This Inspired Home: The Creative Mind of a Toddler

Meet Coral.

Isn't she beautiful?

Meet Corals new art supplies.

Looks exciting doesn't it. You should have heard her squeals and giggles as she held them in her arms on the way home from the store. She was one excited little girl. Coral loves to use her imagination. She uses it in many different ways, whether it be through creative play (being a "mommy" to her "baby", puzzles, stacking blocks, building train tracks..) or through reading, or coloring and painting.

Andrew and I have always said that we want to allow our children to be as creative as they want to be. We believe that children are born creative beings (sit down with my four year old niece and she will show you just how wild her imagination can be), but somewhere down the road, we lose it. We decide that its time to grow up, and stop pretending like were princesses in a castle, or an astronaut on the moon . The world tells us that our creative side wont get us very far in life (being a painter vs. being a lawyer), and that at a very young age we need to start thinking about our future (ie. writing "goals" in grade three....who knows what career they want to have in grade three??). As we get older, our creative minds get slowly used less and less.

So, Andrew and I have decided that we want to help Coral, and our future children keep their creative spunk that they are born with. Im not saying that we don't want our children to be scholarly, because we do. We just don't want them to lose that ability to use their imagination.

We started her out young, doing finger painting with food on her tray. It was messy, but she loved it.

Then she moved on to crayons. She loves crayons or "nons" as she calls them. Her great-grandparents gave her her first set of crayons a few months ago, and she has been coloring on every piece of paper that she can find ever since.

And now, onto paints. This is Corals first acrylic painting. Yes it was very messy. There was paint everywhere. And it required a bath right after as her little body was also used as a canvas by her. But she enjoyed it so much.