In Celebration of Creativity Play: an Exploration on Children's Aesthetic Sensibility and Creativity in Waldorf Early Childhood Education

This study aims to explore the influence of parents-support creative play on Waldorf preschool children's aesthetic sensibility and creativity. The purposive subjects were 30 preschool children in Waldorf Early Childhood Education in Taiwan. A pretest-posttest control group design was employed to randomly assign children into an experimental and a control group. The control group of 15 children remained the same Waldorf teaching for 20 weeks; while the experimental group of 15 children was exposed to the parents-support creative play. The per session 60 minutes creative play for 20 weeks includes four topics of trust, harmony, freedom, and peace. The quantitative instruments included "Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, Figural Form B" and "Preschool Children's Aesthetic Sensibility Measurement". After the data was collected, it was analyzed and tested by independent t-test and one-way covariance. The qualitative instruments included "Educators' Observation on Children's Play" and "Children's Drawings in any art form" before and after the treatment of creative play. The results revealed: (1) With the treatment of parents-support creative play for children, the results of "Preschool Children's Aesthetic Sensibility Measurement" indicate a positive transformation in "Exploration and Awareness" and "Expression and Creation"; the results of "Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking" show a positive influence in "Originality"; (2) The educators' observation on children's play and their drawings reveal that children are willing to express free creativeness of colourful image and storytelling themes towards their drawing after receiving creative play.