Imagination Toys
...create their world
Children learn a great deal through play. This applies just as much to babies as it does to toddlers and preschoolers.
Play should allow a child to make choices and decisions, become aware of others and their needs, discover themself and their environment.
Providing your child with decision-making opportunities and imagination toys is key to the development of your child's self-esteem.
Importance of Imagination Toys and Pretend Play
Play is an expression of thinking and makes visible how your child understands their world. Pretend play involves an imaginary situation that helps your child make sense of their world and allows your child to freely express their thoughts and feelings, test ideas and solve problems.
Imagination toys and pretend play is ideally suited to helping your child make connections between concrete and abstract thought.
During pretend play, your child is able to use one toy to represent another. For example, a red block is a pretend toy for a strawberry. This capability draws not only on memory skills but also an ability to transfer memories from reality to fantasy.
As your child plays, they talk to themselves, other children, and adults. Understanding this, you can encourage language development by setting up play centres with imagination toys that promote reading and writing activities, such as a bookstore, restaurant, or market.
Matching Imagination Toys to Age & Development
- Babies. A treasure basket is a great source of imagination toys that provides a general approach to play materials for very young children. This open type of learning is proposed Elinor Goldschmied and Sonia Jackson in their book, "People under Three".
- Toddlers may use simple musical instruments to explore deliberate sound-making but at this young age they will be broadening their own learning just as much by discovering for themselves that a small drum will roll or a shaker will balance on a xylophone. Preloved telephones and wallets also make great role play toys for young children. A box is a great abstract item loved by kids. It can become a favorite pretend toy such as a car, shop, castle, or spaceship.
- Preschoolers. Pretend play is a great way to both demonstrate and practice real life situations, such as behaving with good manners. Imagine you've set up a teddy bears' picnic with your child in the play room and your child is the host. Serving the teddy bears before serving yourself shows great manners. Asking if a bear would like more and saying please and thank you is great practise in asking for things politely.
Imagination Toys - Kids are Creatures of Learning and Play
The following is an extract about awareness of a child's learning from Marian Diamond and Janet Hopson's book "Magic Trees of the Mind: How to nurture your child's intelligence, creativity, and healthy emotions from birth through adolescence" page 103, published by Dutton, 1998.
"By instinct, babies and toddlers are creatures of learning and of play, exploring every detail of their surroundings with intense curiosity."
These developmental activities help shape the brain - via their interaction with the world through their senses.
"But the parents of babies and toddlers must provide certain kinds of experiences, particularly in the realms of emotional support and language, to foster the child's fullest development at this stage".
Pretend Toys and Play: a Parent's Supporting Role
Give children time, space and props to use pretend toys and immerse themselves in pretend play, and at times also provide them with companionship and explanations.
Time and timing
Kids need plenty of time to enjoy their play and become deeply involved in it.
When planning play activities, build in flexibility with timing and plenty of repetition and return opportunities. For example, when you go for a walk with your child, let them count the letterboxes, touch the gates or do whatever it is that they enjoy doing along the way. Don't simply march on by each walk. Sometimes you won't have time to meander about but make sure you occasionally at least leave time to follow the pace of your child.
Space and the flow of play
Birth to Three Matters stresses that "Children like to return to and revisit things that were important to them that morning, the day before or the previous week".
Such environments enable babies and young children to make choices and to become deeply involved in something. Play allows your child to make important connections about what they know.
Play also enables adults to better understand how young children think before they are able to put their thoughts into their own spoken words.
Whatever way a play experience starts, what is important is that your child is given the opportunity to direct the flow of play.
Play resources
Children need play resources and many don't have to be purchased. It is important is that the resources are versatile enough to allow children the flexibility to determine, influence or modify how they are used.
Together with understanding a young child's play preference, heuristic play gives the opportunity to experiment with a wide range of non-commercial objects.
This line of thinking is in contrast to play with manufactured toys with limited scope for developing children's playful interactions, imagination and learning.
Playful companions
Sometimes babies and young children want to play on their own and sometimes they want company of a playmate, an adult or child, who can follow a child's lead and not take over. For example, a teddy bear picnic - prepare food for the bears and feed them. Adults are great role models for social skills.
One of the ten principles of Birth to Three Matters - The Birth to Three guidance documents for England (Birth to Three Matters) and for Scotland (Birth to Three) - is that "Children learn by doing rather than being told", so all focus should be on making materials available, playing games with your child, devising an appropriately planned and well resourced indoor and outdoor learning environment, and as adult initiated special play experiences.
Explaining the situation
For your child to make decisions, they need to be able to make sense of a situation and see how it fits with the circumstances of their life.
As an adult you can help your child make sense of the world around them by explaining what is happening and why. This is key even for young babies who may not understand what is being said, but get a message through the tone of voice.
In toddlerhood, children are able to understand there are rules for their behaviour, and it is the adult's role to explain the reasons behind the rules.
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