A Creative Adventure

A Creative Adventure

Voice-over: For a child, life is a creative adventure ... a time to explore, imagine and express, 'This is who I am!'Child: See for yourself!Voice-over: Experiences in art, music and drama are all ways for children to get in touch with who they are... And what's great is the more we as parents and teachers support their creativity, the more confident our children will be, the more they'll learn, plus, the greater their success.

Male Teacher: Does it smell like purple? (child giggles) What does it smell like? Perfume?Female Teacher: Are you going to hide a spider in the flower garden? Where's the spiders? What's that one? Two. Purple flowers.Voice-over: Life at this age is about discovery. They're always experimenting and it doesn't have to look like anything. It's just for the sheer enjoyment of creating.Female Teacher: Look at your garden! Do you see any spiders in there? Oh - I see one!

Female Teacher: You're going up and down..Child: Down!Teacher: Down. Voice-over: These little guys right now are just little scientists all ready to go and they're exploring and it's the cause and effect of 'I have control of the world, I can make things happen and I did it'.

Female Teacher: You went round and round and round in a circle!Voice-over: It might look like it's a mess but if you step back and look at what they're accomplishing, what they have learned is more important than the mess. The paint's going to come out. What we put in their minds is going to last a lifetime.Female Teacher: Ok, now put your hands right there and press down real hard! Pick them up!Child: I'm painting me!

Voice-over: The art is really about the child. And when you show a child a product or you say make a ladybug but make it this way. You take away the joy of just working with the material and you're not allowing the child to express the world as they view it. It's their joy, it's their uniqueness that we want to hold on to and everybody does something different.Child: My desk smells like pottery...Child: Mine is all sticky!

Female Teacher: Ooooh! You made a what?Voice-over: I think it's very important to give children the freedom to create and give them as much time as they need. Their imaginations get to working and it's just so neat to see them.Child: My grandma makes pots!Voice-over: We utilize the clay to produce pottery which is an art around here and children see that.Child: I made it a ... (children laugh) I got it on my desk!

Female Teacher: Let's get some flour. Let's get some more flour! Here's your ... over here, now pour it on your ... Voice-over: Before I was always very, very protective. I'm still protective now it's not that I'm not, but I let them make choices now. Before I was always telling them what to do.Female Teacher: Brandon, look! What color should we put in there? We have raspberry and blue and green and red - pick a color!Child: Green!

Voice-over: Slowly Vicky started coming over to do home visits with me. It's made me more open, more willing to try anything with them. They teach me something new about themselves everyday, things that I didn't know. Maybe I was so prejudgemental before about oh you know you're too young to do this. Now I say, you know, 'Wow you can do that.'

Voice-over: The children see all kinds of dances going on. And it's important to our culture and they just love it.(music, drums, singing)

Male Teacher: Are you ready to try the rabbit dance now? Voice-over: Times like this it brings out a whole personality out of a child other than being in the classroom. I want them to have the full understanding, the feeling of 'Wow, this is neat, I can dance'! These kids invent their own styles and I think that freedom of expression to be in your own little world, it relaxes them to the point where he wants to just be creative.

Voice-over: The interest in the hospital came from the children. So we started thinking about how we could build our

own hospital.Child: Which way is it? This way, this way or this way? Female Teacher: This person was sitting outside the door of the hospital, and I was talking to her, and she said she just didn't feel good.

Child: Why she don't got no face now?Female Teacher: Well, that can happen.Child: Somebody kicked her mouth off.Female Teacher: Do you think you can take care of her?Child: I can help!Voice-over: Getting a project started like this I think is easy if you really listen to your children.Child: She's not breathing.

Teacher: Doctor! Doctor! This person is not breathing.Child: Put something on her nose.Female Teacher: Look over on the shelf - is there something we can put on her nose to help her breathe?Child: I know - tape!Voice-over: Also posing things as questions and really relying on their wonderful problem solving skills which I think is really a creative thing.

Teacher: Do you know which bone it is? Do you think we need to take an x-ray?Child: Yeah! I'll show you what's wrong with her. It's her head bone.Child: She's breathing now!

Teacher: You want to go somewhere on the spaceship today - where do you think we should go?Children: Mercury.Teacher: Mercury? Mercury? How about you, Shelby? Where do you want to go? Would you like to go to Mercury with them? Ok, how about you, Henry? Where would you like to fly?Child: Venus.Teacher and children: Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, blastoff!

Voice-over: It's interesting when you watch their play cause it's rather like a dream. I mean you can jump from Mars to Venus to Mercury it doesn't matter. And so it's always good to step back and see the things they come up with.Child: Hey, where are you taking us?

Child: And did you know, in outer space, the food all floats, and you have to grab it with your mouth?Child: Let's go to Earth!Child: Ok, we're going back. Hey! We're going to hit the moon - turn right! Turn right, we're about to hit Mercury! Ok, we're on Earth. My air tank - if I didn't carry air tanks, it would, then we wouldn't breathe. Child: Yeah, but I can take them off in the spaceship.

Voice-over: I think a lot of people think creativity is just sort of playing. I mean it's not very important. But in fact when you look at later life, what adults need to do to be successful is to think and be creative and it's really interesting cause they find that around 4th or 5th grade if kids aren't creative and able to stretch questions, they find school more difficult. So the creativity becomes very important later as you're learning and it gives you a much more positive view on yourself. I'm somebody who does these neat things. What comes out of my head is wonderful and exciting.

Child: Look at mine! This is mine!Voice-over: She needs to be able to know that whatever it is she wants to do, she can do it. And she feels so good about herself.Child: Lookit, Mommy! Mother: Oh, that's pretty good, I see that!Voice-over: Just to see her little eyes, like 'Wow', she did it.Child: That's my ladybug!Mother: That's a nice ladybug - I like that!

Voice-over: If you took the time to give a little child a drum and maybe for five minutes just let him go. You'll see his little spirit come out and he'll be a whole different person.

Mother: Do you like that? What can you do with that? Can you show Mommy what you can do with that?Voice-over: You know doing things like this it just teaches them more. They try harder. I think years from now they'll be a better person because they're always going to do the best that they can. It amazes me. I just love it. I love it.

Voice-over: When kids are creative they are more involved, excited, learn more, more motivated, stay with it longer. It's really powerful.

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