WHY TOONWORLD?

We inspire students to be daring and creative because,
We believe children to be most confident and creative when allowed
to express themselves freely without mistakes or judgement.
Our fun, friendly, creative programs teach life long skills and foster a culture of acceptance of all.
Enrich your child’s future with powerful self-belief and an ability to be genuinely self-expressive.

WHY CREATIVITY?

Through skills based group programs (both single and term) we teach creative skills which help boost the confidence and self esteem of children in their developmental years.

With our policy of “no erasers” children are empowered to draw to their hearts content and express themselves in any way they wish. This culture of freedom, acceptance and non judgement provides and environment where children naturally feel safe in expressing themselves and often create things that have been suppressed by more traditional teaching methods.

With our unique fun and flexible classes children learn life long creative skills, which help them solve problems and become more confident and resilient.

Children who have a creative outlet and develop creative skills are more likely to perform better in school and their other pursuits including sports, music.

Come along and join one of our fun and engaging workshops or programs to see what children can gain from a progressive creative based curriculum taught in a fun, safe and colourful environment.

AT TOONWORLD WE STRIVE TO:

  • Enrich your children’s future
  • Improve their self-esteem
  • Build their confidence
  • Enhance eye and hand coordination
  • Help them thrive through challenges
  • Develop champion problem solving skills
  • Encourage the self belief in your children
  • Develop your child’s personal skills by embracing teams projects

Our open acceptance of all aligned with our strict “No eraser policy” foster a culture of fun, friendship and freedom.
Because of this acceptance, children start to shine and feel more confident to try new things and learn more skills

The collaboration of this feeling then creates a stronger sense of belonging, community.. and self confidence where children are willing to be self expressive and confident.

 

NO ERASER POLICY

Our open acceptance of all aligned with our strict “No Eraser Policy” foster a culture of fun, friendship and freedom.
Because of this acceptance, children start to shine and feel more confident to try new things and learn more skills.

The collaboration of this feeling then creates a stronger sense of belonging, community.. and self confidence where children are willing to be self expressive and confident.

 

RESEARCH ARTICLES AND SUPPORTING THEORIES

CASE STUDY 1

Creativity can prevent aggression

Freud [7] believed that a creative product was the result of indirect expression of sexual and aggressive energy that was not allowed to manifest itself in a more expressed way.

Guilford [8] understood creativity as an ability to abandon stereotypical thinking and considered divergent thinking as the basis of creativity.

Ilyin [9] describes creativity as an ability to find solutions in unusual situations, to become exposed to new things and to reflect deeply.

we have the portrait of a senior preschool child: children who have adequate self-esteem (i.e. sense of usefulness), who can adequately respond to frustrating situations (who have low anxiety), who are ready to find non-aggressive ways to resolve conflict situations will have some potential for verbal creativity. Preschool teachers believed such a child to be a secure, open, pre-schooler ready to interact with peers and adults.

Therefore, special attention should be paid to the development of communicative and emotional side of the child’s personality in the family and preschool institution. This contributes to the expansion of the repertoire of children’s actions and communication schemes suitable for a wide circle of contacts (a preschool institution, family), as well as to an adequate expression of his or her emotional state and empathy. And this is bound to reduce preschool children’s anxiety, increase their confidence when communicating with peers and adults, and, consequently, reduce feelings of inferiority and conflict.

The study found that non-verbal creativity has a positive relationship with aggression. Here we are talking about the so-called productive aggression, which manifests itself in perseverance, severeness (not cruelty), and the ability to defend one’s opinion without assaulting their interlocutor’s dignity, without showing hostility or becoming personal.

While resolving conflict situations with achild (usually when the child does not obey his or her parents’ or preschool teachers’ commands) adults put conflict from a behavioural level to a personal one, i.e. they blame and criticize the child, often without analysing his or her action, and bring in a verdict: “You are bad.” The child absorbs as a sponge all the information received, on the basis of which he or she acquires feelings of inferiority. At the same time, conflict and feelings of inferiority are connected with each other. Thus, the more often the child finds oneself in the centre of conflicts, the higher the probability of developing feelings of inferiority is, and this has a negative impact on the development of verbal creativity.

