Методы развития творческой активности у детей дошкольного возраста

An essential element of the teaching system, that is decisive when it comes to its value, is the set of educational methods. The prominent place amongst those methods is occupied with methods developing creative activity, because the main element deciding of maximizing the child’s developmental chances is its creative activity. The subject matter offered during classes is also a stimulus for the child’s own expression and it enables gaining new experiences and skills. Creating diverse situations that encourage children to take actions, that lead to experiencing the reality in various ways, that stimulate curiosity and interest and placing a child in the situation of open problems, is conductive to the child’s development. Therefore, in the contemporary pedagogy it is particularly accented, that there is the need to stimulate the initiative, activity and independence constantly [Podhajecka 2008, 2011].

In nursery schools there exists unconstrained child’s creation expressed with artistic or music activities and exercises or doing some DIY. The main goal is to train imagination, thinking, expressing experiences and emotions and derivatively, somehow additionally, or to train the efficiency of hands, gestures or eyes. While using methods that release the creative activity of children it is totally free to choose the topic, material and technique. They feel free to play with colours without paying any special attention to forms. They use the ability of gesticulation and facial expression in order to show their thoughts and feelings while playing a variety of creative and imitative games. They also dance freely while hearing records or get into the rhythm of a song that is being sung. They are able to compose and express the rhythm using simple musical instruments. That kind of classes let the children release all of their creative power and give them a chance of affirmation of what is ‘me’. It also enables the expression of sensations, emotions and knowledge gained through their own and group experiences.

Thus, while working with children there should be used the methods that are connected with the child’s free and spontaneous actions that can release their creative activity. Those methods include:

The Project Method. A project is a single undertaking with great complexity. It is limited with time and has an interdisciplinary character. It also brings very good effects that join some practical and mental operations. Such an undertaking has: aims, the ways of their realization and deadlines for particular stages of the project and for the whole project, specific executors and receivers. It is done with the use of some resources and has a specific way of measuring the fact to what extent the aim was achieved. The project is being accomplished by the group of children for quite a long time and towards the end it is crowned with a material product. The time devoted in order to achieve the goal depends on the pace of children’s work. It is not planned by the teacher in advance.

The essence of the project method is determined by the children’s self-reliant work. During that time they are able to practice many abilities. Children are engaged into the project that is carried out from the time of planning till evaluation. The choice of the topic depends of the children’s interest and their cognitive capabilities not of the plan set at the beginning by the teacher. Only then the teacher introduces curricular contents.

Children gain their knowledge while searching for the answers to some questions or through the research activity. The project operations include many fields of teaching and abilities. Classes are focused on the research activity, searching for answers to the questions while using all of the materials and they are not planned by the teacher in order to teach particular content. The teacher just helps with learning the input through the discussion or while taking it over.

Nursery school children may carry out two types of educational projects:

• •    The research project depends on collecting and systematizing information about particular issues. As a result of that there may come into being such products as albums, interviews or drawings.

• •    The project of local operations relies on taking some actions in the local environment (also in the nursery school itself).

The project’s realization is according to the following stages:

• 1.    Establishing the project’s topic – the topic of the project comes from the children’s initiative, sometimes it can be suggested by parents or the teacher. The teacher tests the level of children’s knowledge concerning that topic and possibilities of the project’s realization. It is also the teacher who matches the range of the problem to the programme. If the children are interested and there are conditions to carry out the project and in the meantime it is possible to realize the programme aims then the teacher can make a decision that the topic is appropriate and possible to be carried out. The topic’s exact

• 2.    Establishing the range of the project – both the teacher and the children prepare the list of questions about what they want to find out thanks to the project. Then, the teacher and the children prepare operations for the project. They might be field operations, experts’ visits (here might join in some parents).

• 3.    Carrying out the project – children undertake the research actions (in the field, interviews with experts, perform experiments).

• 4.    Presenting the project – children present the knowledge gained according to their own ideas – by means of descriptions, drawings, staging and all other forms of activities. The teacher supports ideas concerning presentations and their realization. The final is a great event for all of the project participants and celebration for the whole nursery school.

• 5.    Summing up of the project – the teacher while talking to children states what they have learned. If necessary the teacher may put new questions and then they repeat the actions and their presentation. The teacher also needs to analyze and access which of the programme aims were executed, what children should know and be able to do according to the programme and what knowledge and abilities they gained while carrying out the project.

formulating is established through negotiations between children and their teacher.

