Foundation Stage
Creative Development
Requirements
Children's creativity must be extended by the provision of support for their curiosity, exploration and play. They must be provided with opportunities to explore and share their thoughts, ideas and feelings, for example, through a variety of art, music, movement, dance, imaginative and role-play activities, mathematics, and design and technology.
Aspects of Creative Development
Creative Development is made up of the following aspects:
Being Creative - Responding to Experiences, Expressing and Communicating Ideas - is about how children respond in a variety of ways to what they see, hear, smell, touch or feel and how, as a result of these encounters, they express and communicate their own ideas, thoughts and feelings.
Exploring Media and Materials - is about children's independent and guided exploration of and engagement with a widening range of media and materials, finding out about, thinking about and working with colour, texture, shape, space and form in two and three dimensions.
Creating Music and Dance - is about children's independent and guided explorations of sound, movement and music. Focusing on how sounds can be made and changed and how sounds can be recognised and repeated from a pattern, it includes ways of exploring movement, matching movements to music and singing simple songs from memory.
Developing Imagination and Imaginative Play - is about how children are supported to develop and build their imaginations through stories, role-plays, imaginative play, dance, music, design, and art.
What Creative Development means for children
Creativity is about taking risks and making connections and is strongly linked to play. Creativity emerges as children become absorbed in action and explorations of their own ideas, expressing them through movement, making and transforming things using media and materials such as crayons, paints, scissors, words, sounds, movement, props and make-believe.
Creativity involves children in initiating their own learning and making choices and decisions. Children's responses to what they see, hear and experience through their senses are individual and the way they represent their experiences is unique and valuable. Being creative enables babies and children to explore many processes, media and materials and to make new things emerge as a result.
How settings can effectively implement this area of Learning and Development
To give all children the opportunity for effective development and learning in Creative Development practitioners should give particular attention to the following areas.
Positive Relationships
Ensure children feel secure enough to "have a go", learn new things and be adventurous. Value that children can do and children’s own ideas rather than expecting them to reproduce someone else’s picture, dance or model, for example.
Give children opportunities to work alongside artists and other creative adults so that they see at first hand different ways of expressing and communicating ideas and different responses to media and materials. Accommodate children’s specific religious or cultural beliefs relating to particular forms of art or methods of representation.
Enabling Environments
Provide a stimulating environment in which creativity, originality and expressiveness are valued. Include resources from a variety of cultures to stimulate new ideas and different ways of thinking.
Offer opportunities for children with visual impairment to access and have physical contact with artefacts, materials, spaces and movements. Provide opportunities for children with hearing impairment to experience sound through physical contact with instruments and other sources of sound. Encourage children who cannot communicate by voice to respond to music in different ways, such as gestures.
Learning and Development
Present a wide range of experiences and activities that children can respond to by using many of their senses. Allow sufficient time for children to explore and develop ideas and finish working through these ideas. Create opportunities for children to express their ideas through a wide range of types of representation.