Imagination can take you places

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” said Albert Einstein.

I whole heartedly agree. I believe it is extremely important, especially in children to nurture imagination and make it grow. Most children are imaginative. But formal schooling which lays emphasis on scoring marks by giving exact answers (especially in many of the Indian schools) mostly kills imagination. 

Most schools in India, have printed colouring books for Art (especially in the lower classes) and they expect the children to colour within the lines. This is an activity which totally kills creativity and imagination.(If you want to know why read this). I do wholeheartedly endorse Susan Striker's 10 cardinal rules for teaching Art. (a long time back I used to teach Art to children and these rules were exactly what I believed in)

 

Anti-colouring books (By Susan Striker) are a good exercise to develop critical thinking skills and to nurture imagination in Children. My two  children (son who is 13 and daughter who is 9) absolutely love them.

I too do these exercises with them and I, despite being an adult, thoroughly enjoy it.

We treat this time with reverence--it is a 'special activity with mummy' time.  If they have fought with each other or disobeyed  me,then I don't do it that day. (The point I am trying to make is that they truly treasure the time I spend doing stuff like this with them).

Here are a few pages of what we did. On each page we took a small part of the picture, to do the exercise and then passed the sheets around so each one got to do each exercise. Click each image to see the enlarged view.

 

 

'Space explorers have discovered flowers growing on the moons of Jupiter. What do they look like?' asks the question. You can see what I drew :P :) and also what my children drew.

 

What do you wish for?

How do you look when you first get up in the morning?

What do you think God looks like? (My daughter did not know what to draw for this one. So she said she was just copying mine. I loved what my son drew and wrote ('a form which can take any shape') which I felt was really profound for his age.)

Some people think there is a man or a woman in the moon and others say the moon is made of green cheese. What do you think of when you look at the moon?

I loved what my daughter drew for this one.(she has drawn an alien). I liked my son's drawing too.

If any of you want to do this activity (whether or not you have children, trust me it's a great creative thinking exercise) , do post it on your blogs (if you have one) with a link back to this post and I would surely have a look!

Vive la imagination!