Crayons: Shapes of Creativity

On Tuesday morning, after the children had their tea break, I happened to observe the children gathering around the table playing with some crayons. Now, to an unobservant and unaware adult, the children may seem like they were only playing with the crayons. What the children had done was that they had taken the box of crayons from the shelf and had found another way to work with it by forming shapes with it.

Now for me, I would view that a jumping point of how to extend the children’s creativity from there. It may not be necessarily just using crayons, but other materials as well, such as matchsticks or pencils. We could also extend and do that as an activity for an art lesson.

The children were forming shapes and houses with it. A trained and experienced educator would take the opportunity to ask the children what they were doing and at the same time ask if they could identify the shapes, make other shapes, or teach other names of shapes, thereby extending their vocabulary as well as their creativity.
Indeed I found it most entertaining as well as interesting, as I observed the interaction between the children as they had found the activity most exciting and would have continued with it had I not asked them to keep the crayons away to start with the dance practice.