Imaginative play has always been an important part of our family and I have never doubted its benefits for my boys. The process of pretending builds skills in many essential developmental areas. If you’re looking for ideas for imaginative play, you’ll find plenty here.
But before anything else, how does imaginative play benefit a child’s development?
Imaginative Play Benefits
1. Social and Emotional Skills
When your child engages in pretend (or dramatic) play, he is actively experimenting with the social and emotional roles of life. He also builds self-esteem when he discovers he can be anything just by pretending!
2. Language Skills
Pretend play helps your child understand the power of language. In addition, by pretend playing with others, he learns that words give him the means to re-enact a story or organise play. This process helps your child to make the connection between spoken and written language — a skill that will help him learn to read.
3. Thinking Skills
Pretend play provides your child with a variety of problems to solve. Whether it's two children wanting to play the same role or searching for the perfect material to make a roof for the playhouse, your child calls upon important cognitive thinking skills that he will use in every aspect of his life, now and forever.
4. Nurturing the Imagination
You can spark your children’s fantasy world by making materials like empty cardboard boxes, cooking utensils, colouring and art materials easily accessible to them. With their use of these humble materials, you will be surprised at their creativity!
In my boys’ world, they can be soldiers, firefighters, footballers and whatever they want to be in a day! And it amazes me how they are able to communicate their ideas when their age ranges from two to nine.
Thanks to Friso, we received a free Friso playground set (and you can too!). Here’s what’s in the set: a play mat, play balls, a play slide, and a play tent.
We love that the play tent set can be kept so compact in this bag we can bring them everywhere!
Now this is a huge invitation to play, isn’t it?
Let the transformation begin!
First, we made spiralling snakes from paper plates, and baby R3 gets to paint too.
Materials used:
Paper plates, craft paint in assorted colours, paintbrushes, marker and scissors
Instructions:
- Draw a spiral shape onto a paper plate with a marker.
- Use assorted colours of craft paint to paint the whole paper plate.
- Once the paint is dry, cut along the spiral line from the outside to the center of the paper plate.
- Draw two googly eyes on the center of the plate to make the face.
Next, we made colourful parrots.
Materials used:
Cardboard, craft paint in assorted colours, paintbrushes, construction papers of assorted, colours, marker and scissors
Instructions:
- Draw the shape of a parrot on cardboard.
- Paint the parrots with the colours you like.
- Trace your handprints on different pieces of coloured construction paper and cut them out.
- Paste the colourful handprints on the parrots, and we are done!
How do you like these colourful hand-made animals?☺
We transformed our Friso playground set into a Jungle!
We pasted paw prints all over the playground set and pretended that there is a runaway leopard. The hunters (R1 and R2) need to hunt the jungle for all the paw prints in order to find out about the leopard’s whereabouts. However, if the leopard (R2) manages to remove most of his paw prints, it will escape!
After the game, we all gathered by a campfire in the jungle.
Next, we are going into outer space!
First, we will make some alien spaceships.
Materials used:
Paper plates, small clear plastic bowls, colourful pom poms, craft paint in assorted colours, paintbrushes, masking tape and glue
Instructions:
- Put some colourful pom-poms on the paper plate and cover them with a small clear plastic bowl.
- Tape the small clear plastic bowl onto the paper plate using masking tape.
- Paint the paper plate with your favourite colours and you are done!
Next, we will paint the planets, can you recognize them?
We created a dark background and pasted the planets, twinkling stars and alien spaceships all over. Now, we were ready to blast off! Baby R3 was abducted by the aliens and the two superheros flew off to save him!
Get your own Friso Playground Set for free!
We hope you have fun reading our post! And we have good news to share with you: from 1st March 2019 to 30th April 2019, you can take home this Friso Playground Set when you purchase $380* worth of products.
(*Terms and conditions apply. For more details, please visit their website.)