Taking into account these results, we planned and carried out correctional and developmental work aimed at redesigning aggression and reducing levels of such indicators as conflict and feelings of inferiority, which was supposed to lead to improved creativity indicators.

This study found that after creative classes were performed ie 12 classes of 35 minutes each, a significant reduction appeared in the indicators of anxiety in the children within the classes.

Simple conclusion:

Creativity allows children to express themselves more freely and hence feel less constrained and internal. When they have the skills to be expressive creatively they are less inclined to internalise and bottle emotions and less inclined to foster aggressive behaviour.
Creativity fosters peaceful self expressive children.

CASE STUDY 2

Creativity can enhance a child’s ability to see what is possible

Interestingly, when proposing changes of the negative behaviour of the characters in the task-related situations (e.g. when solving the task: ‘What can happen to the kids in the picture? What would you advise them? How are they supposed to change their behaviour?’; Fig. 2), some children taking part in this study used the negative particle ‘not’ as a negation indicator. For example,…not carry a crayon in your mouth,…not run,…not put the rope around your neck,…not put so much in your mouth,…not turn the gas on, etc. In these cases, such usage might indicate that the children had no idea how to change the behaviour of the characters in the model in question, that their level of thinking was low, and that they were not able to evaluate whether these were coded ways of giving advice in the form of prohibition. These results also showed socio-cultural influences in education based on prohibitions rather than precepts.

When analysing their manifestations of wisdom, a significant conclusion that can be drawn is that pre-schoolers should practice giving advice and suggestions about how to change incorrect behaviour, by providing alternatives to it (examples of proper behaviour), as they are indeed potentially able to do this. Doing so also teaches them how to behave correctly (instead of only preventing them from behaving improperly).

Consequently, it can be assumed that the children’s creative activity can be a means of identifying their wisdom. On account of the ability to be creative, which is an important wisdom predictor, this also confirmed the potential of children of senior pre-school age to think and behave wisely (considering values) in the context of the concept by Sternberg (Sternberg, 1997).

Simple Conclusion:

When creative possibilities are opened to children, their level of intellect and wisdom is given a greater chance to shine.

CASE STUDY 3

Creative children are often less compliant with traditional cultural rules

 

On the whole, the conducted empirical research allowed to obtain results having practical significance when the behavior of children with high creativity is assessed. There is the tendency which creative and gifted children experience while socializing. Pointing to these tendencies, their specific manifestations are not spoken about as a rule. The research conducted by us accurately specifies that creative children’s behavior is characterized by non-compliance with safety rules, low self-control, disobedience. Thus, the general result of inverse dependence between children’s creativity and their cultural congruence is the reason for special analysis of psychology of creative child in the context of their socialization and personal development.

Simple Conclusion:

When looking to focus on bringing the genius of children to the fore, we can try and be more understanding that there compliance with rules may be lower for a very important reason – to be creative.

CASE STUDY 4

Creativity in Schools

 

Innovative and creative children are important in educational systems. Scientists have expressed creativity with a variety of interpretations. According to them, all people have different degrees of creativity. This is quite important part of each educational system. Existence of the creative environments is the essential parts of any school system mainly for students, because it provides different opportunities for them. Therefore, creativity is not forgettable in any educational program. In this article authors focused on problem-solving methods with regards to creative students in schools.

Creative Teaching Methods

In recent decades, researches have been done to answer this question “whether creativity can be taught?”
Studies have concluded that innovation can creativity be taught and can grow. Experts believe that the flexibility and variability associated with the feeling of safety in the classroom are factors that strongly stimulate the imagination and creativity of students and make it grow. I feel this inner teacher, and mental mastery of the underlying security is important and effective in the development of his creativity and modernity.
Educational psychologists believe that a creator of all abilities and divergent ways of thinking can be able to teach his ideas to people, especially children and adolescents.

