Imagining places, people and adventures
For me, this category describes when a child’s imagination is leading the play. So included in this section are activities like role play, dressing up, playing with dolls, telling stories, building landscapes and places. Sometimes children are practicing things they have seen or experienced, retelling favourite stories or embodying a beloved character.
First set of animal characters
Using bath toys as props for songs and play
These were some of E’s very first animal figures, which we used all the time from when E was about 6 to 18 months old. They are chunky, soft rubber toys, mostly designed as bath toys. I decided to use them for playing with outside of the bath and so tried not to submerge them in water as this eventually makes them moldy inside.
E loved them as objects, to look at, hold and chew. We started with making the animal sounds and including them in songs (eg Old MacDonald had a farm, 5 little ducks) and then role played with them more, making up stories, making them move around and hiding them for games of peek-a-boo.
Imagining wild worlds
Toy animals and garden items for creating wild landscapes
When E was about 18 months old I got a collection of proper toy animals from a local charity shop and started encouraging E to imagine worlds for them. Here I used some garden weeds, alongside a tray of water and stones to create a jungle scene.
Firstly I moved the animals around and gave them voices, showing E how they might drink or bathe in the water or climb on the rocks. She was quite interested and took hold of the animals herself to move them around. Initially the activity didn’t last very long but it was something I offered her again and again – and she started to play more with it as weeks went by.
Mud and water trays for animals to play
Adding sensory exploration to animal play
This activity combines sensory exploration with the opportunity for lots of imaginative play. Here we added lots of little animals to trays of water and mud, some with stones in to create little imaginary rock pools or lakes.
E enjoyed getting some of the animals muddy and then giving them a clean in the water. We sometimes played together, where I added voices to the animals or made some of them move but she was also happy to sit and play for a while on her own.
Dressing up
E started to love dressing up from when she was about 18 months old. Its something I remember loving as a child too.. I remember sequins, velvet, grown up shoes, hand bags and lots of scarves! My mum was fantastic at finding clothes and accessories in charity shops and U have tried to do the same for E.
The clothes she first played with were all hand-me-downs from friends that were too big, I then bought several things from charity shops (all for between 50p-£1), cut up old clothes rather than throwing them away (eg stained leggings were cut down to make leg warmers or arm bands) and have made some things too (masks, home made jewellery – see the ‘creative’ section for some of these ideas).
We did buy a toy chest and used it as a dressing up box once E had her own room, but before that we kept everything in a large bag. An old suitcase would make a great dressing up chest and could be stored away under a bed or sofa.
Including toys in role play
Soft toys, dolls and babies become other people in the role play
I think we probably started some kind of group ‘tea party’ playing with E’s toys when she was younger than this, but I don’t remember her really getting into the idea of using her toys as other people until she was about 20 months old. From sharing cake at a tea party to including them in music sessions E has enjoyed extending her play to include these toys.
This type of imaginary play has helped E develop a sense of other people as I have given a voice to the characters during the play, sometimes expressing how they feel or what they want and E has been able to practice social skills such as sharing and turn taking. As she has got older E has started to give a voice to the characters herself.
Wondrous little objects
As a gift for E’s second birthday her grandma made the most glorious present. It was a set of boxes each filled with little objects. She had collected items from charity shops and bought a set of tiny food online. Each box had a letter of the alphabet and the objects could be matched to the letter eg an apple for ‘A’ a bear for ‘B’.. This was such a lovely idea and a clever way for practicing letters, sounds and words.
E really liked taking all the objects out, looking at them and exploring them but she wasn’t ready for thinking about matching the objects to the letters so we used them with her dolls house instead.
This completely transformed how she played with her dolls house, it added such a rich layer of interest as now people cooked, had cups of tea, went to the shops – did all sorts of things that she hadn’t been able to imagine before. This activity has had so much longevity and it’s the first activity that she really engaged in on her own and is great when she (we both) need a bit of quiet play.
Building places
Adding figures to construction play
From when E was about two years old she started enjoying construction toys like Duplo or building blocks (we found both these sets in local charity shops). What really engaged her though was adding little figures and objects into the constructed scenes which we then told stories with. For us this started with building a Duplo train station and train and adding all the figures into this imagined ‘set’.
