Understanding Creativity in Early Childhood

Book excerpt: Do you want to understand young children′s development in greater depth? Would you like to see how they view the world around them, and what they think the future might look like? Creativity in early childhood is an area of fascination for all those working with young children, and this book investigates why children create, and what their creations mean. Chapters describe the processes and depict the outcomes of meaning-making, and of making room for children′s voices through the open-ended activity of drawing. Issues examined include: - the increasingly popular use of multi-modal texts; - links between creativity and literacy; - the importance of art in early childhood; - concrete examples of children′s meaning-making, from the author′s research. We see how non-verbal and verbal communication is used to convey meaning, and how children′s voices emerge; the important role imagination and narrative play in the early and continuing development of children is emphasized throughout the book. Ideal for students of early childhood, and for anyone working with young children, this book is a revelatory guide to the mind of the young child.