How can an Active Imagination Help in a Child’s Development?

Children are creative geniuses by nature. They are always finding new and unique ways to play, new ways to pass their time. Be it coming up with an imaginary friend, or playing with usual household objects, kids can always entertain themselves in the most unique and adorable ways. An active imagination is a very integral part of childhood and can help majorly in a child’s development.

What is Active Imagination?

In simple terms, an active imagination is the process that helps to bridge the gap between the conscious and unconscious mind.  Active imagination makes use of creative imagination as a tool to understand the workings of the subconscious and unconscious minds.
Borad EduGames is a new start-up that has created a line of educational board games, and has rightly propagated the importance of active imagination. The folks at this brilliant start-up company strive to work towards building active imagination in children. 

Have you read? Games: The New Learning Mechanism

How can Active Imagination help children?

Imagination is an integral part of every childhood. Children imagine themselves being superheroes, of going on adventures, of stumbling upon a cloak of invisibility and what not. All of this seems to be innocent child’s play, without being of any use. But that’s not the case.
While kids are busy imagining a world of their own, they are also creating endless possibilities of how things can be. This active imagination helps children develop their emotional and psychological capabilities, while also helping them understand the world that they are living in. Here is a breakdown of how active imagination can help child development at different stages.

●       Emotional Development: An eminent part of active imagination in kids is doing pretend-play. Children play games that require them to put themselves in somebody else’s shoes, like a teacher or even a superhero, for instance. This helps them develop empathy and get a gist of that person.
●       Social Development: Going with the same example of pretend play, being in somebody else’s shoes also helps to boost the self-esteem in kids. It gives them the confidence to be whom or whatever they want to. Children also get to work skills like cooperation, collaboration, team-work, etc.
●       Physical Development: Active imagination helps boost physical development in the early years of childhood. It helps children cope up faster with their gross and fine motor skills through the use of different games. Even pretend play helps as it requires the children to self-monitor their movements.
●       Creative Development: Active imagination is a great tool to enhance creative development in children. When kids come up with new games to play, it is their active imagination that is giving a boost to their creativity. This creativity can help children understand ideas and concepts as well.
●       Communication and Language: Games requiring active imagination, like pretend play, help to develop language and communication in children. As children try to act out different situations, they communicate and make use of language familiar to each of them; it might even be the language that they are all learning at school.
●       Thinking and Problem Solving: Children make use of their active imagination to think of ways to not succumb to their boredom. Again, while facing a shortage of any kind in their pretend play, they find out ways to replace that object. Thus, active imagination very well helps to develop thinking and problem-solving skills in kids.

Also read: Busting Learning Myths

How to stimulate your child’s imagination?

All children have an overactive imagination. It is something that they use daily, be it to play or to while away some boring hours. However, sometimes it might be the case that a child remains unaware of his imaginary prowess. But, as parents, we can always help our children explore what’s within. So, here are a few ways that parents can adopt to stimulate their child’s imagination.

●       Open-Ended Questions: Kids always love it when adults, especially the parents, take an interest in the things that they love or are currently doing. So, take notice and ask them open-ended questions to get a conversation going. Open-ended questions also help them find answers that they might be seeking.
●       Imaginary Play: Imaginary play helps children to develop physically, emotionally, socially and creatively through pretend play. You can start with acting out their favorite cartoon scene or even by a simple play of a school day. It also helps them to understand things from a better perspective.
●       Made-up Scenarios: Try to stimulate active imagination in your kids by inventing different scenarios. You can both just sit outside on a sunny day and seek the kid’s help to tackle a made-up situation, like ‘What would the flower and the butterfly be talking about?’ You can also take on a role to encourage your child to play on.
●       Art Activities: Encourage art activities to draw out the creative side of your child. You can also start by asking their help on what you should draw to stimulate their active imagination. If your child is not interested in drawing or painting, you can take the help of clay modeling, crafting, etc.
●       Story-Time Bonding: Story-time can be a great way to stimulate active imagination in your child. You can read stories together with your kid and discuss its ending, its characters, etc. You can also think of an alternate ending of the story and encourage your child to get his creative mind running to find an alternate end to the story.
●       Fun Games: Parents can also make use of different games to stimulate active imagination in children. Nowadays there are many new games available in the market that helps children to develop creative thinking skills instead of confining them to homes. Many of these games also help children to learn through fun.

Speaking about games that can help children develop their active imagination, Borad EduGames is an eminent start-up company in this regard.  Initially developed as a college project, Borad EduGames went on to become a full-fledged company after receiving overwhelming reviews and gaining podium positions in several start-up competitions.
Headed by two aspiring young founders, Mr. Ayush Anand and Mr. Rahul Utamchandani, Borad EduGames aims at making board games a fun and stimulating way to learn. This endeavor was a much-needed step in the current society as the term ‘games’ was gradually seeming to refer to just online games and apps. They explain that these board games are not only an escape from the tormenting screens but also help stimulate a child’s mind through puzzles, pretend play, etc. The range of games offered by them helps students with different subjects of study, while also stimulating their creative thinking and problem-solving skills.
As of now, Borad EduGames has successfully launched four different games to help students with four different subjects.

●       Olro Traveller (for History)
●       Learn Numbers with Borad Bear (for Mathematics)
●      Make Words with Borad Bear (for English)
●      Zoozone Adventurer (for Geography)

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These games allow the children to make the best use of their idle time, while also providing them an opportunity to reunite the bond with family and friends in a very productive way.