{"id":1344,"date":"2013-01-15T15:52:52","date_gmt":"2013-01-15T22:52:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.littlebrowne.com\/?p=1344"},"modified":"2013-01-15T15:52:52","modified_gmt":"2013-01-15T22:52:52","slug":"breaking-rules-going-against-the-grain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.threeadventure.com\/littlebrowne\/2013\/01\/15\/breaking-rules-going-against-the-grain\/","title":{"rendered":"Breaking Rules: Going Against the Grain"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a>You know how there are things we teach our kids like color inside the lines or don\u2019t write on the walls? I\u2019m not a big fan of teaching kids this stuff. I mean, of course we don\u2019t want Sammy going all over the house writing on the walls but why not give kids a wall they can write on? In my mind this will promote creativity but at the same time you are still teaching rules because they need to understand it is only this ONE wall.<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s imperative that we teach kids to think outside the box, be creative, and look at things from all perspectives. We live in such an odd world right now. When school funding gets cut what\u2019s the first to go\u2026art, music, sports? It\u2019s crazy to me that we are teaching the creativity out of our kids. We\u2019re saying math is more important than creative thinking. Beyond that, why in the world are we teaching math to kids today the same way we did 20, 30, and 50 years ago?<\/p>\n

Times have changed and it\u2019s time to raise our kids to be free thinkers, artistic, creative, and open minded. I think math and science are massively important, but some kids are going to be into those things so we need to have the arts available to them as well. Sir Ken Robinson has given a couple of absolutely amazing and spot on talks at TED, here is a link<\/a> to one of them. In this one he talks about how he thinks schools kill creativity.<\/p>\n

I got a bit serious there but I have a point. Annie and I are hoping to raise Sammy to be creative and free thinking. We can teach him this while still having a solid structure in place and teaching him \u201cthe rules\u201d, in our opinion. One way of being creative with him (although he is still too young to understand) was by painting his room different colors and painting his ceiling to look like the sky. Recently Annie and I went in to add some \u201cdecorative\u201d painting\u2026nothing special, just fun stuff to make his room a little more quirky.<\/p>\n

The theme in his room has been Dr. Seuss inspired to some degree, which is where we came up with the squiggley line ideas, etc. As he gets older we will give him a wall in his room to draw or paint on. I think that\u2019s a cool outlet for a child. We\u2019re also thinking about using magnetic paint or chalk board paint, or both, and paint some part of one of the walls and use that as a place where we can put photos. On magnetic paint we could use small magnets to hold them up and on the chalk board paint we could pin the photos and use chalk to write next to each photo.<\/p>\n

Anyways\u2026the purpose of this post was to show you Sammy\u2019s room now that we are pretty much done painting it but obviously I had to get on my soapbox for a second. There are important rules we should pass on to our children, but being a \u201ctraditional\u201d thinker or someone that only thinks inside the system is not one of the things we should pass on\u2026in my opinion. I think creative, free, independent thinking is crucial to being a problem solver. So, squiggley paint lines in his room is hopefully the start to all that\u2026haha.<\/p>\n

What kind of creative things have you done with your kids? Cheers all!<\/p>\n\n\n

\"Cincopa<\/div>\n