To accomplish this goal, the following points are essential:

  • No limitation for experiences of students in specific situation.
  • Consideration for innovative ideas and questions.
  • Preparing opportunities for learning to explore and respect individual differences for creative behavior.
  • Based on the rapid changes in science, technology and communications; human needs to be more innovative and creative. Therefor both the family and schools need to enhance creative thinking students.
  • The question is how can we expect to achieve this gold?
  • Pre training in educational system, maybe the right answers.
  • Being able to go through proses for inventing something new.
  • Thinking of useful ideas in order to be able to heighten perception of our surroundings for a unique fruitful end.
  • Make children sensitive to the surrounding.
  • Respecting children vies.
  • Paid attention to Creative environments in organizations such as schools.
  • Respecting the value of creative thinking of children.
  • Considering adequate rest period times in school programs.
  • Encouraging creative children for constructive criticism.
  • Preparing variety of knowledge in different areas for teachers.
  • Preparing live and active teaching methods.
  • Making teachers and students familiar with problem solving methods.
  • Preparing learning environments away from fear and shyness.

Simple Conclusions:

  • Understanding the importance of creativity in schools.
  • That creativity can be taught to empower children in a rapidly changing world.
  • The environment and how creativity is taught is essential
  • By giving children the freedom to be creative they will develop their own methods to learn and foster their own style of creativity

CASE STUDY 5

Is there a link between creativity and happiness?

 

This article investigates the image of happiness among children with different levels of creativity. The results of the investigation led us to clarify the differences in the attitude to happiness expressed in pictures drawn by senior preschool children. Children with a high level of creativity interpret happiness as an emotional phenomenon. Their image of happiness is built up with social interaction and a focus on other people. Children with a low level of creativity associate happiness with material need satisfaction. Their image of happiness is impersonal, concrete, and it is not focused on other people.

Children with a high level of creativity interpret happiness as an emotional phenomenon. Their image of happiness is characterized in terms of social interaction and a focus on other people. Children with a low level of creativity correlate happiness with the satisfaction of their material needs.

Their image of happiness is less associated with other people, it is impersonal and concrete.

Thus, the hypothesis derived from the idea that that there are some distinctive characteristics of the image of happiness among children with different levels of creativity is true.

Simple Conclusion:

Children with higher levels of creativity will generally form their happiness through their interaction with other people. This is likely to result in a better quality of personal relationships. Children with less creativity tend to form happiness more on material things, which can lead to a feeling of loneliness and introvertedness and a need to attain more and more material things.

CASE STUDY 6

Art can be healing, especially for children

 

Since the first cave paintings, we humans have found creative ways to express ourselves with art. We naturally draw, paint, and doodle to capture thoughts and feelings. Art has also been used throughout history for healing.
Studies show that it creates brain wave patterns that enhance the autonomic nervous system, hormonal balance, and brain neurotransmitters. While doing artistic expressive art, the body’s physiology shifts from stressed to serene.
The same for children. It’s often easier for a child to talk about pictures than about himself or his feelings (grief, anger, shame, etc.). Drawing and painting will allow your child to express difficult feelings or to disclose what he might not share verbally. His artistic expression can give you a clearer sense of his inner struggle, an insight that will help you guide him.

Drawing also increases your child’s awareness of her inner world and creates a window onto that landscape. Art can be a launching point for conversations that reveal her thinking about the world around her.

You don’t have to be a trained therapist to use therapeutic art techniques with your child. Just stock up on a variety of art supplies or join a creative workshop.

Charlotte Reznick, PhD is a child educational psychologist, an associate clinical professor of psychology at UCLA, and author of a new book, The Power of Your Child’s Imagination: How to Transform Stress and Anxiety into Joy and Success (Perigee/Penguin2009,www.ImageryForKids.com/book).

Simple Conclusion:

Let children draw and create freely and let them express their world without bounds.
Have a conversation about their art, it’s a pathway to a child’s inner world when they may be too young to express themselves adequately with words.

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