Constructing board games. While working with nursery school children a big role is devoted to constructing board games by the children themselves. It contributes to engaging their creative potential and broadening their mental possibilities. Next, while establishing with the other child what the rules in force are and respecting them while playing the game, there will be some interpersonal abilities molded in children and some emotional resistance developed.

The games that children may construct themselves are especially attractive for them. They are fascinated by creating various variants of the game and they negotiate with passion the rules that are going to be in force. They adjust the rules to boards and boards to the rules; they invent a number of traps and bonuses and all that is in order to let the game be more interesting. When the game is no longer attractive it is possible to introduce some changes or create a new game.

Constructing games may be linked with various kinds of education. By selecting games you can make different situations more mathematical, you can teach coding and decoding, using various symbols or creating your own ones. It is also of great importance to gain other logical and mathematical experiences: ranking some elements according to the set criteria, establishing criteria for already existing series, linking some parts into the whole, searching for repeating regularity, counting, comparing the numbers of sets, fixing diversity while choosing the winner and finally intensive training by stating the results of the addition and subtraction. What is more, games are great in developing children’s speech, train memory and teach how to use various rules, e.g. spelling.

Constructing games classes may be led with only one child and also with a group of children. While working with the group it is the teacher who helps the children make couples in which they construct the games. The teacher takes care so that in each couple there were children with similar cognitive and executive abilities.

Each game is like a story based on the same pattern (the board, pawns indicating particular participants and the race up to the finishing line). In each game the adventures might be different. Its subject matter is dictated by children’s imagination and ingenuity. Yet, their scheme is similar: there are animals, people or vehicles that race on the route. In all of the games there are also some traps and bonuses that make them more interesting and exciting.

The board in a particular game is like a record of an invented story. It should be drawn up on big paper sheets to let it be more legible. While drawing it a child learns how to code information. Numerous agreed signs, drawings or words have to be understandable for both playing sides. The chasing players are usually pawns, small pictures or Kinder Surprise toys. There is also important a dice with the proper number of pips.

More difficult variants of games have got more complex mathematical strands. There aren’t many stories and adventures are expressed with numerical values. The range of mathematical activities is wider.

The way of constructing all of the games is similar and requires:

• -    drawing the route of the race, which is a properly long path, measuring the right size of tiles and setting the place for the start and finishing line,

• -    establishing who is going to race, thinking of some traps and bonuses and marking them clearly on the route of the race.

What is more, in order to construct the game a child needs to know that:

• >    each player has got a representative which is his pawn that is to jump on the tiles of the path,

• >    players throw the dice in turns, count the pips and then move their pawns forward in accordance with the proper number on the dice,

• >    there is the need to count the number fast and try not to be wrong and it is worth to check whether others were not wrong,

• >    at the end of the race there is a need to throw exactly as many pips on the dice as there are tiles to finish the race, if there are more dots then you need to wait,

• >    the winner is the player that reaches the finishing line as the first,

• >    instructions and rules are set while drawing the board together (each new game requires drawing a new board).

In order to let the children construct the game they need the following accessories:

• -    sheets of paper, Bristol boards, scraps of smooth wallpapers, fabrics,

• -    the dice

• -    felt-tip pens, crayons, scissors, coloured paper, sticky tape,

• -    Kinder Surprise toys,

• -    small toy cars,

• -    animal figurines,

• -    pawns, pebbles, buttons,

• -    blocks to measure tiles of the path,

• -    strings,

• -    lollipop or ice-cream sticks,

• -    rubber bands,

• -    clothes pegs,

• -    dominoes, can be made of paper, created by children if needed,

• -    small homogeneous objects, e.g. beans, chestnuts,

• -    postcards,

• -    measuring tapes,

• -    pick-a-sticks,

• -    playing cards.

Celestyn Freinet’s techniques. In the educational and teaching work of the nursery school, in order to release productive activeness in children, there may be used some of the following Freinet’s techniques:

• >    artistic expression - children’s unconstrained creation: verbal, artistic, music, motor and in the field of DIY,

• >    classroom bulletin - thematically collected materials that are used among other things in order to decorate the classroom, as a display of important current information and also to exchange mails between nursery schools,

• >    correspondence - writing letters, classroom bulletins and tape recordings,

• >    issue portfolios, thematic albums,

• >    self-prepared staging,

• >    interviews,

• >    searching experiences,

• >    planning classroom work weekly together with children, summing up which of the planned works were done [Prokop 1991: 2].

