Usage & Applications

People who solve problems well and seek unique approaches and solutions to problems are typically creative people (Kumar, n.d.). By being creative a person has acquired a useful skill for his or her career, education, and future.  Parents should especially encourage creativity in small children by encouraging participation in arts and crafts.  Kumar (n.d.) offers several tips to encourage creativity in children in her article, Encourage Creativity in Kids by Using Arts and Crafts, to include:
1.)  Encourage free creative exploration - this is done by not passing judgement on a child's work and refraining from offering a personal opinion about the work. 
2.)  Adapt to the child's ideas - An example of this would be a child painting a tree purple.  Instead of telling the child "trees are green", allow and encourage the child to explain why he or she painted the tree purple.
3.)  Encourage children to use creative problem solving - offer children a problem and allow them to come up with his or her own creative solution.

Research pertaining to creativity in adults has been found to produce a bell curve.  There seems to be a peep between the ages of 30 to 40 with a significant drop afterwards.  This finding has lead reasearchers to believe that there is a decline in creativity later in life (Kerka, 1999). For more information regarding creativity in adults click here.

"Ballerina in Forest"