Children are taught to read and write and sit still in class, but these skills are of little use without the wildly creative mind of a child. We give them the proper tools to build letters into words and words into sentences, but are they given the proper tools to build their imaginations? To create the world they choose to live in rather than merely adapt to the world that is presented?

Through the industrial age, children were taught to be efficient workers, and that served a need. Now, that jobs are easily out sourced, it is not our efficiency and mechanics that move us ahead, but our ability to be creative, to create and recreate a new and better life.

Our children need the tools to become the architects of their own imagination to design and build a better space in which to inhabit and in which to invite others to join them in living.

Give a child a stack of blocks to play or colors, paper, scissors and glue then stand back as their imagination expands across the living room floor.  Be warned, however, this does make life a little sticky and glittery at times (all the time), and walking can become an obstacle course. 

The art of play can not be underestimated.  As Friedrich Froebel, the founder of Kindergarten, said, “Play is the work of children.”  Play is how they experiment and learn how to build the world of tomorrow.  Toys and tools that allow children to manipulate, imagine and create are the biggest brain builders.  Some of my favorites are listed below.  You can find samples of some under the Toys heading at DreamArc, if you need any for your little ones to fill their growing hands and minds.

Construction Toys

The Building Blocks page at DreamArc and the earlier blog entry here give a list of some of the brain building power of these little cubes, rectangles and cylinders. 

Toys for Developing Abstract Design & Spatial Awareness

For the manipulation of color, shapes and design beyond the basic building blocks

Imaginative Play Toys

Puppets and play things to add color and dimension, bringing the imagination to life

Crayons, Markers, Chalk & Paint

The basics to illustrate the stories pouring out of those brains, and for designing the Robot Dragons and Amusement Parks of tomorrow

Remember when you leave for the office in the morning with your suit covered in glitter –

Playing Is Hard Work!    

And Important!

We must write our own story & not rely on our back story. We can not live forever in what has already been.  We must create what will be.

I have been pondering the idea of writing our own story, partly because I love to write and am about to undertake a large writing project. (see NaNoWriMo post and future post on Thinking Sideways)  But more importantly, I believe that we have to be able to see the future we want in order to achieve it.  We have to clearly chart the steps or story that will take us there. 

Designing the world to be

The children’s Story Art section of DreamArc has also opened the idea of drawing as well as writing the future.  This exercise can open the right brain up to the process since it speaks in pictures rather than words.  The right brain is more intuitive and imaginative.  Creative thinking is what we will need to begin the process of designing the future we want.  The left brain will have plenty of opportunity to jump in and plot the course of our future story, but we must conceive the story design first.

Architectural Process

Perhaps this possible process intrigues me, because it is the process I have taken as an architect.  The two sides of the brain have to participate on a fairly consistent basis:  picturing shapes and mass then moving back and forth between program requirements to building codes to square footage requirements and back to the story of who will inhabit this space and how they wish to live, work, worship and play.

Children’s Story Time

These thoughts all bring me back to the Story Art Gallery.

I believe that children have found the key.

Imagine Your Story

Draw Your Story

Tell Your Story

Construct Your Story

          Then…

                   Stay There And Play A While!