September 24th, 2007 Still stuck on pretend play Posted by Melitsa in Articles, Education, play activities

In Part I Stuck on pretend play, I received a letter from Melody that I continue with the answer here.

” “My 3 year son doesn’t really dress up or play role playing games. I really noticed it when his friend Claire came around to play last week. He loves to push his little car up and down for hours though or his train. He doesn’t interact or anything! Claire wanted to dress up and play but my son wasn’t really interested. Do you have any tips or activities for encouraging more role playing?

This is the second part of the pretend play series.

Starters- Ways in to encourage role playing games with your son

Although these suggestions were written with Melody’s son in mind they work equally well with girls as with everything it totally depends upon your child.

• Taxi/bus – arrange 2 rows of 2 chairs. Hail a taxi and ask the driver to take you to wherever you want.

• Doctor – 1 of you (or other kids) pretends to be ill and the doctor gives medicine and tucks them into bed. Doctor brings patient soup, hot water bottle etc.

• Multi-storey car park – They have a multi-storey garage and they park it with loads of cars. Then one person drives their car towards the car park and the other decides if it’s full or not

• Police chase – One person drives the “Bad man’s car” and the other person drives the police car.

• Disaster – They get a pile of cars and put them upside down. Then they get an ambulance to save the people in the cars and a digger to help flip the cars over.

• Shopping – They get a “shopping bag” and some “money” and go to the shops. Tell them 3 things each that they have to remember then they go away for a few minutes and come back with their shopping. They tell you what they bought and if they forget something asked them to get it. They go back to the shops!

• Road mats- are great investments. You can make your own really easily.
  

- Road works (they build Lego barriers so have to work out another way to reach the station etc.)
- Follow the leader
- One will be a pedestrian and the other will be the driver and the driver stops for pedestrians so they can cross the road

For car lovers

• “Police” where a police car chases a naughty car then arrests the driver or “ambulance” where a car crashes and an ambulance saves the people in the car. They also play “car crash” which is just 2 cars chasing each other and crashing.

For train lovers

• Trains: with cushions and aeroplane which involves packing suitcases ie emptying every drawer and toy box , check in and then the flight
• Try expanding on the train stuff but having some people driving to the station in their cars – needing to get gas, car wash on the way etc.. to incorporate garage. Use level crossings to have people out walking as crossing roads. The train passengers can wait in the cafe and have a snack. Some of the passengers can be at the supermarket. Then they can all go home ……..

Other suggested situations:

• doctor or hospital? pretend you’re not well and let them lead you to the bed, tucks you in, touches your head and give you medicine. then cooks some soup, toast and tea for you.

• What about restaurant? (You take his order and serve him or vice versa)

• Taxi? (Set 2 rows of 2 seats and he drives you where you want to go then you pay him)

• Lego/Duplo? My 2 use Lego to build toys like car parks.

• fishing sitting on beds with yo-yos

• cooking/tea/baking thing this takes longer if you can brave playdough making carrots peas etc etc and i set the real kitchen timer for about 3mins to cook stuff

• a picnic. Collect all the teddy bears/a sheet/ plastic or paper plates

• hide and seek games /looking for treasure
• when we did trains they had real money and i write on bits of paper for tickets for the ‘little people’ in the train
  
• TV programmes like CBeebies, show some great examples of role playing and pretend play ideas children can imitate to kick start their creativity.
• Try “joining” all the toys together. E.g The alphabet street jigsaw is the town, children from the doll’s house go shopping there in cars from the garage and often stop off at the supermarket, hairdressers, library etc..

• Try using stories from books for him to act out so he starts to see role playing – in time he will start to build his own. Our bears and a doll are Goldilocks characters etc..
• ‘go to the moon’ – we put boxes on our heads, then you have to jump up and down three times, count to ten, stand on one leg, spin around 5 times and then you are on the moon and we have to walk like we are marching and talk in moon voices – seems to have really sparked the imagination.
• sheet or a blanket over a couple of chairs and I send him camping – give him a little picnic

More dressing up box ideas

• Small suitcase or briefcase
• Apron and wooden spoon
• Gloves, purses, necklaces
• Tablecloth
• Hats
• Scarves, bandannas
• Pillowcases

Not an exhaustive list but I hope some of these ideas will get you thinking about the play-activities your children enjoy.

How is their pretend play? Do they participate in pretend play or avoid it? Do you need to help kick start them ? What pretend play ideas do your children love ? Share them here.

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

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