Thoughts for the Week:

Creative work and play come from within a person. Creativity can be many things -- finding new solutions to old problems, making up a simple song, dressing up, pretending. It may be as simple as using an old curtain for a bride's veil, a cast-off pair of adult shoes for pretending to be a mother or father, or a discarded spoon for digging a river bed in the dirt. Each child's expressions of creativity will be different, and by encouraging those differences, we adults let our children know that we value the unique person each child is -- and the unique adult he or she will become.

Summary of the Week:

This week of Neighborhood programs encourages respect for the creative urges all children have and recognizes that creativity doesn't always fit into standard categories like painting or pottery. Children also need to learn that creative play has to be safe. In the Neighborhood of Make-Believe Bob Dog's accidental fall takes him to the hospital, and Mister Rogers goes to a real hospital where he visits the Emergency Department. In his reassuring way, he prepares children for what to expect there, when he meets a child having an X-ray and helps children deal with times when they might need stitches.

"Spoon Mountain Opera" is the culminating musical story of the week, weaving together the themes from spoons to seatbelts, introduced in the week's factory visits. Seeing people dressed up in costumes, pretending to be kings and queens and kittens, singing their thoughts instead of saying them, knowing that it's all right to sing sad and angry songs as well as happy, carefree ones, can all be ways of encouraging children to creatively express who they really are, and in doing so, help them to feel better about themselves.