Operation Playtime Day 7 of 12: Pretend play

January 26th, 2009

Posted by Melitsa in Operation playtime

All children love to be creative. Some of them we have to help them along. Many just can’t help themselves and are eager to dress up or act. There’s no reason to think certain pretend play ideas are just for girls or boys. This is their time to experiment and try out ideas and make sense of the world.

My boys love to dress up in costumes. We have two huge stacks of clothes. Yes we are the family that has a superhero who shops groceries with his mom.

Just like outdoor play and gross motor play, finding time to encourage or allocate time for pretend play isn’t always a priority.

Inspire your children to try some pretend play. As usual push those boundaries only if you’re children are willing and try something different. Or else carve out some pretend play time.

Ideas

Read a story and extend the end of it into their adventure.
Start a pretend story you’re making up complete with actions. Ask them to join in.
Get a favourite toy and use it to start a play scene
Provide a selection of unstructured items ( material, natural objects etc) Invite them to go play and see where it takes them.
Set up an unstructured toy area ( dolls, train set etc)
Join in and extend the play by asking questions” Where should we go” I’m hungry- what shall we eat? Shall we stop? etc

There are so many ways to start them off.

Put your thoughts in a blog post and use that link, not your blog, into Mr Linky. We want to go right to your post

And/or Add a comment here as well if you’d like.

Follow the other Operation Playtimers and comment on their #OPT post.

See you tomorrow.

Melitsa Avila is a former teacher, mother of three boys and military wife who talks about living an intentional play lifestyle using practical and everyday play activities to do with the under 5s. She publishes related ebooks & newsletters. Melitsa is the host and producer of a weekly Early Childhood radio show: Raising Playful Tots bringing parents and carers together with Early childhood practitioners. Thanks for reading!

Melitsa

View all posts by Melitsa
Melitsas website

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

This entry was posted on Monday, January 26th, 2009 at 5:51 am and is filed under Operation playtime. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Comments are closed.

Find me elsewhere

Sign up to our play-activities email and you will receive a new, fun, educational activity to try at home with your child each week. Best of all, it's completely FREE!

View a sample email.