In Episode 012 of Playfully Faith Parenting, we talk about embracing our creativity as a reflection of being made in the image of God.
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Show Notes
Episode Summary:
In this episode, I share a theology of creativity and how we can better incorporate that into our lives, our kids, and our faith.
We talk about process art vs product art, plus being made in the image of a creative God. I also share NASA research that proves we are all “creative geniuses” from birth and we talk about ways to practice using that creativity that is still there in all of us.
Verses from the episode:
Deuteronomy 6:4-9
Genesis 1:1
Genesis 1:27
Links from the episode:
“You’re 96 Percent Less Creative Than You Were as a Child.”
“We are born creative geniuses and the education system dumbs us down, according to NASA scientists“
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Transcript
Here is a rough transcript of Playfully Faithful Parenting Episode 009: Help! I don’t know how to play with my kids. This isn’t meant to be pretty and perfect but is here as a resource for those who want it.
Hey Mama, welcome back to playfully faithful parenting.
I’m your host joy and I’m excited to be here today.
I hope you are too.
I can’t believe that I have faithful listeners that come back week after week.
Well Mama, I would love to know who you are so please reach out to me and tell me who you are.
I want to know.
How you?
How you play, who your kids are, where your kids like to play, how your kids like to play, anything that you want to tell me I want to.
Who you are.
So reach out on Instagram or Facebook or even email joy at created to play com I would love to know who you are.
So mommas I’m just so grateful that you keep coming back week after week.
Today I want to share something about creativity.
I have been thinking about process art versus product art for our kids over the last month or so at least, and my kids love what they call a project.
I want to do.
Project and I just lay out materials and they put together something.
Sometimes they have.
I give a little direction but most of the time I just lay stuff out and let them do whatever they want with it.
Do everything.
And this is called process art.
It gives kids an opportunity.
To practice creativity.
Product art is where we have a particular craft and it has to look a certain way and we expect kids to put the eyeballs in the right spot and the hands have to go here.
And the other hand has to go there.
There, and I’m going to help you glue just to make sure that it ends up in the right spot and that it looks the way I as the one assigning the project.
It needs to look the way I.
Want it to look?
That is product art that is about the product that the kids end up with.
As opposed to the process.
Of art, and I have just been.
Right?
I’ve been thinking about this and I’m just.
Even when I had my.
My preschool years ago I tried to encourage a lot more process art.
Occasionally we would have a craft, but the kids still were able to make them look how they wanted to look.
There wasn’t, you know, maybe it was.
Coming, it’s October, so Halloween so we would do a spider, but their spider could have 12 legs or it could have three legs and it could be colored purple, or it could be colored black, or it could be.
Yellow with pink stripes.
So there was a little bit of a idea that were making spiders, but there was.
Still so much open openness in the project that.
So much open openness in the project that.
It’s still leaned heavily on the side of process art, and that is just based on my research.
And even my theology art, you know, I’ve never called it that, but kind of where I’m going today.
It’s what I feel is the better option for kids is process art so, but I just couldn’t get a whole episode.
For process art versus product art.
And I just didn’t.
Feel good about it like I just couldn’t figure out.
I knew that the topic was something that was on my heart and I thought it was a good.
Thing for our.
For you guys to hear because I think it will help our kids.
When we are using art to teach our kids about the Bible and about God.
That I think leaning towards process art as opposed to here’s a project and a product and I want you to draw this picture of Jesus and draw the little boy and his two fishes and his loaves of bread like that’s what it needs to look like as opposed to let’s read this story.
What do you think happened?
How do you think the boy felt?
Let’s talk about the people.
Let’s talk about where do you think they were?
What kind of fish do you think?
What shape do you think the bread might?
Have been OK.
We’ve talked about it.
We’ve read the story.
We thought about how we might feel.
Maybe we’ve had a snack.
Here’s some art supplies.
What kind of project is the Holy Spirit leading you to create?
How do you want to express your thoughts and feelings of this story of Jesus and this miracle of feeding thousands and thousands of people?
With with a little boys lunch, do you want to express that on paper?
Or with clay.
Or with whatever projects supplies you give them.
So I think that is going to be a much more meaningful experience than here’s two paper fish and a paper you know loaf of bread let’s.
