This section will be added
Imaginative play helps a child explore her own feelings and emotions about a variety of situations. Children can overcome fears, like going to the doctor, through pretend play. They can consider all kinds of different career tracks or practice the parenting skills they will use in the future. Children can pretend alone or in group play with their friends. Both solo and group dramatic play enhances language skills, social behavior, problem solving, and many other areas of development.
Most children can play make-believe with a bare minimum of toys and props, but there are a number of items that will make play time even more fun. The best toys to encourage pretend play are those that allow a child to use his imagination to decide the toy’s purpose. Choose safe, long-lasting toys that fit with your child’s personal interests. Provide your child with a selection of age-appropriate toys that promote self-discovery and creativity.
Dress-up clothes, puppets, and soft dolls will also spur a preschooler’s imagination. Provide your preschooler with a variety of art supplies as well. Crayons, paper, glue sticks, yarn, tissue paper, felt scraps, and buttons will allow your child to create her own imaginary toys and props. Dollhouses are also excellent preschool toys for pretend play. The Our House dollhouse includes all the furniture your little one will need to play house with the included family of four.
Pretend Play Builds 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 just right 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.
Does your child enjoy a bit of roughhousing? Great! Some researchers in early brain development believe that this sort of play helps develop the part of the brain (the frontal lobe) that regulates behavior. So instead of worrying that this type of activity will encourage your child to act out or become too aggressive, be assured that within a monitored situation, rough-house play can actually help your child learn the self-regulation skills needed to know how and when this type of play is appropriate.
Pretend play also promotes abstract thinking. The ability to use a prop (such as a block) as a symbol for something else (such as a phone) is a high-level thinking skill. Eventually it will enable your child to recognize that numbers represent quantities of things, and that combinations of letters represent the words she speaks, hears, and reads.