Facilitating Creativity in Curriculum

Creativity in Early Childhood Education

Creativity is a key component of young children’s learning and development. It is all about using our imagination and ideas to communicate, solve problems, and explore (Isbell & Yoshizawa, 2020). For example when children play with blocks, act to be like an animal, make up stories, or ask questions, children use their creative thinking (Isbell & Yoshizawa, 2020). Every child possesses a special and different creativity within them. Children boost their ability to decide, share ideas, and think creatively through play and try out new things (Mayesky, 2015). This helps in increasing their confidence, developing cooperation skills, and understanding their feelings (Howard & Mayesky, 2022). Creativity is a factor that allows children to express their feelings verbally or non-verbally which helps in their understanding of the outside world (Howard & Mayesky, 2022).

Creativity in Early Childhood Learning Settings

For children’s creativity to thrive, they need suitable area, time, and opportunity to explore freely (Early Childhood Australia [ECA], 2023). Educators can support this by providing open-ended resources, asking various questions, and encouraging children to follow their own ideas (ECA, 2023). It is because children learn the most when they feel free to try new things and aren’t scared of making any errors (Australian Children’s Education & Care Quality Authority [ACECQA], 2020).

For children, creativity is a part of everyday learning and is not only about art and craft activities (ECA, 2023). There are various ways for children to be creative like: learning maths, playing with natural materials in science, and dancing during music time (Isbell & Yoshizawa, 2020). Educators can use simple day-to-day resources so that children feel free to share their ideas and encourage them to learn at their own pace (Isbell & Yoshizawa, 2020).

Creativity in Australian Learning Frameworks

Early Childhood Learning Framework [EYLF] is filled with creativity (ACECQA, 2020). The EYLF states that curiosity and imagination are important part of learning for children (Australian Government Department of Education [AGDE], 2022). Learning Outcome 4 focuses on helping children become self-confident, engaged learners, while Outcome 5 promotes communicating ideas in a variety of ways, such as storytelling, and arts (AGDE, 2022).

Creativity is said to be an important part of quality education by the National Quality Standard [NQS] (ACECQA, 2020). Quality Area 1 encourages educators to design lesson plan focusing on children’s interests, and Quality Area 3 fosters creation of areas where children can experiment, create, and explore (ACECQA, 2020).

The Australian Curriculum encourages creative thinking in all subject areas (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA], 2023). In the Arts, children use different tools and materials to express themselves (ACECQA, 2020). In Technologies, they design and build, where as in Science, they are explore, test, and experiment (ACARA, 2023). Creativity is considered as “general capability” as it is important across all learning areas (OpenAI, 2025).