Where do your creative ideas come from?

Creativity involves making your ideas, imaginings and/or dreams a reality.

Have you decorated a room in your home?

Have you baked a cake or made a fancy meal?

Have you written a poem or special note inside a card?

No doubt, many times in your life you have used your creativity. Life is a series of inspirations that can become art, stories, projects and more. But how do we capture these creative ideas?

Paying attention to the world around you, keeping a journal of important and meaningful happenings and listening to stories and accounts of others can all be a way to find creative ideas.

A.A. Milne who wrote books starring Winnie the Pooh was inspired by watching his son interact with a bear at the London zoo. That bear had been a mascot for a Canadian troop during WWI and when they were stationed overseas they left the bear in the care of the zoo.

Not only did this bear inspire some wonderful stories of friendship, but, it also inspired stories about the real bear, and that troop of soldiers.

Photos are great tools of inspiration

When I was a teenager I was on an outing with a group of Girl Guides that had us staying the night in a high school gym. This school, we found out, was built on the site of a very bloody battle during the War of 1812. As teenagers that didn't mean very much to us, although we did explore the nearby cemetery to discover graves of unknown soldiers. I was an avid photographer even then and snapped shots of the historic places.

Later, as I was working on an idea for a story about bullying I needed to think of a setting. A school seemed like an appropriate setting since a lot of bullying goes on there. Then that school I visited as a teen came to mind. I dug through my photos to find that specific trip. The photos not only reminded me of the school, but of the cemetery and the battlefield. And suddenly I had a story about bullies and ghosts!

Ghosts on the Soccer Field became the first book I published. A chapter book about bullies and ghosts inspired by a sleepover in a school gym.

I looked more into the War of 1812 as background research for the book and this inspired a class on soldiers, field trips to forts and a unit study! Creativity tends to snowball once it starts!

So dig out those photos - and let the creativity begin!

---

"Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun."

-- Mary Lou Cook

---

Read Inspiring Creativity and allowing it to be free for ideas on how to help kids grow their imagination.