Creativity in Your Home
Exodus 35:35 – He has filled them with skill to do all manner of work of the engraver and the designer and the tapestry maker, in blue, purple, and scarlet thread, and fine linen, and of the weaver—those who do every work and those who design artistic works.
I have gotten some great things from devotionals that I have been reading. The devotional I just finished was called “Your Home Matters” and the devotional on creativity in your home spoke to me. The writer listed five ways to nurture creativity in your home.
Model Creativity – Lead by example. If you want your children to try new foods, find new recipes and make them for the whole family. If you want a child to play on the internet but don’t play yourself, then start taking a class. I have a co-worker who told me a story about his daughter when she was five and her brother was nine. They were teaching the daughter how to ride a bike, but she didn’t want the training wheels on her bike because her brother didn’t have training wheels on his. Kids want to mimic us, so if we do creative things, they will too.
Be okay with the mess that creativity makes – because creativity will be messy. This might be hard for some people, especially if they like things clean and organized. Being creative can be messy. If the child is building a town out of blocks or legos they are going to have blocks or legos everywhere. Painting, drawing, or coloring is going to consist of all of their supplies being out and laying around. When they are done with being creative hang up the new art work and display the new building to help encourage the creativity. Clean up comes afterwards, but while being creative it’s OK that there is a mess.
Remember that imagination is a God-given gift – God made us and he gave us the ability to have an imagination and to be creative. Our imagination allows us to be a Super Hero today, but an artist tomorrow, and an astronaut the next day. Imagination is what allows us to explore far off places in our own back yards, make the next best discovery while cleaning under our beds or our bathrooms, or being the next Prize Winner while playing with our toys. If imagination is encouraged who knows what our children can grow up to be. They could be the first missionary to a remote location in the world, be a member or lead singer of the next great band, or they could become a great Christian writer like C.S. Lewis or J.R.R. Tolkien.
Make your home inspiring – inspiration can come from anywhere. You can do this by doing creative things. You can get involved in what your child is doing by playing an instrument with them, being the bad guy that they the Super Hero is fighting or their sidekick, or help build a town out of Legos. You can take a bike ride in the woods or to a park and inspire them to have a love of nature. You can set down and color a page in their coloring book with them. I found this neat coloring book called “Mommy and Me” and when you open it up to a page on both sides is the same picture. One side says “me” and has a simple coloring page, while the other side says “mommy” and has a more detailed coloring page. This allows for creativity for both the child and you. You could also add inspiring quotes to mirrors or the refrigerator to inspire everyone spiritually. Creativity can even be inspired by our spirits and our relationships with God.
Limit media – this can be a hard one in our society today. Now I really liked this one myself. We are more creative if we are out playing or doing something than setting at home watching TV and playing video games. My sister and I had a playhouse in our backyard growing up. We got to play house in our own little house and we took turns being the owner and having the other one over for tea. I would sing in the backyard pretending that I was a singer on the big stage. We road our bikes on the street behind the house and my sister liked to race them because she was better at riding a bike than I was. We even made up a week of lesson plans and taught school to our stuffed animals and dolls. The question we should ask about media is what are we seeing or hearing when we are watching the TV or playing a video game? Even watching a kid’s movie on the TV, I have seen commercials that are not appropriative for children. The video games are often not appropriative for children, because they are full of violence. The thing is that our society today thinks it’s OK to make these violent video games for teenagers and wonder why the teens are the way they are.
Are you allowing creativity into your home? If not what is holding you back? God created us to be creative.