As Einstein said, “Imagination will take you everywhere,” so for a play-of-the-day, kids can blast off with some space pretend play.
Space pretend play doesn’t necessarily require any materials, but kids might want to have a few things. A space suit is beyond most dress-up tickle trunks, although kids are great at turning a small item like a wrist band into all they need. A rocket is much easier to do. To make a rocket or space ship start with an empty cardboard box. Using markers, kids can color on some controls. Your recycling basket will quite likely have other items. An aluminum pie plate could be a window. Glue or tape some plastic water bottle caps to be control buttons. Make stars from cereal boxes or scrap paper. Just getting the rocket ready needs lots of imagination.
Once it’s time to blast off, kids will use some of what they already know and will create what they need. Pretend play is a combination of fantasy as well as reality. Not only that, it mixes thinking with action. Most kids understand that space is far away and rockets zoom but they imagine what they see and hear. Their brains analyse problems and come up with solutions. Kids thinking will also include planning, predicting, and comparing, to name just a few.
Blocks, Lego, and other construction toys might be included in space pretend play. Blogger mum and educator at YouCleverMonkey.com made some wonderful space story stones. Kids use these to create their own scenarios about astronauts, aliens, planets, rockets, asteroids, satellites, stars, etc.
During pretend play, kids can play by themselves or with others. Besides thinking and physical skills, social and emotional skills are also involved. For so many aspects of development, pretend play is a vital component. As children play, whatever they imagine helps them make sense of the world around them. Is your child ready to blast off for some space pretend play?
Kids will play with only cars, trucks, and other transportation toys without anything else. Well, without other kinds of toys that is, but with their own actions and imagination. Although it sounds like a contradiction, pretend play is both vast and tiny at the same time, both unlimited and yet highly structured and controlled.
A child can place cars and trucks anywhere in time and space, but the play might be limited to how two trucks interact with each other. Nevertheless, this boy’s dad says his son will play with these for long stretches of time. Sometimes, the trucks talk in words and other times, their conversation is truck noises like revving engines and changing gears.
Or, play could be about going off to work in a truck. This child is pretending he is a worker and has loaded his lawnmowers in the back. At this moment in time, his world is limited to how he imagines it feels to have a job, to explore the world of work. Figuring out the world is an enormous challenge and imaginative and pretend play is a way to explore one small bit at a time.
Kids will also play with only construction toys, stacking them up to make a tower, bridge, robot, spaceship, castle, or something else they imagine. These toys might be wooden blocks, plastic bricks, or some other material.
Combining transportation and construction toys expands play. Suddenly, children can create towns and cities. They are feeling confident about creating and exploring a bigger chunk of the world through their imagination. It might be the size of a small square on the rug.
The construction and transportation imaginative play may take up the entire living room. In either case, and for play in between, there is a great deal more happening than we see on the outside. Wouldn’t it be fascinating if we could see inside a child’s mind too?
