Teaching preschoolers to be creative can sound like a bit of a paradox. After all, isn’t creativity supposed to spring from some bottomless fountain only the luckiest among us possess?

Not entirely true. Kids have an uncolored, pure view of the world that will most likely sully as they get older. That’s why there’s such innocence and charm in a child’s play, and that’s why kids say the darndest things that end up making the most sense.

The most commonly used way to encourage creativity in preschoolers is to allow them to experiment with arts and crafts and activities. I’ll go into these in depth in other posts, but for now I want to concentrate on the easiest way to encourage creativity and social skills in your child. Arts and crafts are excellent options, but they can be a little time consuming. And some days, your child is not going to be ready for yet another vegetable painting masterpiece.

However, there’s another way you can teach your child to use his imagination without the use of paints and crayons – role playing. It’s simple, doesn’t cost a cent and best of all, it does double duty by combining creative ability enhancement with bonding.

Role paying doesn’t have to be all pirates and daggers and adventure stories. Simple every day activities like going to the grocery store or the bank, or a trip to the beach can be used as themes for role play. It’s something kids enjoy because they love activities that help them pretend to be adults.

I love role play as an imaginative activity because kids are free to assume the roles they want to. Participate freely in the role play, and follow your child’s lead.

If you’re doing an “entertaining” theme, where your child is the host and you’re the guest, follow all social protocol, the way you do yourself as an adult. But, allow them to talk and react the way they want to in the imaginary situation. This particular theme has a triple edged benefit - your child learns to be creative in his responses, his social skills are enhanced, and it creates an incredible opportunity for the two of you to enjoy your time together.

To make things easier, and to help make role play a regular part of your routine, create prop boxes for some much loved themes that your preschooler and you have. Say you love playing shop, set aside a large cardboard box or get one of those big plastic containers, and throw things in there that you could use for your role play – toy fruit and vegetables, toy currency. When you’re actually playing, grab some stuff from around the house, and lay it out neatly just like in the shop.

Separate boxes by theme and label them on the outside. For a beach theme, your prop box would contain a beach ball, sunglasses, a large plastic table cloth that you could scatter with shells and a pair of beach towels for the two of you.

Once you’re done with your little game, just stuff everything back in the box and put it away for another time.