Saturday, August 8, 2009

The Benefits of Creative Toys for Developing Minds

By Oliver Jackson Carter

To teach creativity is thought not to be possible, but there are particular types of toys that are designed to help open the creative gates inside young children's minds, providing them with the necessary tools to develop their own creative personality.

Creative toys provide children with the tools they need to make something of their own, which gives them an overwhelming sense of achievement and joy, particularly when they have physically created it themselves with their own two hands. The long term benefit that this will have on their minds creativity will be immense.

Although other children's toys allow them to be creative in some ways, like the way that they can create scenarios for action figures in creative ways, but creative toys allow children to create things that have never before existed. The satisfied sense of achievement that a small child gets from creating something brand new can be a catalyst for further creativity in later life.

Children's creative toys are often simply scaled-down, safer versions of equipment or supplies that adults use, like a set of toys that have been made by the Discovery Channel, the Ultimate Pottery Wheel and the Sew Fun Sewing Machine.

These are just simplified versions of a sewing machine and a pottery wheel, which in themselves are quite expensive and fairly hazardous pieces of equipment that are used by adults to express their own creativity. The children's versions allow them to get exposure to these kinds of creative and artistic outlets early on in life.

There are toys that allow children to be creative, but are nowhere near as complex as the pottery wheel and sewing machine. These are toys such a sets of felt pens, paints or building blocks. Although these toys are catalysts for creativity, like the pottery wheel and sewing machine they only enlighten children to the visual arts. There are other creative toys that are designed to bring out different areas of creativity in young children.

There are creative toys that allow children to interact with characters or creations such as digital pets. These kinds of toys are a great way open up a sense of creative responsibility in a consequence-free environment in young, developing minds.

Toys that invoke creativity in the minds of young children are immeasurably more beneficial than toys that are purely used for entertainment. The benefits do not end in childhood either, allowing a child to use creative toys as their mind develops will set them up with the necessary tools to have a creative mind for life. - 16890

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