Mental Health and Wellbeing Coordinator

Holidays and Imagination

“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.” Albert Einstein.

Dear Families,

I cannot believe that the holidays are fast approaching. This year continues to race along. We’ve had a couple of lockdowns, but everyone seems to just get on with life. The end of the week will bring a well-earned break and time for us all to recharge. I’ve spoken to many people who have plans to go interstate and we are all hopeful that their plans will come to fruition. What the future brings continues to be uncertain, however we all seem to have built our resilience and are more able to work with life’s uncertainties. 

The Oxford Dictionary defines imagination as the act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or never before wholly perceived in reality. It could also be expressed as the ability to think of new and interesting ideas. Perhaps creating a picture in the mind may be another simple way of defining imagination. It seems amazing to me that young children can imagine anything, but as they grow older, they can begin to lose that ability. But what could be the benefits of an imagination that improved with age? Some may say that it might boost intelligence and keep us younger. It may help us to transform our dreams into reality and help us to dream big. Imagination may develop and feed our creativity. Some people believe that using our imagination can help us to improve our memory and may even promote our empathy. 

While on holidays, you might like to think about doing one or two of the following to enhance your imaginative skills. 

• Invent a short story and tell everyone. You can make the whole thing up or perhaps you could embellish something that you did as a family together.
• Play ‘Mr. Squiggle’. One person quickly draws a squiggle on a piece of paper and passes it along for the next person to complete the drawing.
• Draw some pictures in the driveway with chalk or paint brushes and water.
• Get a newspaper and make the photos more interesting by adding different things to each picture.
• Take a paper bag and go for a walk. Collect five or 10 different items from nature and put them into the bag. When you get home, pick out an item from your collection and tell everyone a made-up story of what the item would be if an alien found it on their planet.
• Imagine you won the lottery. What would you do with the money?
• Make up some ‘campfire’ stories to tell each other.
• Lie on the grass and look up at the clouds and tell everyone all the images you can see in the sky.
• Get a box and make something with it. It could be a shoe box, a fruit box or a box from a new appliance.
• Rename the members of your family and your friends. Why did you choose this new name for them?

“Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all is a form of planning.” Gloria Steinem

Have a safe, fun and imaginative holiday. Dream big and make it happen. See you all next term.