Glue these together and count that as an art experience, because that’s.
Not going to really engage your kid and.
Or grow their faith like.
So that’s just I’ve.
Been like how do we do this?
And then I started thinking about the why because I love thinking about the whys.
The very logical person and when I understand the whys behind things, it makes the practice so much easier for me and so.
Process versus product like why is process art so much better for our kids?
Theologically right, because I believe that if science proves it.
That God has a hand in it.
Has a handle.
Science is just really an exploration of what God has done here on Earth and in space and wherever.
And I think science is an exploration of what God has done in the way God.
Has set the.
World into motion and so if for me, here’s my my thinking.
If we can understand why the process art is going to hit our kids in their spirit and.
So more and then that’s for me, an easier reason more motivating of doing process art with my kids, even though it might look prettier and it might be easier to gift at Christmas a you know craft of something that has.
A clear expectation of I want to give grandma this project and so this is what we’re going to do together is not going to be as meaningful and.
And when I know the whys behind it.
When I know the whys behind it.
I’m going to be more motivated to do something that’s better for my kids as opposed to just what I think is going to be prettier, right?
Right?
So here we go.
Creativity process art leans much more heavily on creativity and encourages our kids to be creative.
And when we are being creative, we are imaging and reflecting who God is.
The very first verb we hear God doing in the Bible is creating.
Why are we going to stifle our kids from being able to do the very thing that God first told us about himself, which is in the beginning God created?
I want to give my kids so many opportunities to be like God and to.
Live into their being made in his image and giving them opportunities to be creative is just one of these ways that we can help our kids see they are made in God’s image and so creativity for me is my big why?
And it’s one of my favorite things about God.
I think it’s so easy to look around the world and see God, creativity.
It’s so easy to bring myself back when I am becoming.
Harsh or critical or judgmental?
Think how is this person a reflection of God?
How are they made in his image?
What can I learn about God from this person and it usually creativity is one of the things that so easily brings me.
Out of this judgmental place right is if I can see God creativity in another person or their ideas.
It opens me up.
It opens gives me, makes me more open minded and it helps me to come back to.
A healthy, loving, graceful place, right so in the beginning God created that’s.
To me is just huge.
God created us in his image.
God created the world.
God created the birds.
God created the plants.
There’s so much God created and we can look at all of these things and just I’m astonished.
And I love talking about it with my kids.
We can see his creativity, especially in nature.
And in US.
And I want my kids to be drawn into that and to continue to live into that.
Come so and.
And this doesn’t happen, right?
We as we grow, we lose our imagination and our creativity.
We don’t have to.
But we typically do, and typically a big reason.
Research shows a big reason we lose a lot of our creativity is education and just the way.
That our educational system is set up and I am not bashing public schools.
My daughter, my oldest daughter goes to public school and will go to public school.
My husband as public school teacher, but research has shown that we lose a lot of our creativity just because of the way our educational system is set up.
So I think there are ways.
That we can work around this.
And then it’s possible to keep our creativity or to relearn to be creative.
So there was this study that I heard about this this summer and it’s so interesting.
NASA hired these scientists to come up with a creative test because they wanted.
Give this test to their rocket scientists and engineers and to see how creative they were and to test.
I think maybe like potential scientists and.
Engineers and to hire, you know, the most creative people.
So NASA had this test designed and if you pass the test, it’s you’re considered a creative genius.
So NASA uses this test.
It meets all their purposes, but the two scientists who created the test.
We’re curious like.
Where does this creativity come from? And so they take the test and then give it to 1600 children between the ages of four and five and when they got the test results back from these preschoolers.
They found that 90.
8% of these preschoolers could pass the test.
And so as one.
Article I’ll link in the show notes.
That’s it, all of us have a creative gene science.
Here is proving this showing research.
I love scientific research.
I know it’s not for some people, but for me it is and so from our listeners I’m assuming you’re going to get into it or you go for it because you’re listening, right so?
Anyhow, so science is showing.
This is one of the ways that we are created in God’s image is we are created creative right?
All of us have a creative gene is what this article says.
So then they take, they decide to make it a longitudinal test.
So they’re going to follow these kids that they’ve tested.
For throughout their high school.
Or throughout there.
