Encouraging imagination in Kids

Kids are imaginative. You only have to hang aroundstructured guidelines can develop creative thinkers.
any human under the age of 12 to see how readilyGiven an atypical set of circumstances a creative
their minds turn to fantastical scenarios or charactersthinker can come up with a solution that fits,
that may or may not exist in our world.whereas a child that is encouraged to only give
Kid's lives today are full of structured activities.answers to specific questions will invariably be stuck.
School can span the main hours of the day withImagination also lets kids role-play foreign situations
extra-curricular activities often crammed in theand experiences that they have yet to experience
morning and afternoon, not to mention commutingfor themselves but may have been exposed to. By
which can often be very time consuming.putting themselves in that particular scenario they can
While all these factors are significant in the educationunderstand more fully the dynamics involved in say;
of a child, it is important that kids also get time tobuying a loaf of bread, driving a car, sailing a ship or
express their own creativity and imagination, outsideblasting to the moon.
of a structured environment. Because the benefits ofEncouraging kids to have imaginative minds needn't
this free time are hard to quantify, it can often bemean letting them loose to do whatever they want,
neglected and undervalued.uncontrolled and unsupervised. Simply setting up a
Why is imagination important?specific space with a variety of creative tools, where
"Knowledge", as Einstein says, "can get us from A tosupervision is distant but there if needed, can set
B. Imagination can take us anywhere."them on a path to creative problem-solving.
The ability to think out of the box, out of strictly