As she has got older she has gained more skills and confidence with the construction element of the play and now does a lot more of the building herself. She still really likes the imagined characters and scenes which I think makes the play more vivid for her.
Finger puppet fun
Finger puppets can work really well for quite small children and can be used for games of peek-a-boo, adding visuals to songs or telling stories. I bought one set of finger puppets from IKEA and another from a charity shop. From when E was about two years old she played with them more independently in her imaginative play. For example she has gathered other items in the picture above to make a tea party for some of her puppets.
Here E is two years old and is playing with the puppets on a felt board. Her grandma made this with felt from a craft shop and velcro which she attached to the back of each puppet. Firstly we used the puppets and board to tell E a story such as The Three Little Pigs or Little Red Ridding Hood which she really enjoyed (these story puppets where bought on Ebay). Later she was keen to re-tell the story herself or to make up new ones and liked being able to move the puppets around herself.
Tea for two
E is about two and a half here and it was a cold wintry day. So when we were feeling a bit miserable on the way home I suggested we have a tea party and warm up with some nice tea. We’d never done this before and E was pretty excited. I found some fruit tea she could try and just laid out her snack in a bit of a grown up way with proper tea cups and plates.
She was pretty thrilled by the newness of this, ate her snack, took a sip of the tea and spent the rest of the time pouring the tea in and out of the tea pot. So it became a bit more of a water play activity than I had anticipated but it was fun and she enjoyed trying out something she had seen in books.
Bath time for baby
E is about two and half here and had enjoyed playing with this baby doll in the garden. It got quite muddyso we decided to give it a bath. She really enjoyed this – using bubble bath and a cloth to give it a good wash. She talked about what the baby needed and related it to her own experiences of bath time.
It was quite easy to dry the baby as it was made of plastic and so E could carry on playing with it straight away. She liked drying it in the towel and getting it dressed into some old baby clothes I had kept for playing with.
Role play libraries
She is about two and a half here and likes to role play experiences she has had. Here we are pretending she is a librarian. It was a pretty simple process that had her interested for quite a long time! I chose a selection of books to ‘borrow’ which she would scan (we started by using the remote control as a ‘scanner’ and then remembered we actually had a toy one from a shopping till set).
We used an old loyalty card as a pretend library card and she would bag the books up for me to take home. She liked enacting things she had seen adults do, like typing on a computer or talking on a phone. She also enjoyed being a visitor to the library but mostly so she could run away with the books before I scanned them, which she thought was hilarious. It was pretty funny.
Recreating stories
E has started to love dressing up as characters from her favourite stories and re-telling the story in her play. For her at this age (almost three years old), the costumes don’t have to be exact but need to give her a sense of being the character so a hat or ribbon or pair of boots can go a long way in helping her imagination. Its really important for her that I take part in the story, sometimes I help her remember what happens in the story but often she is really clear on what she wants to happen and even tells me what to say!
A few basic props like other toys, play food, boxes and blankets can be used in lots of different ways to represent parts of stories. I have noticed E tends to want to tell the same story again and again for a while and then she moves onto a new idea or story. This repetition is helping her to develop a sense of narrative and story telling. This type of play also gives her a chance to think about what characters might want or feel which is developing her social awareness and empathy for other people’s needs.
Party time
This was a great way to extend our usual tea or birthday party role play. We dressed up lots of dolls and toys from selection of old baby clothes and dolls clothes and made some paper hats before we started the party. E enjoyed choosing clothes for the dolls and thinking abut how we needed to prepare for the party.
We used some old paintings and cut the into strips to make hats – so they were already decorated but it could work well to decorate plain paper hats too.
On another occasion we played this again and also made paper balloons and decorations. We cut oval shapes from paper and stuck some string to the back to create a balloon shapes, we did spend some time decorating these with pens. A card board box is functioning as a table, some old gift bags are being used to give E her ‘birthday presents’ (various toys from around the house) and we spent some time making a paper chain decoration.
To make the paper chain we cut an old painting into strips and sat together threading and taping each strip of paper into a ring. E got really involved in this and it was a great fine motor activity for her too – building her hand coordination and strength.
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Play all day 