Early Childhood Education: The Role of Creativity in Development

This essay delves into the significance of creativity within early childhood education and care. It emphasizes creativity's crucial role in fostering cognitive skills, emotional intelligence, and social development among young children. The paper discusses various perspectives on creativity, highlighting its positive impacts on language development, critical thinking, and physical abilities through play-based learning, drawing, and painting. It also acknowledges the importance of monitoring children's play to ensure it aligns with their developmental needs. The essay concludes by underscoring how creative activities contribute to children's overall growth and their ability to express themselves, interact with others, and understand basic concepts, ultimately preparing them for adulthood. The references include key research and studies that support the claims made throughout the essay.

Running head: EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION AND CARE
EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION AND CARE
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

2EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION AND CARE
In the early childhood setting, the concept of creativity is basically related to art like
drawing, painting etc. It is considered to be a very important part of developing the problem
solving and innovative thinking level among the children (Engelen et al., 2013). This paper
shall elaborate on presenting the importance of creativity for the early childhood development
and curriculum provision. It shall discuss the different perspectives on the role of creativity,
highlighting both the positive and negative sides of it.
Creativity can be defined as the action of transforming ideas and imagination into
reality. According to Hamre et al. (2014), creativity plays a significant role in the early
development of children in all domains such as language, cognitive skills, and emotions,
physical and social skills. All the activities that are involved are basically open-ended in
order to develop the analysing and thinking abilities of the children right from their early
childhood. Miendlarzewska and Trost (2014) in this context have claimed that “children have
an innate capability which assist them in channelling their curiosity that makes them think out
of the box”. It makes them feel positive about themselves and help them in experiencing the
happiness of being different while developing new skills.
Furthermore, a wide range of researches and studies have highlighted the vitality of
critical thinking and creativity in every fields of child’s learning. Fox and Schirrmacher
(2014) claims that creativity aids in the development of the children through play based
learning all across the curriculum. They too in this regard have further claimed that active
playing, drawing and paintings offer notable advantages for the emotional, social, cognitive
and physical development at the same time, is the key to creativity. However, Rosen et al.
(2014) have highlighted a significant negative impact of play on children. Indeed play
impacts the entire being of a child, it has a significant impact on their self-image. It is very
important to monitor how children play and what they play with. It would be of a great value
if they play with the toys that are good representation of that particular child.

3EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION AND CARE
In terms of physical development, it is to mention that the different types of arts and
crafts taught to the pre-school children for encouraging their movement helps in developing a
fine motor skills, coordination and control among them. While children manipulate the tools
and they explore the assembly and construction, they unconsciously get involved in the
physical interaction with their environment and world (Engelen et al., 2013). For instance,
painting helps the kids to know the way of holding and controlling paintbrush and defining
their preferences to use them with their right or left hand. In terms of emotional development,
it is stated that when children make use of different tools and arts for expressing their
thoughts that they are unable to share verbally. Creative arts helps them to release their
feelings by means of putting them on artworks. These activities also allow the children to feel
proud of themselves and their achievements and get mastery of their surrounding
environment while crafting something.
Furthermore, in terms of social development, being in a creative environment
altogether, children learn sharing and interacting with others. Dancing, singing and drama
helps in the development of some indispensable social skills like respect, sympathy and
communication. With the same, in terms of intellectual development, Mervis (2017) have
opined that children at their basic level develop abilities of measuring and sorting things.
Asking themselves basic questions and getting engaged in such activities help them in
fostering their understanding about the basic concepts.
Hence, from the above analysis it is to conclude that creativity plays a very important
role in the overall development of child and it also improves their adulthood. They help in
encouraging active learning and exploration among children.

4EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION AND CARE
References:
Engelen, L., Bundy, A. C., Naughton, G., Simpson, J. M., Bauman, A., Ragen, J., ... &
Schiller, W. (2013). Increasing physical activity in young primary school children—
it's child's play: A cluster randomised controlled trial. Preventive medicine, 56(5),
319-325.
Fox, J. E., & Schirrmacher, R. (2014). Art and creative development for young children.
Cengage Learning.
Hamre, B., Hatfield, B., Pianta, R., & Jamil, F. (2014). Evidence for general and domain‐
specific elements of teacher–child interactions: Associations with preschool children's
development. Child development, 85(3), 1257-1274.
Mervis, C. B. (2017). Category structure and the development of categorization.
In Theoretical issues in reading comprehension (pp. 279-308). Routledge.
Miendlarzewska, E. A., & Trost, W. J. (2014). How musical training affects cognitive
development: rhythm, reward and other modulating variables. Frontiers in
neuroscience, 7, 279.
Rosen, L. D., Lim, A. F., Felt, J., Carrier, L. M., Cheever, N. A., Lara-Ruiz, J. M., ... &
Rokkum, J. (2014). Media and technology use predicts ill-being among children,
preteens and teenagers independent of the negative health impacts of exercise and
eating habits. Computers in human behavior, 35, 364-375.