The relationship between creativity and variety of play material in the context of symbolic play

Abstract

During children's symbolic play many cognitive, emotional and social processes take place. A child develops her potential through symbolic play, and creativity is one such potential. Our research focused on investigating the relationship between creativity in early childhood and physical representation of play material in the context of symbolic play. 59 children were included in the study, aged from five to six years. We assessed their creativity before and after ten play-sessions using the Test for Creative Thinking TCT-DP. Each child played individually with one of six types of play material that varied with respect to three characteristics: structure, realism, and complexity. We hypothesized that creativity would increase for all types of play material but that it would not increase evenly across play materials. Due to statistically insignificant differences in creativity measures over time, we could not validate these hypotheses. We did however find a small increase in creativity for a group that played with low-structured, low-realism and low-complexity play material. This result is consistent with other similar research in the field.

Keywords

• creativity
• play
• play material
• toys
• early childhood