Educational system and follow them and test them again after high.
School so they.
Test them five years after their first Test and at that point only 30% of those kids still fell in the genius category of creativity and imagination.
After only five years, so they’re 10 years old and only 30% of them are still creative and imaginative imaginative geniuses. At 15 years old there were only 12% and then.
At 50
As adults, it’s only two percent, 2% or only or all this left in this creative genius. We are falling away from one of the ways that we are created in God’s image. We are creative.
You were creative at one point in your life.
If you’re not still creative, it’s in there.
You have this capability, and these scientists have come.
You come up with ways that we can.
Still, seek out and grow that imagination and that creativity.
It says that capability of the five year old is still in you.
It never goes away.
We just lose practice of using it.
You were created in the image of a creative God and that.
In the.
Doesn’t go away.
It’s still there.
God is creative.
Look at the Peacock look at.
All these other beautiful flowers and plants and the colors and birds and the blobfish and all these weird and wacky animals and beautiful colors.
And I mean just the intricacies of nature and of people, and the way that we grow and develop.
And all of those things it’s so creative and remarkable and miraculous.
And we have.
Of in us a creative ability just like our creator.
Because we are created in his image.
And So what?
They the the scientist, came up with.
Their idea is to their example is take a fork, a table Fort.
And come up with 25 or 30 ideas of how to improve the fork or ideas of how to use it.
And don’t ever count any of those ideas as dumb or say it won’t work, or any of those things.
Just go for it.
Make a list a wild crazy list of ways to use a fork or of, you know, find a toy with your kids and come up with a list of silly things you can do with it, or find, take a scarf and let’s find.
10 ways that we can put this scarf on our bodies.
Maybe you wrap it around the leg.
Maybe you tie it on an ear.
Mary, maybe you put it in a bow, maybe you blindfold?
Yourself, maybe you wear it.
As a diaper, I don’t know, but come up.
With crazy silly ideas and just keep going and don’t.
Don’t let any of your ideas be stifled by the part of your brain that starts analyzing and criticizing.
Let that part go for a bit that’s there and it’s necessary that is called convergent thinking, and that’s what the schools teach us how.
To do, and it’s useful and it’s helpful, and we need that, but not.
When it causes us to completely give up our divergent seeking, which is a creative, creative thinking, and that just kind of can go crazy and look at all the possibilities.
So that’s I don’t know what to do with that for you guys, but that’s what we have for today is encouraging you to play creatively and with your imagine.
Both you and your kids and be more open-ended with your art projects.
And make a new recipe.
Don’t make.
Don’t use a recipe.
Take some ingredients in your kitchen tonight for dinner and throw them together and.
Let’s see what you can do because you are created in the image of a very creative God, and whether you believe it.
Or feel it.
Or what you are still creative.
It’s still in you.
It’s a part of who you are, it’s who you were created to be and our kids are created that same.
Same way they have imagination and creativity and we need to find ways to continue to allow them to express that and encourage.
We need to encourage that and help them to grow in that as they grow in, being able to analyze things and figure out what works and what doesn’t work.
You’re experimenting and playing with things, but please just know you are creative because God is creative and he made you.
In his image.
In his.
Mama, thanks for listening to this.
You know my thought process about process, our product, our theology, creativity, being made in God.
‘s image this NASA study.
It’s all so fascinating to me and I just I love the way that theology and theory.
Enhances our motivation in our practice.
And when we know better, we can do better.
And so, Mama, I just encourage you to find a way to be creative this week.
Whether it’s in the kitchen with your kids, doing some Bible journaling, doing your own art, whatever it is, find a way to play creatively.
Whatever it is.
And just spend time delighting in in the way that we were created just in his in his image.
How we can reflect God.
And don’t judge whatever product comes out because it’s not about the product, it’s about the process and about finding a new way to just be a little bit more like her God, our creator, and living into that.
And experiencing that and knowing and just come.
Basking in
The miracle that we are and what a blessing and like how humbling it is that God wanted us to be like him in a way.
I mean, we’re not completely like him, but we are a reflection of of him and we were made.
Like him and so just bask in that this week, reflecting that live into that creatively and playfully and so on behalf of God.
Thank you for loving and playing.
With his kids.
