Children are constantly creating little dramas with their toys and acting them out. They create art (on walls sometimes), create music as they pull the pans out of cupboards and beat on them, and create patterns as they arrange the pans on the floor from largest to smallest.
Creating is the main thing that goes on at our house. The kids do world-building on paper, with Legos, clay, K'Nex, or in their heads. Sometimes the creation leads to movie-making with paper dolls they have drawn. Sometimes it leads to writing dramas or poetry (we've never had a book produced yet; Luke wrote up 20 pages of notes a book...before he moved on to another book...which also has never seen the light, but still good for his brain). When I was little I loved to create through sewing. I'd lay my Barbie on some fabric and draw around her, cut out two pieces and sew them together, then wonder why it wouldn't go on her; helped me learn about the difference between circumference and diameter.
People are built to create - it is hard-wired in. There is a way to kill this desire though, or at least diminish it and that is to do everything for them. To give them only finished products to play with--pre-scripted toy sets that steer you into playing with them a certain way. To fail to provide the raw materials of play, at a level kids feel comfortable with.
When we were new parents we were poor so we would both bring home stacks of paper from our jobs for our kids to play with (mine were covered with EKG print-outs and my husband's with energy policy proposals). One side was blank, and so our kids would cover these papers with sketches until the floor was literally covered with artwork. Our kids (so far) have all become good artists, and when we had more money we'd buy nice sketch notebooks for them. But it was funny how those sketch books didn't usually fill up as fast as the scratch paper laying around--they were a bit intimidating.
So not having lots of money isn't necessarily a drawback, but impoverishing your child's environment IS. Some parents don't want to have to step over Tinkertoys, or have crayons laying around that their child might draw on the couch with. So they give their kids screens (iPads, lots of TV time) because they are not messy. And though some vouch for Minecraft as a creative outlet, generally what you get with screens at best is pre-digested creativity, at worst is zero, even negative creativity, as the child feels like what he can do could never compete with the colorful stories and images on the screens.
