What does your imagination look like?

Can you imagine a child in kindergarten as an author of a story? Our children had been experimenting with visuals, words and sentences for a while now to express their ideas. We thought it would be a wonderful thought to ask them about stories. We saw excitement in their eyes when the concept was introduced to them. They had been hearing stories since they were babies and now was their chance to make one of their own!

 We explored the book, “The little Cloud” and we wondered aloud whether we could see more shapes in clouds. All the children volunteered to lie down and watch shapes in the clouds on our open terrace garden. Lying on the cool green patch, experiencing the light wind and the harsh sun they squinted their eyes to make out the clouds and the shapes within them. Finally something had caught each one of their eyes.

They stepped back and designed their own clouds on different colour papers of their own choice and traced shapes on it from their imagination. Then began the journey of their own little cloud which had a family and would listen to its parents and so on. In children’s eyes everything around us is alive and learning merges with imagination to breathe life into the stories they create. 

Their journey as authors was just beginning. Once they were done the facilitator asked them whether they would like to create stories with characters different from the cloud?

That’s how this little wonder came alive!

 “The octopus and the sword fish” is the story by a 5.8 year old in the class. In the story a little octopus gets its tentacles stuck in the sea weed and is rescued by a sword fish. 

Taking inspiration from the sea visuals painted on the wall in their class, Aaryav used his vivid imagination to craft a story filled with interesting characters, friendship, helplessness and brave choices. His choice of the octopus to get stuck and the sword fish to rescue show the synthesis of information and facts and beautiful connections in the imaginary world to craft stories that look and feel real!

 He wanted to illustrate his story and added darker and lighter shades of blue in his drawing to show the depth of the ocean. (The above master piece was drawn by him to represent his visuals of the story) It made me wonder about the depth of the perception of a child of the world around them and the courage to represent it from their own perspective. In spite of knowing the reasons and several facts about oceans we may not have the perception or the courage to show the different nuances represented by the child in his picture. 

Looking back at the creation I could see how the values, emotions, knowledge and creativity came together in his work. If you expressed your imagination in pictures or words, what would your imagination look like?


Contributed by: Kishore S,  Learning & Innovation Engineer at Sparkling Mindz.