Imaginative play for toddlers and preschoolers
I hate dolls. I didn’t really play with them as a kid. Even when I was given Vet Barbie when I was nine years old I just took all of her ‘patients’ and played dog rehoming centre instead. So imagine my frustration when the health visitor told me my daughter should be playing with a doll by 20 months old and I hadn’t even bought her one yet.
The thing is, I do get imaginative play. In fact, I used to get told off at school for gazing out of the window and daydreaming too much, or turning my pen into an aeroplane. So here’s a few play ideas for toddlers and preschoolers which will hopefully expand their imagination – whether they like dolls or not.
Play kitchen
One thing that annoyed me about people suggesting a doll for my daughter is that it’s the ultimate gender stereotype – so imagine my frustration when the next idea was a play kitchen. However, children start imaginative play by mimicking what they see adults doing and my children have seen me burn a lot of food. To introduce this toy, we actually spent the morning baking cookies and cooking pancakes in our real kitchen so when we brought out our pretend one, my toddler was quick to mix a spatula in the saucepan. Play kitchens are also great for preparing your toddler for nursery as it seems to be a government mandate that every pre-school has a mud one.
Den building
There’s something very innate about den building, it must date back to when we were all cavemen and needed to build shelters when we were hunting-gathering. Kids love it, in particular. The great thing is, you just need the cushions off your living room sofa and some blankets. You can go big and get some fairy lights for the inside or use a night light or glow egg to give it a campfire feel.
Car driving
This is again linked to the idea that children mimic adults for their first stages of imaginative play – and since they’ve been born they would have spent plenty of time in the car (or bus, if you’re a non-driver). Some toy retailers sell a light up driving wheel but a cheapskate like me just uses a frisbee or plastic plate from the play kitchen. For added imagination points, try setting up some chairs like the layout of your car or play your favourite driving music from your phone.
Zoo bedroom
This is where you pretend your child’s bedroom is a zoo and go looking for animals together. You can use stuffed animals, pictures of them, or animals in books and ask your child how many they can find. This is great for improving vocabulary, not just of the animals but directions too (e.g. under the shelf) and for introducing the sentence starter ‘I see…’. Or if nothing else, it’s a reason to make use of all the random toddler toys lurking in your house.
Tea party
A good one to start imaginative play with as your kids will have likely seen you drink a cup of tea before – or if not, it gives you a good reason to visit a cafe with them for inspiration and treat yourself to some red velvet cake. I even bought a teapot to pour myself tea from when I was feeding my children in the high chair to really hammer the point home. This can also be used with the play kitchen for the full cafe experience.
Puppets
Because everybody likes puppets. One of the first pieces of imaginative play I ever did with my babies was getting their puppets to hug them before they went to bed. I can only imagine what the logical part of their brain is thinking (‘my mum has put some furry material on her hand and is pretending to be a giraffe’) but it’s probably the most explicit way to show your children how you are using your imagination and how they should follow suit.
Tape driving track
Take some masking tape and stick a ‘racetrack’ of it around your living room, before ‘driving’ some model cars around it. This activity uses that same experience of being in the car with you, but this time they’re in charge of the journey – and you can make the scenery of your racetrack as elaborate as you want. As an added bonus, when the imaginative play is over you can let them pull the masking tape from the floor, keeping them entertained for twenty minutes while you have a chill.
Horsey ride
You need two adults for this if your little one is particularly little and likely to land on their head within five minutes but it can work really well if they’ve seen horse riding in action. You can tell the horse to go quicker or slower; you can even ‘feed’ the horse and make a stable for them. Another alternative in our house is ‘dragon baby’ where the children ‘fly’ on Daddy’s shoulders (which is great if you’ve got a hardwood floor and don’t trust your reflexes).
Dress up
There’s lots of dress up options for kids and I half wonder how much of it goes over their heads when they’re toddlers (I mean, how many have actually seen tutu-wearing ballet dancers in action?). I prefer costumes which actually come with some props to show kids what they should be doing like swords for a knight’s costume or a stethoscope with a doctor’s lab coat. But if your child has a favourite character on TV or in film, they will love to dress up as them and you can use these as a starting point to create your own stories.
Model people
The Little People from Fisher-Price are a good example for this, acting as a toddler-safe version of a doll’s house – but you can even make your own figures out of Play Doh. I would advise calling them the names of people from your family at first for children to really get the idea that you are imaginative playing. You could even get the models to perform tasks around the house that you normally do before moving onto other ideas. This, along with the play kitchen, are in my list of top 10 toys for two year olds.