Taking into consideration Freinet’s pedagogical ideas while working with children there should be obeyed first and foremost two principles:

• 1.    Freedom – it depends on choosing the topic for classes or games so that it was compatible with children’s needs and desires.

• 2.    Motivation – a child needs to know what is a particular activity done for and who will need it.

Appropriate tools and materials may enable a child to release unconstrained expression and that plays a major role in Freinet’s nursery school. They are: paintbrushes and sets of school paints, ceramic clay, colourful enamels, glaze, portable electric stoves in order to burn the clay, burins to do linocuts, easy to use linographs to copy them and also all kinds of needles, fabrics and colourful knitting threads to freely embroider various compositions. Beside this, there may be applied all means that enable any contact with the surrounding and that express desires, deepen consciousness with regard to relations between humans and nature. Those tools are: speech, writing, drawing, sculpture, print, music and dance. For each of the tools there is a particular technique of introducing and using it, which requires from the teacher to make careful preparations.

In order to provide proper conditions for children to be able to create there should be separate corners in the nursery school classroom for various techniques and activities. There should be collected some materials and tools needed so that all kids had around the things that would encourage them to work creatively. In Freinet’s nursery school classroom there ought to be:

• -    clay – which is a perfect model-making material;

• -    sand – which children love sifting between fingers, when wet it can become a building material and it can also be a great material for spontaneous experiments connected with measuring and weighing;

• -    water – which may enable experiences in the field of measuring capacity and mixed with paint it becomes a great tool for artistic expressions;

• -    wood – big elements with a variety of shapes to be able to construct a range of building structures, various planks, wooden slats, circles, springs, bobbins, string, some nails and the easiest tools for DIY, chestnuts, acorns and cones;

• -    dolls corner – quite big doll’s house furniture to be able to open it, rearrange, tidy, dolls

with the proper supply of clothing, a cupboard with dishes and all that can let children have imitative games that resemble their family environment;

• -    the board hung low and coloured chalk – to encourage children to draw;

• -    coloured paper and glue for cutouts and tear-outs, various cardboards for sticking on;

• -    paper for drawing – a variety of colours and shapes which give children alternatives to choose from;

• -    soft pencils, coloured crayons, artistic chalk, school and poster paints with the possibly widest range of colours and good brushes;

• -    linoleum and proper burins to cut in it and a duplicator;

• -    various shapes of windowpanes and printing ink or oil paints for repetitive works;

• -    scraps of fabrics, canvas, wool, raffia, straw for embroiders and applications.

The methods listed above are the ways of working with children that depend on releasing their free creative expression through opposing traditional methods to the methods that activate the educational process. They are educational and upbringing methods for nursery school children which apply to their free activeness and creativity.

The aim of leading classes according to those methods relies on the fact that a child does undertakings individually on the basis of assumptions established before. Children’s activeness is steered so that they could find the answers to questions asked by themselves or by their teacher and solve the problems connected with the subject. Children can create e.g. albums, interviews, drawings, create and print texts freely, poems and lyrics, show motor, music and artistic creations which can next be shown in the form of the pre-school board bulletin and correspondence between nursery schools and also create their own music accompaniment.

The originality of those methods depends most of all on the assumption that the teacher, starting with children’s experiences, lets them work according to their own rhythm. The teacher is there to help and encourage children to put still more and more effort in harmony with each child’s individual possibilities. It is the child, though, who makes the decision whether to accept the offer or not. The child is also completely free to choose the topic, material or technique [Jagiello 2010, 2011].

In order to create appropriate conditions for the children’s creation, in each nursery school classroom there ought to be separate corners for various techniques and actions [Klim-Klimaszewska 2010]. What is more, there should be the adequate amount of useful materials and tools so that all of the children could have everything they need to stimulate their creative activeness. The proper tools and materials are of great importance in those methods. They are prepared, arranged and made the children available in the way they could make up the logically organized programme integrity. All that creates proper conditions for every child to work on individual development. Thus, well-prepared undertakings engage the intellect, children’s emotions and become an adventure for them.

Klim-Klimaszewska. Siedlce: Siedlce University of Natural Sciences and Humanities, 2011.