Creating a Creative Child

With my limited experience as a mother (5 years), and some good advice from Mr. Lee and others (I will mention my friend Mr. Lee a lot because he has really good ideas about pedagogy), I can say that creating a creative child is not difficult. It may be that first child temperament that makes parenting so easy or it may be simply that a curious child is a creative child. The difficulty is extending this creativity to the teen years. Some things I have done that are productive are:

1. Get them working with their hands. Problem solving is involved in an art project that has gone bad that you want to make right. Also building things such as woodwork and following directions. The question is that when something goes wrong, can the child work out how to fix it.
2. Answer questions. This one is hard for me especially after a long day. Any question a child has asked must be answered even if it is done at a later time. It is even better if you can't answer the question and you have to look it up. The child then gets comfortable with the resources that are needed to learn. They may not groan like I did whenever my mother said 'go look it up.'
3. Be a young child yourself. If I see something in nature that I wonder about, I say it out loud and try to find the answer.
4. Make these things seem like natural everyday occurrences.

Graphic Arts

Dutch artist MC Escher, featured on the wallpaper, is one of my favorite artists. I could get lost in many of his paintings, staring at the endless staircases trying to find the end! According to Wikipedia, Escher began incorporating math into his artwork around 1936. After traveling throughout the Mediterranean he wrote a paper about how to mathematically create artwork. His work with geometric shapes are playful yet mysterious (especially for me since my favorite subject was geometry) and yet he never did well in school. The wallpaper picture I have above is titled Relativity 1953.

But what does math have to do with patterns and art? With math we can create patterns and with patterns we can explore math. With a series of equations, a computer can create infinite patterns and designs. Or we can go to some North or West African towns and find patterns on the walls of the houses. Below are houses located in Northern Ghana.

Welcome

This blog is targeting parents with young children who would like their children to be as proficient in math and science as they are in English and social studies. If you have children in elementary school and younger and are apprehensive about teaching them math, this is the place for you. If you can not figure out a place to start on their development, start here.

Things that you will not see on my page:

• Math problems that you will see in school
• Routine test questions
• How to solve problems
• Textbook problems
• Worksheets
  

Things that you will see on my page:

• Math in art
• Math in music
• Math in sports
• Math in everyday life
• Tips on how to expose children to everyday math (You will know they are learning, they will think it's just fun)
• Quarterly newsletter for African American parents of young children.
• Interesting math links and math trivia

If you see any banned items on the blog write me an angry comment!