I want us to start thinking differently about creativity in the baby room.
Instead of asking the question ‘What can we do that’s creative?’, let’s ask the question ‘How can we do what we’re doing in a more creative way?’.
Shifting the mindset from ‘What?’ to ‘How?’ is a hugely liberating thing to do. When we ask ourselves what we can do, we’re actually asking ourselves the question: ‘What else can I do?’ and who really has the time or energy at the moment to do lots of new things? When we ask what else we can do, more often than not we end up with a massive to do list but without many things actually changing or improving. When we ask the question ‘How…?’, as in ‘How can I do what I’m doing, but in a slightly different way?’, we are not giving ourselves another thing to do and stress about, but we’re inviting in new actions and new possibilities.
So when it comes to creativity in the baby room, think about all the things you do at the moment – think about changing nappies, enjoying mealtimes, sharing snacktime, giving bottles, putting babies to sleep and of course – all that open-ended play! Don’t add anything to the list but instead let’s wonder about how we can do these things to invite more creativity in, both for us and the babies.
To help with this, I find it useful to introduce the idea of possibility thinking.
Possibility thinking is the shift from thinking about ‘what is’ – what is in front of us – to ‘what might be’ – what are the possibilities associated with what is around us. Another way of thinking about this shift is from ‘what is’ to ‘what if’. The idea of thinking about children’s creativity as possibility thinking was introduced by the late Anna Craft and colleagues at The Open University.
Babies are engaged in possibility thinking for so much of the time. They are constantly exploring the environment asking the question ‘what if’ – what if I pull this towards me, what if I push this away, what if I clench this in my fist, what if I put this in my mouth, what if I give this to someone else, what if I put this here, and so on.
Possibility thinking breaks down into seven key features:
- self-determination
- playfulness
- immersion
- imagination
- question-posing
- risk-taking
- innovation
It’s helpful to look at these features because they can prompt us to ask the right kinds of questions about how we might bring more creativity to everything we do in the baby room. Take any activity and combine it with one of these characteristics and straight away you have a reflective prompt to get you thinking about a more creative baby room. Here are some examples…
How can we support babies’ self-determination in cleaning up at the end of mealtimes?
How can we more playful during nappy changes?
How can we be more imaginative when it comes to nap-times?
How can we celebrate babies’ risk-taking in the outdoor play space?
Working with these prompts (and so many others, because you can come up with an endless list of your own!), I have heard so many wonderful small changes that baby room educators have made to their space and practice. Here are three of my absolute favourites:
- In one baby room, they noticed that babies hated having their faces wiped at the end of mealtimes. They decided to enhance self-determination by inviting the babies to clean themselves. They gave the babies wet, warm flannels and watched – with joy – what happened. And yes, there was quite a bit of mess, but there was a huge amount of creative play as well. And the educators figured that they would be changing the babies after lunch anyway so it was no big deal to invite this creativity in.
- One baby room educator told me about a baby who was particularly struggling with nap-time, particularly resistant. The same baby had a passionate love for vehicles and buses in particular. To help the baby start to explore the sleep space with more positivity, they decided to redecorate one of their sleep spaces as if it were a bus. This wasn’t about getting the baby to sleep perfectly for an hour – it was about using our imagination to take the stress out of a particular transition and invite creativity in as a way to help lighten the mood and connect.
- In another nursery, they were wondering what to do about food play. They were concerned that with the cost of living crisis and our sustainability focus, that food play was no longer appropriate for the baby room. At the same time, the educators felt passionate that food play offered babies a chance to explore in a more open-ended way. Because what the babies were exploring was food, they didn’t need to keep on intervening when they put it in their mouths. Thinking with the lens of possibility thinking was helpful because they realised that when babies put things in their mouths, it is a way of asking a question. And when we have to intervene and stop that, babies are stopped from asking a question. On that basis, they decided to write a food play policy that prioritised creativity while still – of course – being mindful of our social and environment context.