Paper Short Abstract:

The present study tries to highlight aspects from children’ imagination when they speak about invisible worlds as they express themselves through drawings and storytelling. A special focus will be pointed out when children speak or draw symbolical representations from religion and popular culture during creativity workshops.

Paper Abstract:

The present study tries to highlight aspects from children’ imagination when they fabulate about invisible worlds as they express themselves through drawings and storytelling. A special focus will be pointed out when children speak or draw symbolical representations from religion and popular culture during creativity workshops. Children relate with a lot of invisible beings - angels, fairies, unicorns... inspired by adults’ stories and fairy tales, their own readings or seen movies, or different contexts of playing. The cultural and symbolical structure of elaborated images of these invisible worlds was studied, a special attention was showed on children attitudes when meeting these invisible creatures, how do they imagine angles, for example, how do they are protected by them. The distinction between good and bad is explored by children when they speak about imaginary beings and a special aspect was investigated: the way the children imagine they are perceived by these invisible creatures, how do they picture the eyes of the unseen? We explored cognitive and affective aspects of children imagination when they relate with beauty or ugliness, how they respond to joy or fear when they meet fairy tale characters or different traditional masks from Romanian popular culture, how they integrate technology in their life in order to get more coherent with aesthetic values, social rules, principles of life. We also explored how ways of non-formal education about Romanian traditions and popular customs related with children's imagination.