Imaginary play begins as your child first pretends to take a drink from a cup and leads to a wonderful world of make believe and endless possibilities.
When you spend time playing with your child you are helping them to learn to play and interact with others
When you play with others you learn how to take turns and to share (most of the time!)
You learn how to read social cues, how to consider other’s perspectives, negotiate and compromise and how to work together with others to get things done.
Knowing how to successfully communicate and interact with others is a key skill that will help your child throughout their lifetime.
Eventually your child will begin to pretend and take on roles.
When they do this, they can start to imagine what its like to be another person which can help them to take another’s perspective and begin to develop empathy.
When children play they use their imagination to invent new possibilities, to visualise and create.
These are all skills that they will use throughout their lifetimes.
“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” -George Bernard Shaw
Tea Set and Cutting Fruit or Cake
Toddlers love pouring cups of tea and feeding their toys and a Tea Set can provide hours of fun for you and your child (especially when you also have something to put on the plates like fruit or cake!)
This is a toy that will delight your child for several years and is wonderful for developing pretend play and practising social skills.
Early on your child will enjoy pretending to drink from the cup and eat using the bowl and spoon.
Then they’ll start feeding you and their teddies.
Between 2 to 2½ years your child will start to act out little sequences like pouring the tea, stirring in the sugar and giving it to you.
By 3 years you’ll be enjoying elaborate tea parties and picnics with food and drinks and lots of conversation.
This is a toy that is likely to get lots of use so it might be worth investing in one that’s better quality. I have plastic cutting fruit (which are easier to keep clean) but really like the more natural texture of wooden cutting fruit.
I also have a wooden Birthday Cake which gets lots of use too.
Bath (wash cloth, soap, shampoo, towel, duck)
Children love to pretend to do everyday things when they play.
A bath is something they do every day and it’s lots of fun pretending to wash their teddies and dolls.
It’s good to have a few accessories but you can gather these from around the house. A little sponge, empty bottles of shampoo and soap, a towel (a tea towel is the perfect size) and a little toy duck to play with.
The tea towel can double as a blanket if you decide to put the dolls to sleep.
Might be nice to give them some supper first!
Wooden Train Set
Train sets have been enchanting children (and adults) for generations.
Children enjoy putting the pieces together to make the track and then pushing the trains as they wind around the circuit.
You can start off with a simple track that goes round in a loop or a figure eight.
As your child gets older you can add new pieces like a tunnel or a bridge, a turntable or a crossing.
Brio make a wonderful range that includes trains, people, animals and buildings and that opens up a whole new world of play possibilities.
A Train Set gives lots of great opportunities to model new words for your child.
Action Words
“PUSH the train”
“STOP!”
“Oh oh, they CRASHED!”
Locations Words
“OVER the bridge.”
“UNDER the bridge.”
“THROUGH the tunnel.”
“AROUND the corner.”
“Get IN the train.”
Descriptive Words
“Thomas is the BLUE train.”
“They went FAST!”
“Let’s use the BIG one.”
“This is FUN!”
As children get older, their play becomes more complex and they will start to act out little stories.
Sometimes it’s fun to read a book like Thomas & Friends “The Runaway Engine” and then act out the story with your toys.
In this story, Thomas is having great fun racing along the track but then his brakes get jammed and he can’t stop!
The story comes to a dramatic end as he crashes through a fence and gets stuck in the mud!
A good train set can bring your child hours of fun and you can often pick one up in your local second hand store or through the paper. Keep an eye out and you can find some fantastic bargains!
Kath McLaughlin 