Our pioneering discoveries

All those involved have begun to reflect on the use and success of the workshop approach in the nursery.

Many practitioners were familiar with developing workshops but they were often not fully realised and creative activities tended to be “cutting and sticking” or very adult led and product based.

A fundamental aim of the project became really looking at how we can maintain and encourage creativity in young children whilst exploring how what adults provide, do, say and expect affects it.

We also need to enable parents and practitioners to become more creative and need to consider:

Did the Six Thinking Hats® method help? The short answer is ‘yes’ and we feel it helped the adults think carefully about how they talk to children and to plan appropriate questions before an activity or session.

Other thinking tools could be used but the advantage of the Hats method is that it can be developed and used with children as they continue through education and can be applied to many learning situations.

  • What skills do they need to teach the children?
  • What support do they offer?
  • What questions do they ask?
  • When do they ask?
  • What do they provide?
  • When not to get involved in the childrens’ creative process.

What have we learned

From our evaluation of the project it seems clear that there are two key points to consider:

  • Organisation of materials.
  • The role of the adult.

The children worked best when the materials were categorised and their potential was discussed beforehand.

Adults played a key role in asking the right questions at the right time and knowing when to step back. Questions need to be about the potential properties and uses of the materials and we discovered we needed to allow children time to come up with ideas. Having a task in mind (eg making a landscape box) is not the same as getting the children to produce the same object. However, children need time to explore materials freely before moving on to a task-based activity.

It was interesting to note how few materials the children worked with so again by sorting and categorising materials clearly, the children can more easily make their choices.

It is clearly not enough to provide the materials and leave the children to work alone. Children appeared to need adults to be present if not actively involved. This need may diminish over time as children become more confident but raises questions about the needs of the less confident and new children.