8am – 6pm. We aim to aid children’s all round development through an exciting and varied programme of creative study & learning opportunities. FoJanga aims, by providing information, support and delivering direct services, to stimulate creative potential and contribute to the efforts being made to ensure the ongoing success of children in The Gambia.

www.fojanga.com
E-mail: info@fojanga.com
Tel: 9816381/ 7263906/ 648 3405

Amal, I have been trying to contact you through the email that you gave me and the info@fojanga. The mails keep coming back. We met earlier in the year and I mentioned to you that my healing group might like to have a fund raising day for you. We are set to go but with out word from your self cannot go ahead. Please mail me

sharoncamara@hotmail.co.uk

Guys may the good Lord shower you with more blessings for you are doing a great job with our kids,,,,me as a mom am lovin the way my babys face lights up when we talk of you guys,,,,keep up the good work