Creative Play

At St. Mark Lutheran Preschool and Childcare, children have many opportunities for creative play throughout their day. Creative play is an important part of childhood and child development. Through creative play children grow emotionally, socially, intellectually, and physically.

Whether your child is dancing, exploring, or working on art projects, creative play helps to develop gross and fine motor skills, coordination, and control. Building these skills requires practice and sets the stage for improving hand-eye coordination and muscle memory. Creativity fosters mental growth in children by providing opportunities for exploring new ideas and expanding their problem-solving skills. Creative play also helps children develop socially by giving them opportunities to interact with others and explore different values and perspectives. By allowing children to be truly creative we are letting children make whatever activity they are doing their own. This helps acknowledge and celebrate a child’s uniqueness.

St. Mark Lutheran Preschool and Childcare incorporates creative play center-wide in variety of ways:

• Each classroom has a well-equipped home living center that promotes daily creative play.
• Throughout the year, special creative play theme-based centers are added, such as a Farmers Market, Flower Shop, Animal Hospital, Stable where Baby Jesus was born, Ice Cream and Pizza Parlor just to name a few.
• Creative writing centers with an abundance of stickers, colored paper, envelopes, markers, scissors, glue, stamps, paper punches allow children to create their own projects with expanding their fine motor skills.
• During daily gross motor play, children are encouraged to use their imagination to create games with their friends as well as structured play such as parachutes, scooters, and a variety of other gym equipment.
• Teachers incorporate weekly art projects that allow children to express their individual feelings and ideas.
• During the preschool months a variety of field trips are planned through the Omaha Children’s Museum, Rose Theater, and Wenninghoff Farms.
• Providing children activities that are based on children’s interest and ideas.