How to Promote Pretend Play: Five Suggestions from Kibtoy
In my last blog article Kibtoy Provides Great Toys for Children’s Pretend Play, the questions what pretend play is and how it could benefit children’s are discussed. In this article, Kibtoy, as a professional and experienced toy dealer, wants to offer five suggestions on how to promote pretend play, including what parents should and should not do during pretend play and what toys are appropriate for it.
First, Kibtoy believes that the most efficient pretend play comes when parents get down to their children’s level and play with them in the same way as they do. According to Lauren Lowry, face-to-face interaction between children and their parents could make them enjoy the pretend play much because they could feel connected to parents when they see faces, gestures and actions of their parents. Instead, children won’t feel being ignored or even lonely. What’s more, when parents get down to children’s level, they could align their actions to facilitate the pretend play, making it more enjoyable. For instance, they can understand what their children’s interests are, and then motivate children to go on with the pretend play by following their leads, like giving them more toys they like and pretend to enjoy the delicious “food” cooked by them. In other words, parents could imitate children’s pretend actions to encourage them to do more pretend play. Close observation of children’s actions in pretend play could make parents understand more about their children and make more contribution to it.
Second, parents could offer new ideas to keep the pretend play going when children don’t know how to pretend. At first, your children might need your help with pretend play. They need some clues or objects. Parents could help them to kick-start pretend play. Some children might be too young to do pretend play. This doesn’t mean pretend play does not suit them or they lack the ability to do it. Emma Homa concludes that children could learn much from observing, imagining and imitating. Children are usually curious about the things happening around them. They always learn about them by observing, thinking and pretending. This is an important main way for to learn. During pretend play, a lot of imagination is involved. In other words, pretend play is part of children’s learning process. In order to facilitate pretend play, parents could encourage children to think about these things and even imitate them. For instance, parents could give children a set of Car Rescue Toy Set (Picture 1) and pretend that your car is in danger and need rescue from them. Then they pretend play could keep going on. When your children can start pretend play, parents should introduce new ideas or new toy into their pretend play so that they could have more and different fun from it. By this way, children’s experience from pretend play could be escalated and more of their imagination could be generated. For instance, parents could introduce this Airplane Transport Cargo (Picture 2) toy set into the previous car rescue game. This story in pretend play will be intensified and children could learn more due to their increased imagination because they can have some new experiences.
Picture 1: Race Tracks and Car Adventures
Picture 2: Transport Cargo Airplane
Third, parents should promote interaction with children during pretend play. Although pretend play is an important way for children to learn, parents shouldn’t always take over the play in an attempt to demonstrate how to pretend. It could be necessary for parents to lead the play when necessary. Then, parents should let children take the lead and give them appropriate response accordingly. In this way, a back-and-forth conversation could be developed between children and parents. The communication will become interactive and efficient. When children play pretend games with their friends who are at the same age of them, they will be able to carry on this kind of communication. As a result, children will learn many social and thinking skills from pretend play, such as communication, taking turns, respect others and empathy.
Fourth, parents could help children choose pretend activities which are appropriate to their ages. Children’s growth and development is not a stagnant process but always changing or escalating. You might notice that your children choose different toys to play at different ages. When they are infants, they tend to choose those toys they could touch and chew. When they are in the kindergarten, they will love pretending to be teachers and lose their interest in those toddler toys they used to love in previous years. Therefore, it is crucial for parents to choose appropriate toys for children’s pretend play according to their ages. For instance, when a child could handle small tools with hands, parents could provide tool toys like Mini Wooden Play Tool Set (Picture 3) or Take Apart Dinosaur Toys (Picture 4) for them to pretend a plumber. These toys could not only bring entertainment but also help improve many skills and abilities of theirs, such as hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills, logical thinking and so on. When they pretend to play a social role, they will imitate what this role would do in their minds. Their skills and abilities will be also enhanced. Marygrace Taylor has specified how parents could choose appropriate pretend activities for children’s pretend play. Her suggestions could be very useful for parents.
Picture 3: Mini Wooden Play Tool Set
Picture 4: Take Apart Dinosaur Toys
Last, parents could help children build up scenes for their pretend play. Parents should play silly and cheesy games with children because they could have fun from them. Children usually enjoy being accompanied by present parents. In other words, children will get more fun from pretend play when their parents are fully engaged in it. Sometimes, parents would give children some toys before leaving them alone. This kind of accompany is not efficient or affectionate. Children will feel boring with pretend play soon. Kibtoy suggests parents to set up some scenes for pretend play, especially some silly or cheesy games, because children are found to like them the most. Besides, in the scene, parents should be part of it so that they could be fully involved in the pretend game. The most important thing that parents should know during the process of select toys to build up pretend play scenes is that they should provide children with open-ended toys. Kibtoy provides both open- and close-ended toys. Those toys that require and allow children to input their ideas to facilitate the game are open-ended toys, such as arts and handcrafts, dress-up clothes and inertia toy cars. A Princess Castle Play Tent (Picture 5) is a great open-ended toy because it allows children to imagine many things about it. On the contrary, a close-ended toy doesn’t allow children to input much imagination in it during a game. For instance, when children build up flowers out of this Succulent Garden Building Blocks Kit (Picture 6), the result is limited to end up with some succulent flowers. Children are not allowed to immerse their own ideas in the game. When such a toy is spotted, parents should get rid of them from the pretend play scene.
Picture 5: Princess Castle Play Tent
Picture 6: Succulent Garden Building Blocks Kit
Pretend play is essential for children’ growth and development. Parents should learn how to promote pretend games, getting down to children’s level, giving them some new ideas, promoting interaction, choosing appropriate toys according to children’s ages and setting up scenes with open-ended toys.
